Christmas Without the Health Crash: Your 4-Pillar Holiday Guide

Stop fighting with yourself over Christmas cookies. There's a better way.

In this episode, Dr. Orlena shares a powerful client story that changes everything about how we think about holiday eating. Imagine walking into a European patisserie—vanilla and sugar filling the air, pastries glistening behind glass—and genuinely, easily choosing just coffee. No internal battle. No guilt. Just... peace.

Here's what you'll discover:

✨ The difference between deprivation and true food freedom – Why the oscillation between desire and guilt keeps you stuck, and how to reach a place where saying no feels effortless (hint: it's not about willpower)

✨ Why it's not about what you eat between Christmas and New Year – The surprising truth about routines, the 80% rule across four health pillars, and why your other 50 weeks are what really matter

✨ The identity shift that makes healthy choices automatic – How adopting "I am someone who prioritizes my health and wellness" transforms decision-making from exhausting to effortless (just like being a non-smoker)

Plus, Dr. Orlena reveals her personal strategies for navigating holidays, the cocoa versus hot chocolate experiment that proves less sugar means less craving, and why her 17-year-old son's observation about "not entirely delicious" food is actually the highest compliment.

Whether you're hosting family dinners or traveling for the holidays, this episode gives you practical tools to enjoy the season without derailing your health—or feeling like you're missing out.

Ready to make this your healthiest, most enjoyable holiday season yet?

Dr Orlena's Stress Free Holiday Gift: https://www.mealgarden.com/market/buy-package/dr-orlena-stress-free-holidays-d9vfn/?grant=wulopnlsth 

Watch Stop Dieting Start Thriving: https://go.drorlena.com/video 

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Transcript

 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing today. Today is the second part of Christmas and how to navigate Christmas and the holidays without. Totally annihilating health and wellness, but also without feeling that you're depriving yourself, you are restricting yourself and it's not enjoyable.

How do you get the balance right? But first story time. Okay. Today is not my story. Today is a story that I would like to share that one of my clients told me yesterday, one of my clients in my group program. So my client, let's call her Lucy, lives in Europe, and her win was this. She went to the beach.

Okay. It's December, so it's not particularly hot, but when she goes to the beach, she likes to go [00:01:00] to the beach and indulge in perhaps some ice cream or something like that. Now, yesterday, actually it would be the day before now. Anyhow, she went to this beautiful patisserie. She lives in Europe. She described.

Those amazing smells that you get from Patisseries in Europe full of vanilla and sugar and all kinds of amazing deliciousness that are there just to entice you and make you want to eat them. However, what happened to my client to Ducey was that she went into the patisserie, she looked around and she thought, do you know what?

Actually, I'll just have coffee. That my friends is an amazing win because when you get to the stage that it's easy not to eat the enticing food, you are no longer depriving yourself. When you think about depriving [00:02:00] yourself, you are depriving yourself because you want something and you are denying yourself and that.

Two thought process, half of your brain going, yes, I want it. And the other half of your brain going no, you mustn't have it. That sets up this internal dialogue, which makes you oscillate between desire and guilt, desire, guilt, shame, and there's no kind of winning in that situation because when you eat something, you eat it and then you feel guilty about it.

Or as I always. Teach my clients, if you're gonna eat something, enjoy it. There's no point in eating something and feeling guilty about it. But where a really powerful place is to be able to say, do you know what? I can take it or I can leave it. It just no longer has a holder over me. It's easy for me to say no, and then it's just win, win that is not depriving yourself, that is not wanting something, and it makes it so much [00:03:00] easier.

To not eat that stuff, that is going to totally derail you. Push your sugar levels up high mean, make it so that you want to eat more and more of it. Another story for you. Actually, my eldest son, he's 17 and he is busy at that stage where he is trying to be Mr. Muscle Man. And he said to me, mom, I think we are so thin because you create healthy foods that's not like entirely delicious, as in we don't want to eat more and more of it because it's so enticing.

And I was like. Yes, there's a win. That's a great win. That's entirely my objective is that my children are a healthy weight. They're not underweight. They may be underweight compared to some people, but they are actually a healthy weight for themselves. So yes, he has two great points to make. One is that healthy food means that they're less likely to put on excess weight, but number two, when your food isn't [00:04:00] so amazingly delicious that.

Yeah, it fills the spot. You eat it and you enjoy it, but it's not enticing. It's not calling you to eat more and more of it. My drink that I drink in the evening is cocoa, and I think this is a really good example. So I make cocoa with. Cocoa powder. It's just a hundred percent cocoa powder, which is great because it's got some fiber in it.

It's got amazing antioxidants in, I make it like instant coffee, like a teaspoon of cocoa powder. I put some water in and then I put some soya milk in and I enjoy it. But when I've had one cup, I don't want more. I'm just like, yeah, that was a nice finish of my evening meal. That's it. Finish. As opposed to my daughter.

Now, she likes to make. Hot chocolate, you know the stuff that you buy. And actually, if you look at the ingredients of the hot chocolate, it should really be called hot sugar because it's 66% sugar with some cocoa powder in it. And obviously it's got thickeners in it as well 'cause it makes that really [00:05:00] gloopy sugary stuff as opposed to the cocoa that I'm drinking is less than 1% sugar.

So the amount of sugar in my cocoa is negligible because I'm only putting one teaspoon in. So there's hardly any sugar in there at all. Could my kids keep drinking and drinking that chocolate? Yes, of course they could if they were allowed to, which they're not. But that's a really good example of not only is the one Cup containing lots more sugar than the other one, but it also has that effect that you want to have more and more.

A bit like when you drink alcohol and you drink one glass, another glass, and then you're like. Oh my goodness. I could just drink anything. I'll just keep on drinking. Okay, so Christmas time, holiday time. Here's a really good saying that I want you to remember. It's not important what you eat between [00:06:00] Christmas and New Year.

It's important. What do you eat between New Year and Christmas? What does that mean? It means it is important. What your general routine, what you are doing all the time is important. And Christmas is just a little blip. One year, one week, two weeks, depending on where you live. So here in Spain, Christmas kind of starts on like the 24th, 25th, and then we have New Year's, and then on the 6th of January they have Kings.

So it's a two week holiday here. But it's just two weeks outta 52 weeks. And if you are doing the healthy things, if you have got to 80%, this is where I want to get my clients. 80% in all four pillars. Eating healthily doesn't have to be perfect, but eating healthily most of the time, exercising most of the time, good quality sleep, most of the time, paying attention to your stress levels.

[00:07:00] Emotional wellness most of the time. If you are doing that, most of the time, the reality is it doesn't really matter what you do over Christmas and New Year. For example, last summer we went to Paris for a week. I couldn't do any exercise. We did a bit of walking, but like not real exercise. It was difficult to eat healthily.

I managed to eat as healthily as I could, but we went to Disneyland, Paris. There were six of us. I spent 400 Euros on ice cream and McDonald's. Do I normally do that? No, I don't. Why did we have McDonald's? Because to be perfectly honest, it was the cheapest of a bad lot, and when you are in Disneyland, Paris, it's impossible to eat.

Out of Disneyland. I did actually trek in the blazing sun one afternoon to the local supermarket. It took me half an hour to get there and bought as many fruits and vegetables as I could and healthy snacks, but it's [00:08:00] really difficult. Okay, but you still want to know what to do over Christmas.

Okay. So there's loads of things that you can do with Christmas if we think about Christmas. Or the holiday season. There are a few things that are going on. So remember last week we talked about social eating, which is a really big part of Christmas. Why do people eat differently over Christmas? A lot of it is to do with social eating, either with your family events.

All kinds of things. So we looked at that specifically. The main problem with Christmas is that our routine gets knocked sideways. And if you're going away, for example, it's really difficult for you to control what you are eating. It might be really difficult for you to maintain your exercise. And on top of that, there is this idea of, oh, I should indulge.

Join in the party. This is what we're doing. [00:09:00] We are eating too much, we're drinking too much. We are having fun. And I put it to you that you don't need to eat and drink too much to have fun. Now, I'm not saying that you can't make that choice, but really the fun is connecting with people and enjoying that period of time.

Thinking about all the things we are grateful for, thinking about our lives, thinking about our friends and our family, and we don't need to eat too much or drink too much for that to be enjoyable. And one mindset shift that I think is really helpful is to think about health and wellness. How to get healthy and strong.

So what I see a lot of people doing is thinking, oh my goodness, I feel overweight. How can I stop being fat? And I think actually what you need to think about is how do I get to healthy [00:10:00] and strong fit and healthy and strong? How do I make that change? What do I need to do? And one of the tools that I find really helpful, both for myself and my clients is what I call the I Am statement.

And we have an I Am statement, which goes along the lines of I am somebody who prioritizes my health and wellness. Now you can choose whichever you want. Like it could be something totally different. I've had clients who say things like, I have time to exercise. But the basic statement is, I am somebody who prioritizes my health and wellness.

And when you learn to believe that, it becomes your identity. And this is really important because our identity is the hangar of which we make decisions. Now a really, I've told this story lots of times, but I'm gonna say, tell it again or example rather than story. If you are somebody who smokes cigarettes and somebody offers you a cigarette, [00:11:00] your identity is, I am a smoker.

Somebody offers you a cigarette. You may say yes. You may say no. Depending on the circumstances, chances are you are gonna say yes. Now, if you don't smoke, if you are a non-smoker, your identity is, I do not smoke, and somebody offers you a cigarette, and the answer automatically is. No, why would I want a cigarette?

I don't smoke. It's not even a decision that you make. And the same is true of our health and wellness. When you start to think of yourself as somebody who looks after yourself, who prioritizes your health and wellness, it is easy for you to make decisions that are healthy. Yes, I am going to go to the gym.

Yes, I'm gonna do my exercise. That doesn't mean that you can't miss a day. Yes, I am going to eat healthily. That doesn't mean that you must never eat sugar and chocolate and alcohol, but you do it [00:12:00] within limits, within parameters, within internal limits, ones that are easy for you to follow. I refer you to the story that I told at the beginning of this, when it feels easy, not because you are depriving yourself.

So if you have that, I am somebody who prioritizes my health and wellness. It becomes easy for you to maintain these habits over Christmas. So for me, it's really easy to maintain habits over Christmas. Okay. Confession. It's really easy because we are not going anywhere anyhow, and we are gonna carry on doing the same things.

We'll have a meal over Christmas, but it's only one meal, and I will be able to maintain most of my exercise routine. But even if I was going away, if I was going away, here are some of the things that I would implement if I was away over the holidays, number one. Nutrition. I never go anywhere without a [00:13:00] large bag of nuts.

If I feel that I'm going somewhere where I have zero control over what I'm going to eat, then I will take nuts with me as a healthy snack so that I've got something that I know is healthy. Now, there are other ways of navigating this too, but essentially you want to be thinking about your protein and your fiber, which means making sure you are eating vegetables.

Protein normally is reasonably easy for people, particularly around Christmas when there's lots of meat, but fiber is the one that gets lost. Another thing that I think is really helpful over Christmas, which you can do more if you are either staying with a friend who likes cooking or you are at home, is to make.

Healthier treats. Now, I love healthy treats. For example, my cocoa. Okay, that's not necessarily a treat, but it's a healthy version of something else. One of my favorites is I make a really lovely mince pie mixture. Now, [00:14:00] I came to realize recently my clients, my American clients, saying, what are mince pies that mince pies are unique to the United Kingdom?

So if you are not. From the United Kingdom, a mince pie is a little sweet pie and it has something called mince meat in it, which is basically raisins and a lot of sugar, and they are delicious. Now I make one by using grated apple and carrot and putting in raisins and nuts and things like figs, and I bake it and sometimes I turn it into a pie and sometimes I just make the mix.

My husband likes pastry, so he likes the pie. I'm like, I don't get pastry. But anyhow. It is, it's still got that Christmasy flavor. Obviously you put the spices in as well. Yet it is just healthy stuff. Yes, it's more sweet than if I was just eating vegetables, but it's still full of fiber. It's got antioxidants.

It's tasty. It's not going to spike your sugar levels in the same way [00:15:00] that eating mince pies is so healthy. Alternatives is a really good trick. What else would I do? I would try and maintain exercise as much as I could. Now, if I was going away, that would be difficult for me to be able to go to the gym and do weights and to go to the swimming pool, however.

I would make sure that I go for walks. Walks can be really sociable as well, so thinking about things that you want to do with your friends and family. Going for a walk is a lovely plate way to see an area and you can chat whilst you're doing it. You can also do things like seven minute workouts. You can do two of them to make it a 14 minute workout, but two little bits early in the morning so that you make sure that you are doing.

Something. And I have definitely been known when I go and stay at my friends to be jumping around first thing in the morning when everybody else is still sleeping. I just put it on and or I go into my room and do it so that people don't think what a crazy person she is. [00:16:00] What else do I have to tell you?

I think enjoy it is really my big piece. Remember? Four pillars, nutrition, exercise, sleep. Sleep is really important, so alcohol is another big thing. The reality is that as we get older, particularly as we go through menopause, alcohol affects us more and more, and it affects our sleep and the knock on of a bad night's sleep the next day is higher insulin levels, higher cortisol levels, and wanting to eat more personally.

I drink less and less alcohol. I have a limit that I will not drink after seven o'clock. Even then, I find it has a knock on effect to my sleep. Next year, I am going to do a dry whole 2026. It is my challenge to myself. I always do dry January and I'm gonna see if I can maintain it for the whole year.

In fairness, I don't drink very [00:17:00] much, so I don't really think it's gonna be a big deal. So alcohol is another thing to think about. And I'm not saying you should never drink alcohol. I'm saying you should drink alcohol with your eyes open, knowing what the consequence of drinking alcohol is, you probably will feel a little bit fuzzy the next morning.

Now, sometimes when we travel, we don't sleep well anyhow, so you might say it's not gonna make any difference. I'm gonna enjoy a glass of wine or whatever it is that you want to drink, but what I don't want you to do is drink the wine and go, yeah, this helps me sleep well. And I know it's good for me that my friend is not true.

It doesn't help you sleep well, even if you feel your sleeping deeply. Actually, you are not getting good quality sleep, but that is your decision to make. Okay, so that's pillar three is sleep, and then pillar four is the emotional stress one. So don't get stressed by Christmas. The whole point of Christmas is to relax and enjoy [00:18:00] yourself.

By the way, I do have a doctoral arena's stress-free Christmas. It's a little program, it's totally free. I was gonna charge 12 euros for it, but I decided I would just give it out, out for free 'cause it was easier and it includes lots of healthy recipes. I will leave a link in the show notes that you can sign up for that.

And if you are thinking, yeah, I totally get all of this, I need some support. I really want to make 2026 the year that I get to healthy amazing me. I want to be confident that I am doing everything in my power. That it's easy to lead a healthy, long, and vibrant life, and perhaps you have some excess weight that you also want to get rid of.

If that is you, I urge you to book a call this week. Why this week? If you join this week, if you join my coaching program this week, you can have your onboarding now and enjoy Christmas. You don't have to do anything like deprive yourself over Christmas. You can [00:19:00] start thinking about the mindset piece, which is amazingly powerful to understand how your brain works, how the human brain works, specifically, your human brain works, and then you can start properly in January, so know that you are going to be.

Kicking off strong at the beginning of January, you plan it now, and it's gonna happen in January, so that by the end of March you're thinking, yes, I've got my system. I know what to do. I'm confident I'm loving this. This is amazing. All I need to do is keep doing so. Number one, you can watch the video, stop dieting, start thriving.

I have redone it. It is only 10 minutes long. If you haven't watched it, I urge you to watch it. You can also book a call. I am taking calls for the next few days until middle of sometime next week. I can't remember when and I wish you all an amazing Christmas and a happy New Year. Goodbye.