Well, we made it! Christmas is over for another year and we survived without diving head first into a Christmas carb fest. We thought we would follow up from our tips for surviving the silly season post and report back how we survived.

Keto Friendly Sweet Treats

Prior to heading off to stay with Dan’s family for a couple of days, we made some keto chocolate truffles and some other keto sweet treats that we could have when the desserts came out. This worked perfectly as we never felt like we were missing out.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas eve we were the organisers, so we were able to drive the menu. Dan’s family have a smaller get together on Christmas Eve and this year it was our turn to organise. We made a vegetable platter, Caesar salad (no croutons) and purchased chicken and sausages for the BBQ.

We also made some ranch dip for the vegetables and some devilled eggs. We are able to relax knowing all the food was keto friendly. We didn’t make a keto-friendly dessert as we knew we would be the only ones eating it, so we assigned dessert to Dan’s sister to bring and just gave it a miss.

Christmas Day

Breakfast was something we wanted to make special. We didn’t want to just have the regular type breakfast of eggs and bacon. We had bought some Anna’s Low Carb Kitchen mixes a couple of months ago and thought this would be the perfect time to have the pancakes.

We cooked up enough for Dan’s Mum and partner also and served them with some sugar free maple flavoured syrup, berries and double cream. This was perfect and it really felt like a special treat.

Lunch was a slightly tougher proposition as we had no input into the main meal. It is the same every year so we had an idea that we would at least be able to eat the protein safely. We made a grazing board to have out when everyone arrived and this meant we could snack on this while everyone else had chips and lollies.

For Dessert, we were also tasked with taking a fruit platter we made sure we added blueberries, strawberries and raspberries so we could still participate in dessert. We also took some double cream so we were set. Luckily for us the carb options weren’t super appealing and we were able to navigate lunch pretty easily.

Challenges

• There is just so much food around all the time. From the moment people arrive there are nibbles, then lunch then dessert and then you leave. There isn’t any time when there is not food on the table. This meant we were grazing unconsciously, even if it was keto-friendly food. In this situation it is very easy to overeat.
• Having all those sweet keto treats around we were focused on eating them just because they were there. It is not usual for us to eat so much sweet food and to have it around all the time.
• Trying to not fall into the ‘Oh it’s Christmas just one lollie/rum ball/bread roll etc is okay, it’s a special day’ mentality. It was the start of a 2 week holiday for us & could easily snowball from 1 rum ball is ok into a 2 week carb binge.
• Focus was just choose best low carb options and not limit to 20gm of carbs etc and just enjoy ourselves with our family

We felt we managed Christmas much better this year than last year. We were more prepared having already had one keto Christmas under our belts and were more confident we could stay keto friendly this year.

Check out some of our other Christmas related posts –

• Sugar Free Blueberry Tart – Low Carb Dessert
• Keto Christmas Menu – What’s on our table for Christmas 2018!
• Low Carb Christmas Pudding – Cranberry & Walnut with Mascarpone Cream
• Black Forest Trifle – Low Carb and Keto
• Keto Gingerbread Cookies
• Keto Rum Balls
• Keto Rocky Road
• Keto Chocolate Bark
• How we Survived Christmas
• Keto Chocolate Salami