Christmas Day is fast approaching – 10 days at the time of this article’s publication – and many of us will be preparing to battle the traffic in-and-out of supermarket car parks to fetch last minute Christmas gifts, buy the turkey, wine and a plethora of vegetables. However, do you know how many calories are actually contained in the food and drink you plan to indulge in over Christmas? If not, it may be time to get clued up. Not that Medical Specialists® Pharmacy want to be party poopers of course, but it may be worthwhile considering portion sizes and a slight degree of restraint occasionally. Things can still be enjoyed – in moderation – unless you want to risk a 3 or 4 month battle with the bulge by consistently going way over the Recommended Daily Average (RDA) calorie limit. Incidentally, according to the NHS: “Within a healthy, balanced diet, a man needs around 10,500kJ (2,500kcal) a day to maintain his weight. For a woman, that figure is around 8,400kJ (2,000kcal) a day. These values can vary depending on age, metabolism and levels of physical activity, among other things.” Over the festive period the average person gains about 4 pounds merely between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day – a single week! However, when we delve into the calorific things we are putting into our bodies over this time, it is rather easy to understand. Many of us will gorge on over twice our recommended daily calories intake in a single sitting. Previous research suggests that the average Brit will munch and drink their way through a staggering 5,240 calories on Christmas Day alone. In order to burn this off, you would need to run 2 full marathons. Yes, 2 of them! A marathon runner approximately burns off around 2,600 calories over the 26.2 miles involved in a marathon, equating to about 100 calories per mile. If running isn’t for you and you are trying to protect your joints a little more by cycling, don’t think that will be easy either…You’d still need to be peddling away for a whopping 109 miles, burning 48 calories per miles. If you are the sort of person who prefers exercising indoors by frequenting a gym, you will have to graft too in order to burn off the 5,240 calories. Specifically, 9 hours of graft, burning 590 calories per hour. Whilst those hitting the pool would need to front crawl for 13 hours. When you break down exactly what you are putting into your belly over Christmas, it quickly becomes easy to see how the calories can rapidly accumulate. Only 3 roast potatoes can add up to about 600 calories, 4 slices of turkey contain around 404 calories, Christmas pudding with brandy butter and custard has 587 calories in a single serving, whilst washing all that down with only 2 glasses of Champagne whacks on a further 226 calories. This equates to 1,817 calories and that is not adding together all the vegetables, gravy, cranberry sauce, pigs in blankets, and countless other additions to your Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, for many of us it is taking until Easter time to shift the weight, at a time when Easter eggs and other treats risk gaining some of the weight back! Forza Supplements conducted a survey of more than 1,000 people and discovered that over third reported it would take around 4 months for them to lose weight and get back to the shape they were in pre-Christmas. Lee Smith, Forza Supplements managing director, said: “The problem most dieters have is they tend to ‘write off’ Christmas and go right over the top – not just on Christmas dinner but all the endless nibbles which are brought out between meals. “We all want to have fun at Christmas but the best way to maintain a bit of discipline is to look at the hours or exercise you will have to carry out to burn off their calories. “When dieters realise you have to run a half marathon to work off the calories consumed having Christmas pudding and cheese, they might just think it is worth calling it day after the turkey.”