Season’s Eatings: Navigating the Holidays with Nutritionist Gareth Nicholas

Combining preparation with nutrition and exercise tracking is key to achieving your holiday health goals.

During the holidays when indulgent dinners and decadent desserts are everywhere, it can be challenging to strike a healthy balance. Whether you’ve spent the year following a keto diet, going gluten-free, or just trying to incorporate a more well-rounded diet, end-of-year celebrations often involve getting excessive. But a little holiday extravagance doesn’t have to turn into a guilty conscience.

Gareth Nicholas, a performance nutritionist that works with sports and fitness professionals, says that preparation coupled with nutrition and exercise tracking can go a long way in helping his clients achieve their health goals.

“What I usually do with my clients would be to do a food log or food journal to track their current diet and then start making changes,” said Nicholas. “Otherwise they might not have any appreciation of what it is they are trying to achieve. Often people maybe don’t have the best idea about food portions or whether something is particularly calorific.”

That can be especially true around the holidays when large, buffet-style dinners often have people going back for second servings and eating more sweets than they normally would. To combat this, Nicholas has three main tips.

“I would say that eating a little bit of food often, portion control, and preparation are the three key tips for today’s lifestyle,” he said. “It is important to know how we eat will impact our body and our energy. Skipping a meal or eating a larger meal will have an impact on how we achieve our goals.”

Portion control is perhaps one of the biggest obstacles we face in achieving our health goals. Nutrition scientists in the United States have found a global trend that average restaurant portion sizes are high in relation to calorie requirements. Nicholas says this is also partly due to cultural influences.

“Most people think that portion size is dependent on the size of their plate. In several countries in Europe people feel like they must finish all their food, or they will feel like it went to waste,” he explained. “If we want to have a rough gauge on portion size, typically for carbohydrates it will be in the size of your fist. For potatoes, they will be the size of the scoop of your hand; for meat, it will be the size of your palm; for fats it will be the size of your thumb; and for saturated fats and sweets, it will be the size of your thumbnail. There is no one size fits all for portion sizes, since it will depend on your body structure. Taller, bigger people will need larger portions. If you are short and small, then you will not need as much energy.”

Whatever your body type and goals, there are a wealth of resources available for helping you maintain a balanced diet. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch, for example, is fully equipped for helping you track calories and exercise. Synced with Samsung Health across all your devices, it makes achieving your goals easier than ever. Nicholas championed the new wearable as a powerful tool for tracking nutrition. 

“The typical way of logging a food journal can be quite cumbersome. The Galaxy Watch makes food logging very simple and easy,” he said. “If you wanted to go more in-depth into your nutrition, then there is Samsung Health and Bixby Vision that can help break down the information further. The Galaxy Watch and Samsung Health is like having a nutritionist with you all the time on your wrist that can help keep you on track to make the best decision for yourself.”

To learn more about the Galaxy Watch visit www.samsungmobilepress.com for the latest news and updates on all of Samsung’s devices.