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Being the host of a Christmas feast is hard enough, but doing it while staying faithful to your Low Carb way of life can be an especially challenging task! There are three most probable scenarios to fit your situation:

1. You’re hosting a family feast (or a small family dinner) and the entire meal can be low-carb.

2. You’re the host, but you have to fix meal choices to fit both traditional eaters and those keeping their low-carb diets in check (even if it’s only YOU!)

3. You are a guest at someone else’s meal and fear there will be no choices for you to keep your carbs to a minimum.

We’ll try to cover all three scenarios here because we’re already getting letters from low-carbers who are growing worried. We’ll concentrate on the low-carb challenges of cooking the meal since that will be the hardest.

A few quick words about staying on the diet – I know there are those who believe “diets” don’t belong on holiday occasions and that surely taking a day off can’t do much harm. For a few of you, that may be true – but keep these things in mind when you make your decision:

This is not a “diet” in the traditional sense. It’s a way of life, and the food choices you make every day for the rest of your life should be those that are friendly to a low carbohydrate lifestyle and the new-found health you enjoy.

A day of high-carbing means 3-4 days to get back into Ketosis (if you are doing the Ketogenic version of LC, and most of us are.) It also means as much as a 5-pound weight gain from a single day’s indulgence.

It will be much harder than you are telling yourself to get back on the diet after the holidays. You’ll realize you have all those great “leftovers” and you can’t let them go to waste. Sugary treats will be coming at you left and right – as they are most plentiful this time of year and are often offered in the holiday spirit – and you’ll have no defense at all.