I was in the water at North Avoca on Tuesday, later than usual because the car park was already full of Christmas-decorated four-wheel-drives at 6.15am, and I got to thinking about how differently this month sits in the body compared to the rest of the year. More sugar, more late nights, more standing around a kitchen bench with a glass of something in hand while someone’s cousin tells a long story. None of that is a problem on its own. The thing I keep coming back to is that it’s the accumulation, not any single lunch, that tends to leave people feeling flat by January.
Silly season wellbeing gets talked about in two unhelpful ways, in my experience. Either it’s total abandonment, eat and drink whatever and sort it out later, or it’s this white-knuckle discipline where people are doing extra gym sessions to ‘earn’ Christmas lunch. I don’t love either. What actually helps, I’ve noticed, sits somewhere quieter in between.
Why the silly season feels different in the body
December on the Central Coast has its own rhythm. Longer light, more social plans stacked on top of each other, and for a lot of us, family arriving or travel disrupting the usual routine. Nutrition Australia notes that eating patterns naturally shift around holiday periods, with more discretionary food and less regular structure, which isn’t a moral failing so much as a predictable seasonal pattern.
I’ve kept a scrappy journal for a few years now, mostly to track sleep and energy rather than food specifically, and every December the same thing shows up. Sleep gets shorter and more broken, not dramatically, just enough to notice. And when sleep shifts, everything downstream of it, appetite, patience, the afternoon energy dip, shifts with it. If you’ve read what actually helps the afternoon energy slump, you’ll know I think that particular slump is often less about willpower and more about what happened the night before.
The one thing I’d actually change
Here’s my quiet opinion for the year, and it’s a small one. I think the ‘earn your Christmas lunch’ framing does more harm than good. Extra cardio sessions booked in to offset a meal that hasn’t happened yet puts food back in the category of something to be managed rather than enjoyed, and that tends to backfire by New Year’s Eve when everyone’s exhausted and reaching for whatever’s easiest. I’d rather people ate the pavlova and went for an ordinary walk the next morning because it feels good, not because it’s owed.
What I’m actually cooking through December
My approach through this stretch isn’t about restriction, it’s about having a few reliable things in the fridge so that when the big lunches and long nights happen, the in-between meals are simple and don’t ask much of me. A chickpea and roast capsicum salad lasts three days and travels well to a friend’s place. Ocean trout with ginger and coriander takes about fifteen minutes and feels like an actual meal rather than something scraped together, which matters on the nights you’ve been at the beach until dark.
Breakfast is where I’ve noticed the biggest slide happens in December, mostly because mornings get eaten by visitors and plans. A quinoa breakfast bowl with roasted plums made ahead on a Sunday solves that for me without much thought required on a Wednesday. And on the mornings I haven’t got it together at all, I lean on a morning routine that actually sticks, which is really just permission to keep it small rather than aspirational.
The evenings matter more than the lunches
Everyone worries about the big Christmas Day meal, but in my experience it’s the string of ordinary weeknights either side of it that quietly wear people down. Late dinners, another glass of wine because it’s summer and everyone’s outside, screens on later than usual. Healthdirect’s general advice around sleep hygiene points to consistent wind-down habits mattering more than any single night’s choices, and that’s matched what I’ve seen in my own patchy December sleep.
I’ve started treating the hour before bed as non-negotiable through this period, more than I usually bother with. Sometimes that’s golden milk with cinnamon instead of a third coffee-adjacent thing at 8pm. Sometimes it’s just sitting on the verandah without my phone for twenty minutes. If you want a fuller version of this, I wrote about building a wind-down ritual around food earlier in the year and most of it still applies, maybe more so now.
Magnesium, gut feel, and not overthinking it
I’m cautious about making this sound like a supplement pitch, because it isn’t one. But I have noticed, and this is entirely anecdotal, that the weeks I’m eating more leafy greens, nuts and legumes alongside the usual holiday food, my sleep and energy hold up better than the weeks I don’t. Eat for Health’s general dietary guidelines back up the value of these food groups as part of an overall pattern, not as a fix for any one thing. If you’re curious about which foods this covers, I put together a list a while back on why magnesium-rich foods are worth knowing about, and it’s the kind of thing I dip back into around now.
The gut side of things is less dramatic than people expect too. It’s not about avoiding the trifle. It’s the small, steady habits either side of the big meals, more water, regular meal times where possible, that seem to keep things settled. There’s a gentler rundown of this in small habits that quietly support gut health, which I’d call the least glamorous and most useful thing I’ve written this year.
Mindful, not restrictive
The phrase ‘mindful eating’ gets used a lot around this time of year, usually as code for eating less. That’s not really what I mean by it. What I mean is closer to what I wrote in what mindful eating actually looks like on a Tuesday night, which is mostly about noticing rather than restricting. Are you actually hungry, or is it 9pm and the room’s still loud and the chips are just there. Neither answer is wrong. It’s just useful information, the same way checking the tide chart before a swim is useful information.
I’ll admit I get this wrong plenty of Decembers. Last year I ate three mince pies standing at the kitchen bench while pretending to help with dishes, and felt fine about it, mostly. The year before that I overdid the champagne on Boxing Day and felt genuinely average the next morning, and that told me something too. Neither observation needed a plan attached to it. Just noticing, and moving on.
A gentler way through to January
What actually helps, in my experience, isn’t a strict December and a strict January either side of it. It’s staying loosely anchored, a decent breakfast most days, some water before the second glass of wine, an early swim when the tide’s right, and letting the rest be genuinely festive without an audit running underneath it. The Central Coast in December is full of long lunches at places like the surf club decks along the coast road, and honestly, that’s a big part of why I live here. I’d rather enjoy it properly than spend the whole month managing it.
Whatever this season looks like for you, I hope it’s less about getting it right and more about noticing what actually feels good, and doing a bit more of that where you can.
— Tanya Pryce, Golden Door Living
