Bring us some figgy pudding - calories in a Christmas dinner

City of Derby Masters swimmer Val Thorpe counts the calorie cost of our favourite Christmas foods! Find out the calories in a Christmas dinner.

I’m sure all of you Masters out there will know that we swim for the honour, the glory, the medals, the PBs….yeah right! The main reason we all swim is to eat (especially cake).

And with Christmas fast approaching Masters swimmers have the best opportunity of the year to indulge in their favourite pastime (it’s a bit like Worlds, Europeans, GBs and Nationals all rolled into one).

But a few words of warning….how far do we have to swim to work off that Christmas dinner? How many calories in a Christmas dinner?

Christmas dinner

• Roast turkey (149 calories)
• Roast potatoes (127 calories)
• Stuffing (231 calories)
• Bread sauce (42 calories)
• Roast parsnips (102 calories)
• Boiled carrots (14 calories)
• Boiled Brussels sprouts (32 calories)
• Gravy (17 calories)
• Cranberry sauce (45 calories)
• Pork sausage (62 calories)
• Bacon (135 calories)
• Grand total:956 calories

Now I don’t think that 956 calories is too bad and it will only take roughly 75 minutes of mixed strokes or 70 minutes of fairly fast free to swim that off.

We can all manage that can’t we? Well maybe not too soon after eating. But it would be a normal session for many of us

But what about the best bits of Christmas eating? This is where the real damage is done

Puddings and desserts

• One slice of Christmas cake (249 calories – that’s about 30 minutes of backstroke needed to deal with that)
• One portion of chocolate log (101 calories – 7½ minutes of fly and its gone!)
• One portion of cheese and biscuits (394 calories – 45 minutes of slow free, my personal favourite, slow is always good)
• Christmas pudding with cream (587 calories – 45 minutes of fast free – might start to feel a little poorly after that)
• Mince pie and cream (368 calories – 30 minutes breaststroke – that one is for the Masters Officer to take one for the team. Those that know her know her passion in breaststroke)
• Three Quality Street (133 calories – 10 minutes fly – although at my club 10 minutes fly equates to at least a tin of Quality Street. Please note other sweets are available!)
• Five chocolate fingers (150 calories – we might as well finish with another 11 minutes of fly)

And afterwards of course….

• Average selection box (1111 calories and you will need to swim fast free or fly for approximately 80 minutes)

So happy Christmas and an even happier new years training schedule!

The calories in the Christmas dinner have been calculated using the BBC Christmas calorie counter and Just Swim calorie cruncher was used for the calories per stroke. All the calories, portion sizes, etc are approximate.