Anyone else having Christmas with non big eaters?

I love the idea of all the food at Christmas, and in previous years would have baked and eaten and indulged, this year I haven't and I have realised it's just marketing and fancy cooking programmes on telly set up to make us think that's a perfect Christmas, in reality unless you have masses of guests there is too much food around it's actually repulsive.
I can't wait for it to be done and throw what's left away.

Our Christmas food will seem quite paltry to some people. It’s not though but it is manageable, and with no waste. I’m not a big eater and neither is my husband or dad. The thought of having an abundance of food just makes me feel queasy. I like to enjoy food rather than stuff my face for the sake of it.

We've definitely indulged more in previous Christmases.

We had a late ish breakfast, and I had one croissant but didn't want anything else.

We have given up on making starters a few years ago and do have lots of trimmings and different dishes for Christmas dinner, which we load our plates up with. But then have no pudding as we don't want any.

A few nibbles in the evening and we are done. Once we'd have put a full buffet out and it would have been a waste.

We aren’t massive eaters, only thing extra I brought was chocolate yule log, crackers & a box of celebrations. I do find it a bit wasteful of people buying a months worth of food for a few days when half of it ends up in the bin!
one christmas a few years ago we spent with ILs and we had a roast dinner every single day for 6 days! It put me right off.

Sounds like you had to many puddings. Why did you serve 2 puddings after Christmas dinner? Surely one was more than enough, I didn't even have that, I left pudding for later in the day

We don’t eat much unhealthy food as who wants to start the new year feeling they need to lose weight? I think this is a normal attitude to have. We’re adults, not farmyard animals.

I would love to eat everything possible, I have a mega sweet tooth but I'd just end up feeling fat and gross.

My youngest DD eats just enough to survive, she isn't interested in big meals or treats. Her 2 older siblings eat plenty.

This year I purposefully bought a lot less food, just a box of biscuits and a posh box of chocolates as a treat and hardly any alcohol.

We have definitely felt this this year. We bought the usual amount of treats but most of them are still untouched. Haven’t even started on the frozen party food and I didn’t have an alcoholic drink until Boxing Day. It’s made us reevaluate how much we will buy next year as we will have so much left over by NYD.

Lol - cross posted. Seems we’re not the only ones!

We’ve become like this, actually. The rest of the year we watch what we eat because weight / cholesterol. It’s just makes everyone feel yuck to overeat on any day, not just Christmas Day.

HOWEVER! I too love the taste of all the indulgent Christmas stuff so now we start at the beginning of December. We’ll have a pack of mince pies in a week, first week of December. We’ll have roasts more frequently. I’ll buy a pint of super indulgent ice cream second week of December. We’ll have a tin of a Danish cookies knocking around for three or four weeks. Chocolates = one advent calendar, normally everyone gets one or two pieces over 24 days because none of us wants to eat chocolate every day. And so on and so forth. There’s basically different stuff cooked and eaten over the month, but spread out. Not all on one day.

That's a good plan actually, start the treat food earlier, rather than saying "it's for Christmas" and then stressing about it not being eaten or getting beyond a use-by date.

I wonder whether it's the timing that affects appetites? Lots of people have Christmas dinner early afternoon instead of evening when they normally eat. I did the full spread and my DSs (27 and 29) ate loads, but no-one was hungry later so it was basically the only meal of the day. I had made two puddings and baked cakes etc. I sent them each home with leftover cheesecake and sausage rolls.

Boxing day DH and I just had eggs on toast despite a fridge full of food. I had been cooking family meals all week as DC were staying and had enough!

When our shopping delivery arrived on Monday evening the driver said it was nice to begin his round with a small normal sized shop. I didn't think too much of it then but its true that apart from the Christmas dinner fresh food, there was mostly just ordinary weekly stuff. We had one tin of Heroes which has been open 2 weeks and is still half full. The pringles have been eaten and replenished and there is one extra wedge of brie in the fridge, a Toblerone and that it.

Ds2 has a smallish appetite anyway and once the normal sized roast was eaten he had no room for any pud until about 3 hours later.

I don’t buy or cook anything I know won’t be eaten on Christmas Day now. Loads of fruit and veg but just enough meat and fish for Christmas Day. No biscuits or chocolate and we had a normal breakfast and no starters. It’s one day for us.

I tend not to go crazy at Christmas food wise anymore.

It's only two days really if you count boxing day so not that much time to eat everything even if you want too. I usually buy one nice treat a week from the 1st of December to eat that week. So a box of nice biscuits can last us a good few days one week, and then I made a Nutella christmas tree the next week, and last weekend we had our cheeseboard. You've got to spread it out otherwise it won't all get appreciated or eaten.

Yes we buy for big Christmases but in reality it’s 2 kids and 2 adults who eat less these days. Loads gets left from the day but it all gets eaten over the whole festive period.

Our eyes are definitely bigger than our stomachs when it comes to Christmas.

I used to be a horrible over-buyer in the lead up to Christmas, and end up with tons of stuff left over, that would just end up getting binned.

Nowadays, the only stuff I still tend to over-buy on is chocolate, but at least that keeps! We'll still be eating it in March I reckon!

There's this lady I follow on TikTok with 6 kids. I get that's a lot of kids, but this woman is a massive over-consumer/over-shopper.

I just saw a video of her "left-overs" that she was having for Boxing Day lunch and it was BANANAS. Most stuff not even opened, cheese and meats for days. 2 massive trays of dry AF turkey, tons of stuffing balls.
Most of her kids are under 10 I'd guess. Kids that age don't want endless wedges of fancy cheeses and endless trays of salami-style meats.

With house guests for 6 days including Christmas Day I cooked what seemed to be roughly the right amount I my head. But some food vanished quickly and some were leftovers - hard to predict! The only issue was one of our guests repeatedly telling DH and DS that they needed to learn what a portion looked like. Both are distance runners and return to the house pretty hungry!

Social media food stuff isn’t real. It’s OTT for clicks.

We don't have lots of food at Christmas. There was only me, my parents and one brother. We had turkey, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, carrots and stuffing. My mum had Brussels sprouts. We did have dessert too. Chocolate log or cheesecake were the choices this year. We have boxes of chocolates and they do get eaten.

I think it works better if people are staying for at least a couple of days.

No one in our extended family ever wants pudding after the main Xmas Day meal so now we schedule it for Boxing Day, after a cold cuts lunch, when it gets appreciated. My super fit husband likes a large plateful but has never been a snack person, whereas a large plateful puts me right off but I can graze. I’ve also not got a sweet tooth at all - no point in having unwanted Christmas cake or chocolates around since they won’t get eaten - by inclination, not by willpower. We don’t have starters and rarely do in a restaurant unless it is part of a set menu.

Don’t get me wrong, we eat plenty and enjoy it all, and the teen can really eat, but we rarely have waste as I don’t buy stuff we don’t need just because an advert says so.

We also graze over several days.
Christmas Eve treat was steak for dinner, normal
food otherwise.
Christmas Day croissants or porridge for breakfast, main roast meal and whichever pudding we each fancied. A few chocolates in the evening. Teen also had some cheese n crackers and a turkey sandwich later on.
Boxing Day leftovers meal, some mince pies, a couple of chocs.
Today my treat will be some of the so far unopened Yule log on top of normal food.
Tomorrow finishing the chocs probably, maybe some cheese on top of regular food.
Other bits will wait until Hogmanay/New Years Day. I will buy one Camembert to roast rather than another cheeseboard.
I don’t feel any pressure to buy loads and loads of excess food. I know what we like to eat now as a family and don’t go mad.
Neighbours will always give us biscuits/chocs later on as they buy so much more than needed. I usually donate them to the food bank.

I don’t know how people eat a massive breakfast, big lunch and then buffet at teatime. I can only do one of those in a day. We don’t buy big tubs of chocolate, perhaps one fancy bar and some Turkish delight that lasts until mid January. Drink very little and try and eat fruit rather than sweets. Having said that DH is a mince pie fiend and will start as soon as they hit the shops.