---
title: "Magic recipe to avoid gaining weight this Christmas"
published: 2015-11-30
updated: 2026-08-04
category: "De todo un poco"
source: "https://dev-abp.massivoai.com/en/articles/receta-magica-para-no-engordar-esta-navidad"
---

# Magic recipe to avoid gaining weight this Christmas

**The most difficult time of year may be approaching for those who struggle day after day against the force of extra kilos, belly fat, and other side effects of good eating. December is par excellence the month of tamales, desserts, parties, drinks, and unlimited merrymaking. After all, it's a time to enjoy, not to go around restricting your food.**

And well, naturally, everything has its consequences. Nutritionists estimate that, on average, Costa Ricans gain four kilos in December, and these are normally not lost in January or for the rest of the new year. Of course, so much dietary merrymaking also doesn't do our performance as runners any favors, and that half marathon we were planning for next year can keep slipping away as the kilos pile on.

But don't worry. Like every Christmas, all sorts of magical diets start appearing so you can savor as many little tamales as you want without gaining a gram of weight. And it comes out in the newspaper that if you drink more water, or if the tamale measures so many centimeters, or if the eggnog was made with skim milk and "light" rum. Then you pull out your calculator, do the math, and realize you're entitled to one and a half tamales, and that half without pork, and hold on tight.

Faced with this unfair situation (gosh, we should all have the right to enjoy food at this time of year, don't you think?) we've taken it upon ourselves to design a recipe that saves you those complex nutritional alchemies and doesn't require much math. We've summed it up for you in 10 simple steps:

1. Run.
2. Eat your first tamale.
3. Run more.
4. Eat more tamales.
5. Run even more.
6. Run even longer distances.
7. Run even faster.
8. Don't stop running.
9. Eat your little tamales, your Christmas cake, and your eggnog.
10. Repeat steps 5 through 9 until you're satisfied.

Simple, right? This recipe has been approved by the most rigorous scientific studies and is backed by the most elementary law of common sense: everything that goes in must come out, and if it doesn't come out, it accumulates. What goes in is, of course, the food, and the act of getting it in is performed by most of us with amazing talent. What comes out would be, then, the same food, but no longer in the form of a tamale but in the form of sweat and kilometers run. A tamale eaten, a kilometer (or kilometers) run. It's not that complicated. Seriously. It's not. Let's run!

A Buen Paso uses [Massivo](https://massivoai.com), the event-registration platform that powers this article.