The holiday season is a time for joy, family gatherings, and indulgent feasts. However, amidst the twinkling lights and festive cheer lurks a sneaky saboteur: hidden dietary tripwires in seemingly innocent foods that are booby traps for your diet especially with New Years coming right after Christmas where we make those New Year’s Day Resolutions to lose weight and get into better shape.
These booby traps are actually culprits that can derail even the most disciplined diets, leading to stubborn belly fat that clings long after the decorations and holidays have come down and to an end. The key to navigating this minefield by using detection from nine data points off the nutrition label?
Understanding the Dietary MAC Score for retaining your Health and Fitness
Understanding the Metabolic Analytics Catabolic (MAC) Score, a metric that evaluates nutrition labels of how certain foods impact our metabolism and how food is stored as fat instead of burned as energy. Your body can only do two things with food, storing it as a fat, what you don’t want, or burn as energy that is what you do want to do.
Foods with high MAC Scores (food above 3.50) hinders our body’s natural catabolic processes that promote our weight gain, high blood pressure, high blood glucose for diabetes, and high cholesterol readings leading to heart disease.
As a rule, I avoid any food that exceeds 3.50 by staying on track with my health numbers. You can still enjoy the holidays, just arm yourself with awareness to the nutrition label and with portion control. You got to know your numbers if you want to maintain your weight or drop weight, inches, or even drop years off your age. That is right, knowing your MAC Score, you can drop years off your appearance.
Below, I am shown here at age 68 in our hangar in September getting ready for an classic car and airshow:
Spotlighting Some of your Holidays Dietary saboteurs
Let’s spotlight four common tripwires at parties shown above and in the featured photograph: French Onion Dip, comes in first place, Sour Cream, Cream Cheese, and Coconut Flakes. These staples appear in appetizers, sides, and desserts, but their sky-high MAC Scores make them potent diet saboteurs or booby trips if you want to maintain a healthy diet.
New Meaning to Teaspoon Serving Size
The serving sizes give new meaning to teaspoons serving size. There are 3- teaspoons in 1- Tablespoon, Tablespoons are generally used in serving dishes. During a party, it wouldn’t be difficult to dip 1- Tablespoon onto your plate for dipping those delicious potato chips into. While potato chips have the lowest MAC Score among these five items, most people at a party can easily consume 35 or more chips.
French Onion Dip, the worst offender at most parties, often paired with crunchy veggies or chips, can pack a punch to anyone’s diet with its creamy base. Laden with fats and additives, it boasts a MAC Score well above 3.5 per serving (2 tsp), triggering insulin spikes that store fat around the midsection, our waistline. Instead of scooping freely, limit it to ONE tablespoon or opt for a yogurt-based alternative to slash the score.
Sour Cream follows the lineup of offenders, crowning baked potatoes or tacos with its tangy richness. A dollop might seem harmless, but its high saturated fat content pushes the MAC Score to around 6.5, contributing to visceral fat buildup.
During holidays, use it sparingly—or opt for Greek yogurt if you are a host for a lighter version that keeps the score under 4.0.
Cream Cheese, third in the lineup, the star of cheesecakes and bagel spreads, is a holiday heavyweight. Its dense, calorie-packed profile yields a MAC Score of 7.0 or higher, making it a prime suspect in post-feast regrets.
Limit Your Proportions and Still enjoy your Holidays
Craving cheesecake? Heed this tip: instead of a full slice of cheesecake, savor a quarter portion instead. This simple swap reduces intake without sacrificing the festive vibe.
But beware especially of Coconut Flakes used in healthy fruit salads at times, the deceptive darling in fruit salads, cookies, and ambrosia. They masquerade as a healthy tropical add-in, yet just 2 teaspoons clock in at a staggering MAC Score of 9.33—far beyond the 3.50 threshold. If you are preparing a fruit salad, substitute low sugar Greek Yogurt instead of sour cream and leave off the coconut flakes.
This even caught me off guard once during the summer of 2023 where I maintained a 29.0-inch waistline, leading to unexpected weight gain and one-inch gain during a dinner I was having. The flakes’ natural sugars and fats accelerate metabolic imbalances, fueling belly fat as I discovered unfortunately. I do photoshoots and I can gain an ill-affordable weight gain.
Scan Nutrition labels and substitute other Healthy Selection
The good news? Holidays don’t have to mean diet doom and just giving up and surrendering. Practice mindfulness: survey those buffets for these tripwires, prioritize veggies and lean proteins, and indulge modestly. Track your MAC Scores off nutrition labels by using just nine (9) data points to make informed choices that are a major part of the Catabolic Diet. By detecting and dodging these ingredients, you’ll emerge from the Holiday season energized, encouraged, without weight gain or letting your belt out. Remember, it’s about balance—celebrate without compromising your diet. IT IS POSSIBLE, it DOES NOT have to be MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!
Below is my photoshoot I did in September to promote our Southern Classic Car & Airshow we held in November during Veterans Day weekend in November of 2025.
The Ironclad-Fitness & Catabolic Diet Program
For more information on the MAC Score system purchase my IRONCLAD-FITNESS & CATABOLIC DIET Program that allowed me to drop my numbers, my weight, inches, and even decades off my appearance, above and on the cover of the book are two photographs taken in July of 2025 at age 68:
To read all my books on Amazon Kindle, please use the link below:
To prove the GOLFER’S SYNC-PRESET STRIKE ZONE APP is an effective Self-Coaching Tool I did a video for a local Sports Zone Show, where I am hitting a 295-yard Tee shot to within 15-feet of a Home Depot Orange Bucket:
