How many calories are in a Christmas dinner?

One full plate of a traditional roast is about 1,250 calories using UK reference values: 140 g of turkey, 200 g of roast potatoes, three pigs in blankets, stuffing, roast parsnips, sprouts, carrots, gravy, bread sauce and cranberry sauce. Christmas pudding with custard takes it to about 1,705. Drinks, nibbles, a cheeseboard and the selection box are what push the whole day much higher.

How many calories are in a Christmas pudding?

Shop-bought Christmas pudding is 285 calories per 100 g in the UK government dataset, and homemade is 316. A typical portion of about 110 g, an eighth of a large pudding, is around 315 calories before anything goes on it. Custard adds about 135 for 120 g, double cream about 150 for 30 g.

How many calories are in a mince pie?

A shop-bought mince pie is 377 calories per 100 g, so a 60 g pie is about 225. Homemade ones are richer, at 436 per 100 g, or about 260 for the same size. A dusting of icing sugar is small; a spoon of cream or brandy butter is not, and is worth its own line.

Which Christmas dinner foods have the most calories?

On a typical plate, roast potatoes (about 320 for 200 g) and the turkey (about 265 for 140 g with skin) are the biggest lines, followed by pigs in blankets (about 200 for three) and stuffing (about 175). Sprouts, carrots and gravy made from granules are among the lightest things on the table.

Should I log Christmas Day if I go way over my target?

Yes. A heavy day left out of the log makes your averages look better than they were, and the weeks around it stop meaning anything. In Fitto AI the streak counts days you log, not days you stay under a target, so Christmas Day keeps your streak alive as long as it is logged.

How do I log Boxing Day leftovers?

Log Christmas dinner as usual, then save it as a favourite. Re-logging a favourite the next day costs no AI credit and takes a tap. If the leftover plate is smaller, or turns into a turkey sandwich, edit the portions before you confirm.

Christmas Dinner Calories: Roast, Pudding and Drinks

By Samipan Bandyopadhyay, developer of Fitto AI

Christmas Day is the hardest day of the year to keep a food log. It starts with chocolate at breakfast and ends with cheese at ten at night, and in between is a roast with a dozen parts cooked by someone else. So the day often goes unlogged, and January’s numbers start from a week that never happened.

It doesn’t need to be exact to be worth logging. A plate split into its dishes, with sensible portions, gets you most of the way there. Here are the numbers to do that with.

Calories in a Christmas dinner plate, dish by dish

These are reference values from McCance and Widdowson’s Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID), the UK government’s food composition tables, multiplied out for a typical serving. Cranberry sauce isn’t in CoFID, so that line comes from USDA FoodData Central. The portions are ours, and your plate will differ, so the per-100 g column is there to redo the sum with your own amounts.

Dish	Serving	Calories per 100 g	Calories
Turkey, roasted, meat and skin	140 g (3 to 4 slices)	190	266
Roast potatoes, roasted in oil	200 g (about 4 pieces)	161	322
Pigs in blankets: pork sausage, grilled	45 g (3 chipolatas)	294	132
Pigs in blankets: streaky bacon, grilled	20 g (1½ rashers)	337	67
Stuffing, sage and onion, homemade	70 g (2 balls)	253	177
Parsnips, roasted in oil	80 g	158	126
Brussels sprouts, boiled	80 g (about 8)	32	26
Carrots, boiled	80 g	29	23
Gravy, made from granules	80 g	30	24
Bread sauce, with semi-skimmed milk	45 g (2 tbsp)	97	44
Cranberry sauce	30 g (2 tbsp)	159	48

One plate with everything on it comes to about 1,255 calories. Three pigs in blankets together are about 200, as much as the stuffing and parsnips combined.

Two lines deserve a second look on your own plate:

Roast potatoes are the biggest single item, and the easiest to underestimate. They soak up fat in the tin, and a fifth or sixth potato is about 80 calories each.
Gravy is light only when it is made from granules. Gravy from the roasting tin, with the fat left in, can carry several times as much per spoonful. If yours is rich and homemade, count it higher.

Some tables add a Yorkshire pudding, about 60 calories for a 30 g one. A turkey crown or white meat without skin comes in lower than the figure above, at 153 per 100 g for roasted light meat.

Pudding, mince pies and the dessert table

Dessert	Serving	Calories per 100 g	Calories
Christmas pudding, shop-bought	110 g (⅛ of a large pudding)	285	314
Custard, made with whole milk	120 g	114	137
Double cream	30 g (2 tbsp)	496	149
Mince pie, shop-bought	60 g (1 pie)	377	226
Mince pie, homemade	60 g (1 pie)	436	262
Trifle, homemade	150 g	167	251
Christmas cake, with marzipan and icing	70 g (1 slice)	355	249

Pudding with custard takes the dinner to about 1,705 calories. A homemade Christmas pudding is richer than a shop one, at 316 per 100 g. Whatever goes on top is its own line: custard, cream, brandy butter or ice cream.

Where the rest of Christmas Day hides

Totals for “Christmas Day” that run into the thousands count far more than the dinner. Most of the rest comes from the parts of the day nobody thinks of as a meal:

Extra	Serving	Calories
Milk chocolate (selection box, tin of chocolates)	30 g (about 3 sweets)	156
Mixed nuts	30 g (a small handful)	174
Cheddar on the cheeseboard	40 g	166
Cream crackers	3 crackers	107
Red wine	175 ml glass	133
Sparkling white wine	125 ml glass	105
Mulled wine, homemade	150 ml	233
Port	50 ml	79
Cream liqueur	50 ml	153
Premium lager	1 pint	165

The drinks are the hardest to count afterwards, because glasses get topped up. A useful rule is to log a glass when it is poured, not when it is finished, and to log the bottle if you lose count.

None of this is a reason to skip anything. It is the list to run through before bed, so the log matches the day.

How to log Christmas dinner without weighing anything

Nobody is bringing kitchen scales to the table. You don’t need them.

Photograph the plate before the gravy goes on. It is the one moment every item is visible and separate. Once gravy covers the potatoes and stuffing, it is much harder for you or an app to tell what was there.
Split it into dishes. “Christmas dinner, 1 plate” from a database is someone else’s plate. Turkey, potatoes, pigs in blankets and pudding as separate lines are each easy to judge.
Count things you can count. Roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, stuffing balls and sprouts come in pieces, which is easier than guessing grams. For the rest, use your hand: a palm of turkey is roughly 85 to 115 g, and a fist is about a cup. Our guide to tracking calories without weighing food has the full set.
Count the fat you can’t see. Goose fat or oil on the potatoes, butter on the sprouts, cream on the pudding. A camera can’t see fat soaked into a roast potato, which is one of the reasons photo estimates come in low on rich home cooking.
Log seconds, pudding and the cheeseboard when they happen. Each is a separate entry, and a separate entry is easier than a memory at midnight.

If you are the one cooking, the cooked-weight method for homemade food gives you calories per gram for the whole tray of stuffing or the whole pudding, and that number keeps working for every leftover portion.

One big day, in proportion

A single Christmas dinner is not what moves the scale. When researchers at the University of Birmingham followed 272 adults over Christmas, those in the comparison group gained an average of 0.37 kg between November or December and January. Those given a brief intervention (weighing themselves regularly, practical tips for the season, and pictures of how much walking or running it takes to burn off festive foods and drinks) lost an average of 0.13 kg over the same weeks.

That study tested self-weighing and calorie information, not a food diary. But the idea is the same one behind logging: people who can see the numbers through the season handle it better than people who look away until January. Logging Christmas honestly, big plate and all, is how you keep seeing them.

How to log Christmas dinner in Fitto AI

Photograph your plate, or say or type what is on it, and Fitto AI lists each food it can identify with an estimated portion and calories. Before anything is saved you can edit every line, so if you know the potatoes were roasted in goose fat or you had four pigs in blankets, change it. A photo, voice or text analysis costs 1 AI credit, and new accounts get 5 free.

You can also build the plate yourself for free. Turkey, roast potatoes, sprouts, parsnips, carrots, cranberry sauce and mince pies are all in the free food search, with no credits and no daily limit. Its data comes from USDA, so a few British dishes such as Christmas pudding and bread sauce aren’t in it. For those, type the dish in yourself with the figures from the tables above.

Two things make the long weekend easier:

Boxing Day leftovers are free to re-log. Star Christmas dinner as a favourite, and logging the same food the next day is one tap with no credit spent. Edit the portions first if the leftover plate is smaller.
A heavy day doesn’t break your streak. Fitto’s streak counts days you log, never days you stay under a target, so Christmas Day keeps it alive as long as it is logged. Here is why it works that way.

Celebrating with a different menu? Our Thanksgiving plate breakdown covers the American version, with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and pie.

Fitto AI provides estimates for general wellness. If tracking food ever starts to feel stressful or compulsive, it’s worth talking to a doctor or registered dietitian.

Sources

Public Health England. McCance and Widdowson’s The Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset 2021 (CoFID), table 1.3, proximates. Food codes: turkey, whole, roasted, meat and skin (18-367); turkey, light meat, roasted (18-359); potatoes, old, roasted in rapeseed oil (13-534); sausages, pork, chilled, grilled (19-509); bacon rashers, streaky, grilled (19-018); stuffing, sage and onion, homemade (11-1000); parsnip, roasted in rapeseed oil (13-632); Brussels sprouts, boiled in unsalted water (13-630); carrots, old, boiled in unsalted water (13-497); gravy instant granules, made up with water (17-725); bread sauce, made with semi-skimmed milk (17-664); Yorkshire pudding, made with semi-skimmed milk (11-960); pudding, Christmas, retail (11-1022) and homemade (11-1051); custard, made up with whole milk (12-575); cream, fresh, double (12-334); mince pies, retail (11-848) and homemade (11-1092); trifle, homemade (12-600); cake, fruit, rich, iced (11-991); chocolate, milk (17-648); nuts, mixed (14-880); cheese, Cheddar, English (12-346); cream crackers (11-820); wine, red (17-752); wine, white, sparkling (17-757); wine, mulled wine, homemade (17-812); port (17-234); liqueurs, cream (17-768); lager, premium (17-751). Values per 100 g; drinks converted at 1 ml ≈ 1 g.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, SR Legacy: cranberry sauce, canned, sweetened (FDC ID 173961). Retrieved November 2026.
Mason F, Farley A, Pallan M, et al. Effectiveness of a brief behavioural intervention to prevent weight gain over the Christmas holiday period: randomised controlled trial. BMJ, 2018;363:k4867.