When you're back from the pub and tucking in to a plateful of turkey and trimmings on Christmas Day, washing it down with a nice glass of wine perhaps, spare a thought for Ken Owens.
Along with 87 of his rugby-playing colleagues around Wales, the Scarlets and Wales hooker will be the heart and soul of abstention on 25 December.
Rugby player Ken Owens
Boxing Day in the Rabo Direct Pro 12 League is derby day. And in the professional rugby era you can be sure that the match day 22s of the Scarlets and Ospreys, Dragons and Blues will be at peak fitness the day after Christmas as the local bragging rights go up for grabs.
"It's a strange one," says Ken, who will turn 26 on 3 January, and so could still have another decade of abstemious Christmases ahead of him.
"You see everybody around the table with you filling their faces with food and drink and you are sitting there watching what you eat."
Professionalism starts at home, or in Ken's case at his parents' home near Carmarthen, where the Owens family clan will gather together this year.
He won't be the only Welsh international rugby player at the table - his sister Vicky, who plays lock forward for the Wales women's team, will also be there.
But as the Christmas pudding is passed around Ken, who has been suffering from a rib injury but is hoping to be fit for selection on Boxing Day, will be the one under pressure to hold back.
"Vicky's not playing the next day like I am," he says, "but then she's quite sensible anyway."
With teams of sports nutritionists attending them all year round, and regular trips to the cryogenic therapy chambers of Spala, Poland, thrown in to sharpen their fitness, you wouldn't think the odd sprout too many at Christmastime would matter that much to a front row forward.
But like any top sportsman, Ken, who stands 6ft 1in tall and weighs in at 17st 2lbs, knows his own body.
"It's all because you don't want to be feeling too heavy the next day," he says.
"I can put on weight quite quickly and if you wake up the morning of the match a couple of kilos heavier it can affect your confidence and how you feel in yourself.
"So I eat the same food as everybody else but perhaps in smaller proportions. I usually stay off the beer and stick to coffee or Coke or some of that nonsense.
"But it does mean you can't have a drink so in the pub, and that you're either the chauffeur or else the boring one sitting in the corner."
The Boxing Day derbies this year will see Scarlets making the trip to Ospreys, and Dragons travelling to Blues.
