In the spirit of good fun — and holiday cheer — I want to give you a sense of what you're snacking on and the amount of exercise it takes to burn it off so you will think before you eat.

Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes = 2 hours and 23 minutes standing in line to see Santa with your 3-year-old.

Yeah, that's right, just one of those cakes takes hours to burn up at 200 calories per cake. And what about Entenmann's Gourmet Holiday Cookies? Just two (120 calories) would cost you an hour and 25 minutes waiting to sit on Santa's lap.

Ghirardelli Holiday Chocolate Assortment Squares = 21.5 minutes of setting up and decorating your Christmas tree

Setting up the tree is hard work, but it's fun — so you really don't even feel it. Why not try making all exercise fun? Have you ever received a gift box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates? They have that creamy hazelnut taste throughout. They're a holiday tradition, but just one (73 calories) would mean about 27 minutes of setting up the Christmas tree. Is a Christmas Tree Marshmallow Peep a better choice? Well, it's lower in calories (43.3 calories per peep) and burning it off would require less time setting up your tree, but it's not really a better "health" choice. In fact, it's really just sugar and a lot of artificial colors. At least with the chocolate you're getting some health benefits. Or try Williams-Sonoma Christmas Crunch at 50 calories each.

Fit tip: Always go for the dark chocolate. Ghirardelli makes a 60 percent cacao square that has health benefits.

Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark = 119 minutes of preparing, serving and cleaning up after a holiday party

Friends get this for us every year and having that stuff around the house is truly a bittersweet situation. It's so tempting to snap off a piece without realizing how much you're actually eating. The recommended serving is 1 ounce. So I took out my trusty food scale and looked at how much I (and most other people) typically break off, and it was about 2.5 ounces — or 350 calories — and it's not a very big a piece.

Fit tip: Try Miss Meringue Peppermint Crush; nine cookies are 110 calories.

Russell Stover Chocolate-Covered Marshmallow Santa (1 ounce) = 19.5 minutes performing in "The Nutcracker"

Do you even know how to do pirouettes, spins, jumps and pliés? In reality, however, this is lower in calories than most candy bars, so it's not terrible.

Fit tip: Go for the Dark Chocolate Placesetting Snowman by Lake Champlain Chocolates. It's slightly higher in calories, but with 54 percent cacao you get the magic of dark chocolate.

Three big handfuls from the popcorn tin = 64 minutes dancing as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall

Oh gosh, those tins of popcorn seem like such a healthy treat. Wrong! A 6.5-gallon tin can be a treacherous thing to have around the house, especially if you can't stop grazing. The tin opens and closes about 20 times per day.

Fit tip: Get a bag of yellow unpopped kernels and make your own popcorn in an air-popper.

Charles Stuart Platkin is a nutrition and public-health advocate, and founder of www.DietDetective.com.