So if you have been going to the gym, watching your diet, and seeing great results, what could be the problem?
Well, now you're going to be away for a couple weeks in a foreign place, and you don't know how to keep up with that progress.
So this week's post is concentrated on some tips and methods to keep you on track during vacation.
Here goes...
Good luck
All kidding aside, here is are some actual tools and tips to use while on vacation to mitigate some damage at the very least.
If you are not the one in control of the dietary decisions on the trip (like the position I was in on my recent Brazil trip), there are still a few tools you can use to at least not do so much damage.
Intermittent fasting
If you haven't tried this before, try pushing your first meal until a little later in the day. Essentially, this just means skipping breakfast. During this early period of the day, just drink lots of water and a couple cups of black coffee or tea to blunt hunger. This will give you some more room to work with later on when temptation starts to loom.
If this idea scares you, you can try eating a protein heavy meal earlier in the day to fill you up, and then save your bigger meal for later. Skip the carbs on your early meal, especially if you know you are going to have some drinks later in the day. If you know that you're going to be drinking that day, I would suggest going slightly lower in carbs/fats that day anyway. The extra protein will help to keep you full.
An example would be having some eggs for lunch (or egg whites for lower fat if possible), turkey bacon (or another lean source of protein) and/or Greek yogurt. This kind of meal will also help you to get closer to your protein numbers for the day to preserve muscle, as you don't want to completely go off track with your overall diet.
If you can get by with a smaller meal early on, stick with that and then drink some water to hold you over until your bigger meal, which is generally going to happen at night anyway.
Don't force yourself to eat when you're not hungry
If you aren't hungry one day, just don't eat as much. Vacationing doesn't have to purely be about food - it should be about experiences as well. People will keep trying to feed you and make you drink. Say no a little more, and it will add up. Don't worry about missing a meal, especially if you're not even hungry. You will not wither away, I assure you. If your group wants to get a big lunch, and you know you are going to have a big dinner later on, you can either go off on your own and get in a nice walk. If you don’t want to be so anti-social – join the group, but just have some black coffee or tea. A sparkling water will also help to fill you up for a bit. You don't have to eat every waking hour of the day just because you are on vacation.
Walk more
A little extra walking should help to offset some of the extra calories you'll likely be consuming on vacation, but it could also help with some creative thinking. There are so many benefits to walking such as decreased chances of diabetes, boosting immune functions, burning fat, improving balance, improving heart health, and decreasing stress.
It is also the cheapest form of transportation. Why pay money for a cab if the place you're going is close enough to just walk? Picking a vacation spot that includes lots of walk paths and/or hiking trails can ensure that you don’t gain a bunch of weight while away on vacation. All your daily movement adds up, whether it is taking the stairs instead of elevators or escalators, parking your car further away, or just being more active overall throughout the day. Even fidgeting throughout the day has been shown to burn a significant amount of calories.
Being more active could be the difference of coming back from vacation with 5-10 lbs of weight gain, when you could have come back with only 2-3 lbs of weight gain. Usually most of this is water weight unless you really went nuts on that trip!. Or if you're really on the ball, you could come back even leaner!
Check out this article on the benefits of regular walking.
Drink more water and less beer
Okay, before you walk out on me, I'm not saying that you can't drink at all, but if you are going to consume alcohol on the trip, here are a few ways to incorporate that into your diet. First, drinking a lot of water throughout the day should keep you fuller for longer. I would advise to drink beer sparingly (especially if you prefer heavier craft beers), and stick to hard liquor with no calorie chasers such as seltzer water or diet soda. Soda is already terrible for you anyway, so you might as well not waste calories on the real stuff, especially if you don’t make a daily habit of having diet sodas.
Studies seem inconclusive whether diet soda causes long-term effects, but logic alone would advise us that a chemically driven zero calorie substance is probably not the healthiest choice. If you're going to weigh the pros and cons, holding excess body fat seems way unhealthier to me than the occasionally chemicals in those diet sodas, so sometimes you just have to pick your poison. (But that is a topic for another discussion)
As far as beer vs liquor goes, you could be talking about a 125-200 calorie difference per drink between a 1 fluid ounce pour of hard liquor (such as vodka, gin, rum and tequila at roughly 100 calories a pop) and a heavier craft beer such as Lagunitas Sucks (239 calories per 12oz or Founders Breakfast Stout - 270 per 12oz). If you plan on consuming multiple beers, stick to lighter ones, though I’d personally rather have one or two really good ones than a bunch of crappy ones. One decent beer with one whiskey neat, and you will be in decent shape calorically, and will likely be less obnoxious than if you have gone overboard with your consumption.
Preparation before the trip
I think preparation for the trip is also key. If you eat less the weeks/months in advance and set up your strength training program to have a deload week during your trip, you will be likely be ready for an easier week anyway. Then, you can just focus on maintaining your strength so you don't come back really weak after your vacation. You can also use your vacation as a planned reefed period to ramp up your metabolic rate, especially if you've been in a caloric deficit for a decent amount of time. Your body may get just what it needs. Check out this article on planned refeeds from Lyle McDonald (flexible dieting expert).
Generally, going on vacation is not the best time to be "dieting" anyway (or trying to achieve a caloric deficit, so it's best to not go into your vacation with that mentality because you won't have as much fun. Just do what you can, and try not to do so much damage. Personally, I never actually ENJOY losing complete self control with my diet, but a healthy break can be very beneficial psychologically, as well as physically.
Grocery shopping for some healthier options
If you planning a long vacation stay, and can do some grocery shopping - then you can pick up some healthy and simple foods. It is likely that you will be getting more sodium and cooking fats if you are dining out a lot, or even if someone else is cooking (and doesn't pay as close attention to caloric ingredients).
At the store, choose some fibrous and protein filled options such as lean meat, cottage cheese, green veggies, and other anti-inflammatory foods that will fill you up and will soak up some of that sodium. Bananas are another good source of potassium to balance out some of the excess sodium. Just don’t go overboard with the bananas, as they are somewhat calorically dense.
Do what you can
Basically, you will need to do what you can while you're on vacation. If you are going to be on the road fairly often, you would need to implement more long-term methods, though they generally aren't much different than what I've suggested here. It's just a matter of getting better at it over time.
Hopefully your trip will incorporate a little bit of all of these tools so that you can still enjoy some of life's finest treats, without the expensive receipts that come with overdoing it.
Try to keep fats lower, while protein and carbs should be higher to spare muscle development - especially if you have been on a strength training program prior to the vacation. You don't want to lose hard earned muscle on your trip, and have to come back to the gym weak as f_____ because you completely threw caution to the wind.
Conclusion
If you do a little here and there while on vacation, it will definitely add up. I ate of ton on this past vacation, and had really no way of tracking most of what I was eating. When I came back, the first day I thought I gained 4 lbs, but after a day or so, though I realized most of that was water. Two to three days later when the water weight subsided and the dust settled, I was only up a half a pound since the beginning of the trip. Not too bad for completely going off track of my usual diet plan, and I even made some nice strength gains on some of the workouts.
I think my body was actually ready for the increase of calories in order to increase my leptin (hunger-hormone) levels. Raising leptin levels after long periods of calorie restriction actually helps to increase basal metabolic rate, so that the body will burn more calories at a resting rate.
I followed all of these tips myself, ate a lot of food, and wasn't able to be as active on this particular trip.
Yet, I still found a way to make it work. Hopefully, these tips can help you when you go on your next trip. Thanks for reading.
Continue below for some sample impromptu workouts that I came up with on the fly.
Sample workouts
You’re not always going to have the same kind of options you have at home. That fitness center with all the equipment you need for your workout may or may not have an equivalent in your vacation locale.. Here are some suggestions to keep some level of maintenance, so that you don’t come back from vacation completely weak and unable to complete your workouts.
On my recent vacation to Brazil, I was in several different cities and locations. With each arrival to a new city, I was faced with another uncertainty of how to get in a workout, but where there’s a will there’s a way.
Here's some quick sample workouts that I did there 1) with a crappy little hotel gym (which only had one 30 lb pair of dumbbells and crappy useless machine), 2) with no gym at all, some random pull-up bars that I found while walking around on the beach/waterfalls, and 3) some other random gyms that were serviceable at best. If you have access to an actual gym, then you are good to go and can proceed as you normally would. But if you don't have that access, have fun with some improvisation, and use your own body to get in some impromptu workouts. This will also be a fun way to see what you can come up with, and to get some creative juices flowing.
Workout 1
Crappy little hotel gym (which only had one 30 lb pair of dumbbells and crappy useless machine)
Pistol squats with 30 lb Dumbbells
2 sets of 5-6
Handstand push-ups
2 sets of 5-6
Cable pulls downs on crappy useless machine
3 sets of 10
Push-ups with girlfriend laying on your back
As many as you can do so you don't get in trouble later
Or
2 sets of 10-12
Last set followed by max body weight push-ups, or elevated feet push-ups
Capped with laying leg raises
2 sets of 20-30 or as many as you can do
Workout 2
Find an exercise bar or sturdy tree branch to do some body weight exercises. If you don't have a weight belt or weights to use, then do some more rest pause training (shorter rest periods) to simulate having more weight.
Muscle-ups -. If you can do any of these, congratulations!!!! If you can’t and are able to do some pull-ups or chin-ups, here’s a nice little workout to do.
Wide grip pull-ups (body weight rest-pause style workout with shorter rest periods)
Set of 10
Set of 8
Set of 6
Chin-ups (body weight rest-pause)
Set of 9
Set of 6
Set of 5
One-arm push-ups
3 sets of 8-10
Workout 3 (found a gym. YES!!!!)
Standing military press
Warm up set with ½ your desired weight at 6 reps
70-80% of your work set for 3 reps
4-6 reps of your max heavier weight (training just below failure), followed by 1-2 sets of 90% at 6-8 reps each (reverse pyramid training style)
Incline press (Dumbbells) (reverse pyramid training style)
Cable pull-downs (reverse pyramid training style)