Can you keep up your slimming during a vacation?

I know how hard it is when you have just got into the zone, your body is slimming down nicely and you feel you have everything under control. Then along comes an occasion that is going to change things for you. The last thing you want is to stop losing weight, but you also don’t want to turn down the invitation to have a great vacation. If you need to lose weight, it can be very difficult when vacations come along.

I can tell you that you will do just fine. Accept the invitation and I will show you a few tips that will help you to still have fun during your break, without putting lots of weight back on. Life is very short, and we need to make the most of it and have fun. There are many tips on this website to help you lose weight, and you can use a lot of them while you are away on vacation. Lets first ask us why vacations are threats for your slimming plans.

Why is it harder to keep slimming during your vacation?

Vacations put you in several tempting situations:

Slimming during your vacation?

• You change your mindset during a vacation. Since you are on holiday you will more easy going plus also not be as active with things to do as you would normally be. You aren’t for instance bound to the timetables that come from school or work. This feeling to not have a plan easily causes you to think about food. Food is really the only plan you have for the day because we humans have to eat. Since you now are putting more attention on food, your desire to eat will also increase.

• Your travelling companions will easily tempt you to eat bad food (without meaning to). I have not been on a single vacation without hearing my companions exitedly talking about what to eat next. You will easily get drawn into that enthusiasm if you aren’t enough motivated to stick to your plan. During vacations we stick to our companions and make decitions in a group. You can’t go off on your own to eat because it would 1. be very rude and 2. very boring for you too. Many times you will have to go to an unhealthy restaurant because the majority of your companions want to go there. Once in an unhealthy restaurant it is even more tempting to choose something healthy out of the menu.
  

  Image by WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com) via Flickr

• As we mentioned, you will be eating out (in restaurants) a lot during vacations. There might be a lot more hidden calories in the restaurant’s food than you’d think. Most restaurants’ goal is to make the food as tasty as possible so that you will come back for more and give them your money. It’s all business. They don’t care about your health and may therefore put a lot of extra fat, sugar and additives into the food. Even though a dish would look healthy, don’t be tricked because there may be some hidden calories in it.
• Many people drink more alcohol during a holiday in order to relax and also because they are allowed to be less cautious with this since they aren’t bound to their normal life. Even though some alcoholic drinks aren’t sweet, don’t forget that the alcohol in itself contains a lot of calories.
• During vacations we often get very lazy. We don’t move around and exercise as often. We might not have had enought room in our bags to even take a pair of trainers with us. Another thing is that we aren’t familiar with the vacation spot’s exersise places. Many times we are just too lazy to find out about the training conditions of this new place.

How do we prepare ourselves so that we can keep slimming during our vacations?

In the previous paragraph we talked about why vacations make it harder for us to lose or maintain the same weight. Lets now see how we can solve these problems:

• Plan out things to do in beforehand and make a timetable for each day as a backup. As I mentioned earlier, if you end up being bored or just feel uneasy about having no plan, you will start to think about food. The timetable doesn’t have to be followed too strictly, because you still want to feel like you are on holiday. Just see the plan as a backup plan in case you get that bored feeling and need to focus on something else.
• First of all, travel with people who support your slimming goals. This would be the most effective way for you. Just think about it: if you would be travelling with a “weight loss support group”, do you really think you will gain weight during your vacation? I doubt it. You would lose even more weight instead. You would be surrounded by people who talk and plan the same things. Instead of lying down on the beach, your group might chose to go hitch hiking. Instead of going to a fast food restaurants, your group would have just as much fun in a sallad/seafood restaurants.
• If it wouldn’t be an option to go with other people on a vacation, like it is for most of us, then it might help to prepare your friend’s mindsets with what you’d want out of the trip before you go on the trip. By informing them about it before the trip, you won’t make them put up different expectations or plans for the trip than you. I don’t want you to be selfish when you tell them this – just inform them that it would be great if they’d be interested in doing the same as you or at least encourage you to stick to your goals during the trip. I don’t know what type of people you are travelling with, but if they really care about you (as much as you should care about them) it will go fine.
  
• Before you go on your vacation, find out about the training facilities or other possibilities, their locations and how to get there from your hotel. You could of course do this on location, but the problem is that we tend to get lazy about finding out this stuff once we are there. Sometimes there isn’t any internet available, sometimes the people around you speak a foreign language and sometimes you had forgot to pack down something that you would have needed in order to exersise. Therefore I recommend you sort all this stuff out before the trip so that you are ready to go strait away once you arive.

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  Avoid buffets to keep slimming during your vacation

  Since we are on vacation we may more likely treat ourselves to go on a buffet. BEWARE! Buffets are one of the most dangerous places (weight loss wize) that you should stay clear of. There are several things that make you eat more during a buffet

  1. You might want to taste more kinds of foods (rather than stick to a few) on a vacation. I was once in a pizza restaurant and felt very full after eating the same kind of pizza for a while. After that I had some icecream and suddenly I didn’t feel at all as full as 1 min earlier when I was eating the pizza. After a while with the icecream I eventually started to feel full with it. What happened next was I tasted more of the pizza again becauese I felt there was still room for some pizza. Do you see what I see? You will trick yourself to eat a lot more if you eat a lot of different tasting foods. Your body will make you feel full sooner if you only eat one type of food, it will on the other hand make you ignore your fullness if you eat a lot of different types of foods.. very dangerous (if you want to lose weight).

  2. During a buffet, you are allowed to eat as much as you want for your money’s worth. Is that really what you want to do? Think about it. If I were you, I’d rather go and pay the same amount for a fixed dish size of some food that was very high quality instead…. like some nice seafood.

Use some of my ideas about slimming during your vacation, and I’m sure you’ll come back feeling very rested,  and at the same weight if not less.

Just stick with a few rules and you won’t go off track from your slimming goals!