HOLIDAY HELP!

7rainbow

Hi everyone! I've been using my fitness pal on and off for a while, and am really hoping to make a lasting improvement in the new year, since tbh I have gained back the weight that I lost. However I am going away for the holidays and have NO CLUE how I will survive on vacation. I'm the kind of person who can gain weight very fast when I'm eating out on my travels. Any tips for how I can enjoy my trip but also not put my calorie goals off?

steveko89

It's not a "hot tip" by any stretch, but I'm a firm believer that one must come to terms with the fact that all calories count... on vacation, on holidays, on your birthday, all of them. For certain events/occasions it may not be feasible to stick to a calorie or food choice goal 100% so maybe choose to eat closer to maintenance rather than lean into the skid with a binary approach of "well I'm going to go over, I might as well not put any thought towards calories", which I see quite often. Socially, things are so food-centric that there are always going to be things that are obstacles to meeting calorie goals; parties, events, other holidays, birthdays, etc. The key for me is to accept that things are going to perfect on X day or X days and work to mitigate the damage as much as possible and resume your normally scheduled, calorie-goal-oriented programming immediately following any sort of deviation.

Where so many fail is when they have too much of an all-or-nothing mindset; allow yourself some latitude to "fail" or make choices not requisite to your goals occasionally and focus on the overall consistency.

tulips_and_tea

Since you've used MFP already, hopefully you've been weighing and measuring your food. This should help you estimate proper portion sizes. You know how much you eat of something (say a serving of pasta, bowl of cereal, restaurant entrees, etc.) so just make it a point to eat a bit less than you normally do.

Downsize your servings to maybe 2/3 of what you normally eat. That should make a difference and most times we'll be satisfied on less than we think we need since most of what we serve ourselves it out of habit and not actual need. Enjoy your holidays!

7rainbow

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I tend to have the all or nothing mindset, which is why when every holiday hits I reverse all of my progress. I'll try to get half portions, and to continue keeping track instead of saying "screw it" and pretending like nothing counts.