Going on vacation... question!

It's a great question. There's such a balance between wanting to enjoy yourself by not stressing over food, but also the stress that you are gaining weight can make it hard to do that!

If you CAN forget about the diet, eat within reason and be relatively active, that's ideal. If you CAN'T, then maybe try to focus on just enjoying foods that are part of the vacation but not just going all out at every meal. Like eat a Maine lobster dipped in butter and have some brie and croissants in France, but don't go for seconds at the hotel breakfast buffet just because you can.

Honestly...when I go on vacation with my kids I don't even really splurge much because they want to go to sports bars and kid-friendly restaurants where I'm perfectly happy with my usual "dinner out at kid friendly restaurant" I eat at home. I try to make the decision based on whether enjoying a specific type of food is part of the vacation experience.

Give yourself some rules to follow and plan your splurges a bit. This will help with weight gain AND your wallet. For example if I was going back to Disneyland (for the umpteenth time) these would be my rules:

1. At the hotel breakfast I will eat the items and quantities I would at home.
2. If we are eating somewhere we have at home, order what I would at home (I don't need the calorie bomb drink at the Disneyland Starbucks because "we're on vacation".)
3. I will carry my water bottle and refill it at the restaurants, I don't need to pay for sodas and lemonades.
4. I will pack several small snacks in my bag every day to prevent bad last minute choices.
5. We are DEFINITELY getting the Mickey beignets and Dole whips and something sweet at Pooh Corner.
6. I will keep the fixings for light meals in the hotel mini-kitchen so we aren't tempted to order takeout for dinner or grab a last snack while leaving the park.

If I was going somewhere with all you can eat type options, I'd probably have rules like "pick one dessert per night" or "eat plate of salad before getting entrees and sides".

I also usually go to maintenance, and my vacations are usually pretty active, so that helps too.
I’m also another who takes healthy snacks in my bag to help prevent bad choices. Works well.

I’m going away this weekend to a conference and I plan to eat at maintenance, make sure I get in my 10k steps each day, and get up early to walk each morning. I’ll be sensible about the foods I eat (they cater, and it’s not terribly healthy food), and use some of my snacks to top up meals that are high in calories- so I’ll have a smaller amount of the high calorie food and pair it with some baby carrots or a protein bar or something.

I'm going on vacation starting this weekend & I'm going to have a good time (within reason). If you can't go out & have a good time, it's not worth it IMO. I'm not going to pig out every meal or drink a lot each night, but I figure if I eat sensible for most of the vacation & work out while I'm there, I'll gain some, but I can deal with the consequences when I get back home.

I say enjoy yourself, but don’t go crazy!

I went on vacation in April and went completely nuts. eating and drinking everything I could! I think that by giving myself a free pass, I ended up with this
“now or never” mentality. “Drink that beer now, because you won’t get any when you’re home!”

I ended up having a very hard time getting back on track when I got back from vacation. I think if I’d have avoided overdoing it on vacation, it would have cut out this “now or never” impulse and also would have made re-assimilating into real life a bit easier.

HakunaMatata137 wrote: »

Hey everyone!

So I'm going on vacation in a couple days for a week. Normally when I go on vacation I gain weight and all my diet/exercise goes out the window. But this time I don't want that to happen. I've lost 35 lbs. since Jan. and have about 40 more to lose. I do plan on working out 4 out of the 7 days I'm there.

And although I don't wanna gain weight, I also don't wanna deprive myself of vacation foods/drinks. Right now I'm at 1600 cals/day and currently do intermittent fasting. I've been losing around 1-1.5 lbs/week. So my question is: Should I temporarily change my calorie goal to maintenance while I'm on vacation? It would be around 2100 cals/day, and then I'd change it back to 1600 cals/day when I go back home.

I'm thinking that this way, I don't gain weight, but I also give myself a little more room to indulge. What do you guys think? Is this a bad idea? Thanks for any help!

As long as it doesn't make you OCD during your vacation. Personally, I don't mind the weight gain during my vacation, because I know it won't take long once I get back to my regular routine for the weight to come off since the vacation weight gain is mainly water weight and not fat.

On my last cruise, I gained 8 lbs in one week, it took me 2 weeks at my regular calories intake to get back to my pre-cruise weight. I basically lost 4 lbs per week, of course it was all the water weight I was carrying.

Personally i would just not worry about it. I wouldn’t be logging my food at all. Just too much of a hassle when on vacations and eating lots of different foods. But that’s just me.

Choose maintenance for the WIN. I went on a vacay and simply maintained while enjoying meals with my family. These are once in a lifetime experiences that we can't duplicate at home. Learning to moderate ourselves is where the rubber really meets the road while we're on the road.