Don’t forget to include your nutrition goals in your spring break plans! How to ensure you stay on the wagon during vacation.
Spring is almost officially here, and my family is already enjoying our spring break. March and the beginning of spring might be my favorite time in Arizona! My kids even have spring break in March, which really makes it feel like the kick-off to vacation season! After seven years as a flexible dieter, I have almost perfected my system for staying on top of my goals while vacationing and I want to share all my knowledge with you!
If you’re getting ready to head out on vacation (maybe for the first time since the pandemic hit, yay!) but you’re also stressed about gaining weight, then you need to start implementing these strategies! This is how I manage to enjoy my vacation, including eating out and the occasional cocktail, without gaining a ton of weight!
Plan meals & snacks for the week
As always, if you want to stay on track with your nutrition, then you have to know what that means to you, and that requires a plan!
I love macro tracking because it gives me daily guidelines of what nutrition goals I want to hit. When I go on vacation, I like to stick to those goals as closely as I can, but I also allow myself some more flexibility so that I feel like I got to have some fun.
It’s absolutely OK to eat out while you’re on vacation, but if you want to avoid major weight gain, try to limit your eating out to a few meals, not every meal. The rest of the time, I suggest eating foods that you would normally eat if you were at home. Our bodies love consistency so if you can have your regular breakfast before a big night out at a restaurant, you’ll be better prepared.
After you have a solid plan in place, you’ll need to take some extra time to prep!
Prepare your food before leaving for vacation
There is nothing worse than spending your vacation in the kitchen! That’s half the reason we go on vacation, right? In order to not be cooking and cleaning when you’re on spring break, you’ll have to devote some extra time to getting things ready before you leave.
If you’re driving, then prep for your trip by making a quick grocery run for anything you want to take with you and then pack it in a freezer and throw it in the car! If you’re flying somewhere, then you’ll have to grab groceries when you arrive. I love to use pickup ordering when I’m traveling because I can land, grab groceries on the way to the hotel and then I’m ready to go once we check-in!
Whenever we travel, I try to make sure all of our snacks are prepped ahead of time too! If you have baggies of fruits & veggies ready to go or yogurt cups in the fridge, it’s easy to grab that instead of hitting up the vending machine.
Another great reason to prep snacks ahead of time is so that when your kids need a snack, you don’t have to get up and get them something! They can grab something out of the fridge without bothering you! Boom!
Protect your plan so you protect your goals
One of the biggest challenges I see women face when they’re going on vacation is that they fall into the “vacation mindset.” The “vacation mindset” tells us that if we really want to enjoy our vacation, then we should eat out and grab a fruity drink anytime we want. It tells us that it’s not a vacation unless we give into every indulgence.
But guess how that leaves us feeling? Bloated. Sick to our stomachs. Paranoid about how we look in a swimming suit. With a bad hangover.
And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to feel that way on vacation! I’d rather feel strong, confident and ready for an adventure with my family! Which is why I make sure to protect my meal plan and weight loss goals, even when I’m on vacation.
Protecting your plan means that when you’re at the restaurant and the deep-fried appetizers are calling your name, you think about what is more important to you: the food or your goals. Most of the time, I choose my goals because as much as I love onion rings, I know that in the end, they don’t make me feel great.
Get back on track asap
That being said, sometimes I do go for the onion rings, and that’s OK too! Part of flexible dieting is learning to not demonizing our food. If you can’t stop thinking about the onion rings, order some! You can have a few, see if that satisfies the craving, and if it doesn’t then eat a few more! No matter what you do, the next step is critical: get back on track at your next meal.
Just like eating one salad doesn’t make you lose 10 lbs, one off meal doesn’t make you gain 10 lbs. We gain weight when we eat an off meal, and then another off meal, and another and another.
Don’t fall into that trap. You haven’t ruined everything. You aren’t a failure. You’re a human. That’s it! You are still a healthy person. You just have to act like it! Stick to your plan at your next meal and you’ll be just fine!
If you want personalized guidance to help you through your nutrition needs, then let’s chat! Schedule a free discovery call with me and we’ll figure out what your needs are and how we can get there, together.
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