how to diet during holiday

Dieting on holiday is basically an oxymoron.

A holiday is supposed to be a time where you fully relax and go do the things you wanna do without restriction. Dieting on the other hand is all about controlled restriction.

The answer I usually give when someone asks me how to diet on holiday can be summed up in two words:

You don’t.

Enjoy your holiday to the fullest, and worry about dieting when you come back. A holiday is temporary, it’s not your everyday lifestyle. Doesn’t matter if your holiday is a day, a week, or even a month. Fact is that holiday will end and when it ends and when you come back to your normal daily habits you’ll be back on track towards your diet/weight goals.

Sure of course, during and immediately after the holiday you could gain some weight. Totally normal. But again that weight gain is temporary cos as soon as the holiday ends and you go back to your normal habits, that temporary weight gain will fizzle away cos the habits that caused the weight gain didn’t continue.

Then again, it’s a totally different story if after the holidays you go back to your day to day life but still continue your holiday eating habits. That’s when holiday weight ends up staying for longer than welcomed.

Remember your overall average weight in the long term is a reflection on your eating habits. If you’re in a calorie deficit 80% of the time in the past 3 months, you’ll have definitely lost weight comparing day 1 to day 90. Whatever you do in that 20% doesn’t matter cos 80% heavily outweighs that. A lil holiday, a lil getaway, a birthday party, a wedding, all those things can’t “ruin” your progress if you make sure to get back on track.

I just got back from a 3 day trip since the kiddos had a week off school, you’ve probably seen the pics here and there on my stories. On the trip I  just ate whatever was available and didn’t count calories. I guess I can’t fully say I didn’t count, cos having been on a daily basis for so many years it’s pretty easy for me to make a mental note of how much I’m eating.

The way I ate during the trip was basically priority 1: eat whatever looked good, and priority 2: try to eat more of whatever was available that I needed for my daily diet meaning if there was a meal that veggies was abundant I’d eat more veggies that meal cos it was quite possible the next meal had zero veggies. Same with protein, if one of the meals we were at a place that it was easy to eat more protein I’d do so cos some meals could just be mainly carbs.

It wasn’t like a make or break thing for me trying to eat healthy or hit my proteins during the trip, it was more of “oh if I can make a little effort I will, if not that’s totally fine too since it’s just 3 days”.

Didn’t have any kind of scale with me the whole trip, no food scale no body scale so I had no idea how I was doing weight wise. I expected to gain a lil weight in the 3 days simply cos the food I was eating was a lot more oily & salty compared to my day to day foods. To my surprise, I came back and weighed myself the next morning and I was 0.5kg lighter than the day I left for the trip.

I think reflecting back on this trip, understanding food and goals really makes a huge difference in terms of guilt control. I felt zero guilt this trip with food. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to eat more as it wasn’t a food trip, yet I also wasn’t too concerned about what or how much I was eating cos I knew all this would only last as long as the trip. Once I’m back to my day to day all the I know all the numbers will fall back into place.

Long story short, when on holiday relax & enjoy, when back from holidays get back to the normal routine asap.

Play hard, work hard.

—Po