How To Get Back On Track After Vacation

Summer is the time of year when many of us decide to pack our bags and set off on an adventure!

Swimming in the blue waters of the Bahamas? Backpacking through Europe’s historic sites? Lounging on a hammock with a mai tai in Hawaii?

Wherever you fly to for your adventure, one thing is for sure – the temptation of decadent treats will pull you in like a mermaid enchanting a sailor with her siren song.

Remember in the cartoons you watched as a kid when the steam from a freshly baked pie would come to life and dance around the cartoon’s nose? That’s exactly how it feels when you travel to a new land with all kinds of goodies to indulge in.

We’ll be the first to tell you, go for it! It’s vacation!

You shouldn’t feel like you need to deprive yourself of expanding your horizons and giving your tastebuds a taste of all the wonderful flavors of the culture you’re in!

However, we’ve all experienced that shocking moment when you return and realize just how much you were “treating yo’self”.

Don’t fear! You can get that weight off again in no time with the help of these tips!

Don’t Weigh Yourself

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When you’re trying to lose weight, it’s only natural to want to immediately step on the scale to see how much weight you’ve “gained” after your vacation.

Stop right there!

Don’t give in, you’ll only make yourself feel horrible and could potentially sabotage your progress by going on another binge.

If your pants feel tighter or you just feel heavier, then you don’t need the scale to tell you you’re carrying a little extra weight.

Just take a deep breath, remind yourself it’s temporary, and focus on getting back into your healthy lifestyle.

There’s no sense in making yourself feel bad about the wonderful time you just had! It’s okay to indulge yourself every now and then, as long as you pick back up where you left off!

Drink Plenty of Water

We know, we know. We’re always stressing the importance of drinking water (in fact, go get a glass while you read this), and this time we’re going to tell you how water will help you shed that post-vacation bloat.

Let’s say you go on a week long trip, and you come back to see (because you didn’t listen to us and stepped on the scale) that you’ve “gained” 5 pounds.

“How is this possible?!” you exclaim out loud to yourself.

We’ve got good news for you, it’s not!

In order to gain a pound, you would need to be eating 3,500 calories more than your normal daily intake. So if you’re regularly eating a normal 2,000 calories a day, you would need to be consuming 5,500 calories a day!

You may feel like you’re eating 10,000 calories when you make various stops to eat pastries, ice cream, and fried foods, but most likely you’re consuming less than you think.

That weight “gain” and bloated feeling you’re experiencing is a product of your sodium intake. When there’s a spike in sodium consumption all of a sudden, your body begins to retain water to keep itself hydrated.

This water retention is what gives you the impression of gained weight. However, you can rest easy knowing it’s not true weight gain!

Over the next week or two you return, be mindful of increasing your water intake to flush out any toxins and sodium from your system. You’ll see that 5 pounds disappear in no time!

Return To A Healthy Diet

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Leave your vacation eating habits at the airport (along with that graphic t-shirt of an iguana drinking a pina colada you thought you absolutely needed).

You had your fun eating everything you wanted, and now it’s time to get back to your healthy lifestyle!

Hit the grocery store and stock up on your favorite grains, fruits, proteins, and fiber! Getting back into your healthy eating habits right away will keep you from staying in vacation mode and turning those 5 pounds of water weight into 5 pounds of fat. And you don’t want that after all the hard work you put in!

Catch Up On Sleep

We know this sounds silly when you’ve just come back from a vacation – that’s what they exist for, right? To sleep in and relax all day?

When you think about it, we actually don’t get a whole lot of sleep while we’re on vacation!

There’s many factors that go into lost sleep while traveling, a couple of which include:

  • If you travel to a different time zone, your sleeping pattern will be disrupted, causing you to sleep at the wrong times or not at all, even.
  • With so many sights to see and activities to do, you may find yourself waking up early to get a head start, and going back to your hotel room late at night after a few post-dinner cocktails.

Sleep is how your body refreshes and rejuvenates itself so that you can function at your best state. When you lose sleep, your body doesn’t run as efficiently, and your functions are greatly impacted – including your metabolism’s ability to burn calories.

Catching up on lost sleep will restore functioning and regulate your systems, making you feel fresh and ready to get back on track!

Get Back to Exercising

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The best way to make yourself feel good again is to get back into exercising!

If you feel like you need to start off slowly, then start off easy and work your way back up to your more intense workouts.

You can even come visit a Fit Body Boot Camp near you to sweat it out! Our supportive community will make you feel motivated and right at home.

Our Afterburn workouts are designed to burn more fat than a typical cardio workout while building and toning muscle in as little as 30 minutes!

There’s many ways for you to get back on track after a trip, but the most important thing to remember is to allow yourself to enjoy food while you travel. As long as you stay dedicated to your fitness lifestyle in the long run, a little water retention won’t stand in the way of your goals!

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