Take your diet on holiday
Holidays are fun enough without using them as an excuse to binge. That’s why when I go on holiday this year I’m taking my diet with me!
Who packs a calorie counter into their suitcase as they set off for their annual holiday? Me. That’s who. But surely holidays should be a rest from endless calorie counting, weighing, measuring, forever doing mental calculations in your head? Should they though? How many times a year do we say, oh it’s a special occasion I’ll leave the diet at home. Many of us are presented with endless opportunities to come off our diets: birthdays - yours and many others, Easter, Jubilee, weekends away, family get-togethers, leaving dos, weddings, hen and stag parties, reunions, anniversaries and of course the big daddy of diet destroyers that is Christmas.
If you really want to take weight off and keep it off you have to take your diet with you wherever you go. A committed vegetarian, vegan, a practising Muslim, orthodox Jew, someone with Coeliac, Diabetes or a heart condition never leaves their diet at home. Their way of eating is part of their way of life either for religious or health reasons. It should be the same for those of us on a diet and here’s why. Coming off your diet for any reason not only means you’ll almost definitely gain weight then have to start all over again to re-lose what you already lost. It also risks you coming off the diet altogether. I’ve fallen so I might as well stay fallen. A recovering alcoholic, former drug addict or ex-smoker will be as keen to maintain their abstinence away from home as they are in it. So should dieters.
Control
It’s all about control. It was loss of control made most of us gain weight in the first place. Getting back that control, learning to tailor what we eat to what our bodies need rather than what our minds tell us we want takes an enormous effort. Such a huge effort in fact that most diets fail. If you’ve come a long way already why would you risk putting it all back on; that mammoth effort all for nothing? The snake that takes you back to square one on the snakes and ladders board of life.
And make no mistake life is there to trip you up. Life doesn’t want you to lose weight and keep it off. The diet industry is founded on failure; if diets didn’t fail there’d be no need for the massive money-making machine that keeps churning out ever new ways to tempt us. Knowing each new diet will almost definitely fail and we’ll be back for another.
So when you make plans for your holiday build in treats that are not food based. Read that thick doorstopper novel you’ve been meaning to, listen to that play/podcast, catch up on sleep, swim, sunbathe, visit museums, art galleries and the theatre. Enrich your mind and free your body from holiday food overload. Don’t use your annual break as an excuse to splurge. The best way to take holiday pounds off is never to gain them in the first place!
Have a lovely holiday.
True wisdom. It is a lifestyle change. I can't say I am perfect on holiday but I do make the effort to eat the least processed food possible.
Hi Laura
Good advice. Can I add a tip of my own.
When I was a child we didn’t go on holiday very often as money was one of those commodities which were in short supply but we did occasionally go on a holiday to visit some friends who lived in Cornwall. My parents still didn’t have much spare dosh but they saved up enough for us to have a treat. The choice was one treat each day of the holiday…. An ice cream or a coke/ pop. We relished our treat and savoured it as slowly as we could. We also thought we were the luckiest kids on the planet.
I wonder if the holiday diet could take a similar approach. You are allowed one treat each day.. an ice cream, a glass of wine, a pudding or whatever but only once a day and then you can plan and look forward to it which is as enjoyable as having it.