Holidays are a common pitfall for most people, being a repeating time frame where they gain weight they worked hard for to lose in the weeks leading up to the holiday.
For several weeks the feeling of freedom from responsibilities results in more alcohol intake, more ice cream consumption and in general bigger portions being eaten every meal. But it can be different! Fitin20 wants to share some tips that might be useful for you to enjoy your holiday, while still maintaining your goal weight!
Tips for nutrition and holiday snacking:
- Try to stick to 3 meals and 2 small snacks a day, just as you would at home.
This way, you can prevent skipping meals which can lead to overeating and copious snacking. You are also more inclined to make more healthy choices for your mail meals. - Make yourself a promise to not eat ice-cream every day. Stick to every 3-4 days and make sure you either count it as 1 of your snacks and/or balance it with a smaller portion size of 1 of your following meals.
- Drink a tall glass of water after each glass of alcohol. Drinking a glass of wine in the sun is great, however alcohol is a big culprit in consuming empty calories, and gaining weight. Alcohol is also linked to more resorption of fat into the body, and increasing hunger. By drinking a glass of water in between, we aim to put a bit of a brake on the alcohol intake.
- Drink plenty of water! Your body needs it for almost all bodily functions including your digestion. It also slows down your feeling for hunger and cravings.
- Eat fresh fruit. They are a great way of getting in plenty of fiber, quench your thirst and you will crave less unhealthy food (like ice-cream) that is on offer on your holiday!
Tips for fitness:
- Choose leg power to explore your new surroundings! Make an adventure out of it and walk where you would like to go on Holiday. By walking, you will burn a lot of calories. Besides preventing weight gain, it is also a great mood lifter and is great for your digestion.
- Make use of the pool on your holiday! Invest in some good waterproof headphones, blast your favorite tunes and swim some laps. If you are not into that, dance in the water to those tunes. Who cares who is looking, you are on holiday! And you will burn so many calories while having fun and improving your mood even more.
- Want to incorporate some basic training during your Holiday? Here is the Fitin20 homework list for YouTube: you can pick a different problem area each workout. Set yourself a challenge and work up to several sets if you like! Fitin20 Home work Playlist
Have you ever heard of the 7 minute work out? Scientifically proven to be an efficient work out to maintain some results. When properly done, and repeated preferably 2 or 3 times (but once is better than none), it helps to get and stay fit. And you only need a chair, your body weight and a wall! You can also get it as an app on your phone that will guide you through it by voice cues.
7 minute workout on Youtube - Relax! Holiday is a great time to let your joints and muscles recover. It is great if you are committed to not gaining any weight on holiday, but make sure to take a day of here and there too and completely disengage of any responsibilities. It won’t impact your results as much as you think, as long as it doesn’t turn into a three week habit (or worse, beyond that when you returned home :-)).
Enjoy your holiday, and we are looking forward to hearing all about your adventures while suiting up for your next EMS session!
With warm regards,
Your Fitin20 team