Travel can be an amazing source of relaxation and happy memories. If you’re one of the many people who struggles with their relationship with food and/or body image, it can also be an anxiety trigger. Even if you feel secure in your established routine at home, being out of your comfort zone can feel daunting. It may have you falling into old patterns before your vacation of picking apart your body, over restricting your intake, excessively exercising, etc. And once you’re on vacation going long stretches without eating, binging past the point of physical comfort, feeling guilt over eating foods you enjoy, etc.
In reality, an intuitive and balanced approach to food can work great in any setting regardless of your travel plans. Here we’ll address some of the behaviors clients have cited as sources of anxiety when traveling and how you can avoid letting them impact your next vacation. Whether you’re going home to your parents for the weekend or living large on a 10 day European vacation, these can help you feel more secure out of your comfort zone.
“Pre-Vacation Diet” aka The Crash
If you’re struggling with your body image or your relationship with food, knowing that you have a vacation coming up where you may be photographed a lot and/or be in a swimsuit can be a source of anxiety. You might find yourself standing in front of the mirror picking apart the parts of your body that aren’t usually shown. Instead of enjoying the planning process, you may find yourself spiraling at the thought of your body as it is being on display. Sometimes, in an effort to address these insecurities, we crash diet. Often this involves extreme restriction, going very low-calorie, low-carb, juice cleansing, eating only raw foods, or whatever fad diet came across your instagram at the moment, in an effort to look “better” for the vacation. I’m not going to lie to you, you might see some initial short-term results, but the emphasis there is on short-term. Repeating this cycle over and over (maybe before every vacation or big life event) is commonly referred to as yo-yo dieting. Yo-yo dieting, and dieting in general, has been statistically linked to increased insulin resistance, depression, body dysmorphia, increased risk of heart disease, muscle loss, eventual weight regain and multiple other poor outcomes that leave the dieter in a worse state than before starting the diet.
Let’s look at the motivation behind the urge to lose weight before a vacation. Who or what is it for? Will being 5lbs lighter actually make you laugh harder with your kids? Will it make that sunset more beautiful? Will it make that sight more awe inspiring? Will it make that zip-line more fun? Or do you think it will make you more likeable to people on social media when you post beach photos? Likely, if you think deeply about why you feel the need to lose weight before going on vacation it could be rooted in two possibilities: either an insecurity that others will negatively judge your appearance if you aren’t “perfect” or a fear that you may “lose control” relaxing on vacation and this is how you maintain your control. Both of these motivations are signs of disordered eating. If you are experiencing these thoughts and urges to restrict, please reach out to us. We’re here to help you with those.
Maintaining Balanced Blood Sugar and Hydration
Vacation schedules are usually totally different from our usual schedules. On top of that, we may not have access to our go-to foods and drinks. Sometimes this can result in going long stretches without having anything to eat or enough water. This is especially true if you’re sight-seeing and walking around a lot. The best course of action: plan ahead. Focus on protein/fat and carbohydrate combinations that will give you energy and leave you satisfied so you can be fully mentally and physically present. Maybe bring your favorite protein bar in your suitcase. Or stop at a grocery store when you arrive and stock up on foods that can be carried with you (e.g. bananas, apples, nut-butter packets, package of nuts, protein bars, jerky). Having something on hand doesn’t mean you have to eat it, but it is a good backup so you don’t get groggy and cranky while trying to enjoy your relaxation time.
Hydration is always important and can be especially challenging to maintain while traveling. If you have a water bottle you like to use and carry with you at home, bring it with you! Fill it up in your hotel room before going out for the day. Or refill it periodically if you’re somewhere with clean drinking water. If you don’t want to bring your water bottle, you will have to plan ahead. Hydrate before heading out for the day, take advantage of situations where you can order a glass of water, but most importantly regularly check in on yourself. You check in on everyone around you, but it’s easy not to ask yourself how you’re doing. If you’re starting to feel a little foggy, tired, thirsty, seek out somewhere you can buy a bottle of water to take with you. Similar to letting your blood sugar get too low, dehydration can ruin your good time by making you lethargic, tired, foggy and cranky. Staying on top of your hydration is key to enjoying your vacation.
Guilt Wasn’t Invited
If you’re like me, trying local foods or eating things you wouldn’t normally have access to is a huge part of travel. Enjoying your meals is part of the overall experience of vacation. Unfortunately, sometimes this enjoyment can be negatively impacted by feelings of guilt for not sticking to our self-imposed rigid diet rules.
What are we feeling guilty about? The feeling of guilt is defined by Oxford Languages as “the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime.” But what crime or offense have we committed? Was anyone harmed? Did you harm yourself by enjoying locally made bread with your loved ones? OR did you harm yourself by beating yourself up for enjoying food that wasn’t bad for you? All foods, in appropriate portion sizes, have the capacity to bring us fuel, nourishment and joy. Assigning morality to foods by making them good or bad, guilt free or guilty, gives them a power they do not have. In turn, you take on the morality assigned to these foods when you eat them. Skipping the locally grown fruit because you’re worried about the carb content won’t make you a morally better person, so why would eating it make you deserving of feeling guilty? Breaking the habit of these thoughts is a process that we can help with. There is a way to enjoy your favorite foods without having to feel guilty or distressed about it.
This Isn’t the Last Supper
Ok, maybe if you’re on your last night of the vacation it is technically your last supper of vacation. What I’m referring to here is the “Last Supper Mentality” which tells us that we won’t be eating these foods again for a very long time so we have to make the most of it by eating beyond physical comfort. This can also overlap with the “Clean Plate Club” mentality of having to finish everything in front of you. You may also experience similar feelings such as eating things “because they’re there” or continuing to eat when you’re full because the people you’re with are still eating. If you’re coming off of a period of dieting, whether it’s chronic dieting or a pre-vacation crash diet, you may also be in “vacation mode” and justifying binge eating behaviors because it’s vacation. Vacation mode is fine in moderation. It’s more than ok to sleep later than you usually do, have a drink at a time you normally wouldn’t, spend a little more on a meal out than you would in your city. Like anything else though, it’s about moderation. Vacation mode when applied to eating can play into the toxic nature of diet culture. Vacation mode can mean that because at home you restrict yourself to a point of borderline malnourishment, you should now binge eat all the foods that you don’t normally allow yourself to eat. You ignore nutrient dense options and instead eat an excessive amount of foods you’ve deemed “bad” because they’ve been villainized by diet culture. The result: feelings of physical discomfort in the short term, guilt and beating yourself up for enjoying your vacation, and another crash diet post vacation in an effort to compensate for what you’d eaten while on vacation. The problem with vacation mode isn’t that you’re enjoying the foods you love, it’s that it’s done in excess and paired with restriction and guilt before and/or after your trip.
The reality is that eating beyond your level of fullness doesn’t make the meal taste better. Having more food than your body wants in your stomach rather than still on the plate doesn’t make you less wasteful. Being physically uncomfortable at the end of the meal won’t make your vacation memories more enjoyable. In fact, if you’re vulnerable to feelings of guilt like we discussed above it may trigger those feelings and negatively impact your vacation experience.
The best way to avoid this is to go into meals with a mindful approach. This involves being mentally present with your meal, yourself and those around you. Choose a food from the menu that you want and you’ll ENJOY, but that also provides some nourishment you may not receive at other meals you’ve had that day (e.g. if you enjoyed a delicious pizza at lunch, having a high protein source as part of your dinner may leave you more satiated). When your meal comes, savor it. Experience each bite, chewing it and noticing the flavors. Put your fork down and engage in conversations about your vacation adventures with your company. Take a sip of the wine the waiter recommended to go with your meal. And, most importantly, check in on your own hunger cues. Your body knows better what your serving size should be, whether that’s more or less than what you were served.
If you struggle with recognizing hunger cues in your body, try using the intuitive eating hunger scale. In short, this scale goes from 1 to 10 with 1 being so famished that you’re shaky, 5 being totally neutral without hunger or fullness, and 10 being so full you feel physically ill. Ideally, you’d like to stay between a 3 (hungry, maybe some stomach growls, ready to eat) and a 7 (full, satisfied, no signs of physical discomfort). When we aren’t listening to ourselves, we can easily slip between meals into a 2 (moody, brain fog, fatigue) or finish a meal at a 9 (physically uncomfortable, slight nausea, beyond normal bloating). Before you go on your trip, start using the hunger scale at home to establish what 3 and 7s feel like in your body. The amount that will get you to each of those numbers may vary by situation and may be totally different than anyone else’s, and that’s ok. For more information on the hunger scale, how to use it, and the benefits that come from using it check out our hunger scale blog post!!
You’re Allowed to Relax
Finally, in our rat-race culture it can be hard to turn off. It can be hard to embrace that enjoyment isn’t something you have to go above and beyond to earn. Being on vacation is a time to embrace what you enjoy. If taking a break from your normal fitness routine and finding movement that helps you enjoy your destination is what you need, embrace it! If having a cocktail on the beach while you lay in the sun is what’s calling to you, cheers! Do you need to gently stretch or rest after walking around sights all day rather than go to the gym, sounds amazing! 7 days out of the 365 in a year will not be what defines your wellness journey. The memories you make will be something you take with you, so give yourself the chance to make them. And have fun! We’ll see you when you get back. And if you already found yourself struggling to achieve this balance, reach out for a 15-minute call when you get back to see if you can benefit from working with us to make your next vacation more enjoyable.
