Holidays
Funnily enough, I actually began developing Appetite Retraining on holiday in the South of France.
It was the summer of 2011, and I’d decided only the previous week to see whether I could devise a way of losing weight that didn’t involve dieting.
My aim was to draw on everything I knew about psychology (which was quite a bit – I had three degrees in psychology and 22 years’ experience under my belt as a Clinical Psychologist at this point), to lose a stone myself.
So the holiday morphed into an experiment on my own eating, with certain non-negotiables.
My weight loss foods were going to have to include French cheese, baguettes, pains aux raisins and chilled rose wine (my version of the Mediterranean Diet), because as well as the sun and the sea, that’s what I was going on holiday for.
So when I’m talking about avoiding holiday weight gain, I’m not talking about holiday dieting.
The opposite in fact – maxing out on the pleasure of eating – by attending to quality over quantity, and addressing specific challenges that crop up when we’re away from home.
Holiday weight gain isn’t inevitable
You gain weight on holiday because you’re doing things you don’t usually do.
That’s exactly the point of the holiday – a change of pace and a change of scene – so you might like to know that weight gain is not inevitable, even whilst you’re soaking up the sun or partying like it’s 1999.
Want to know how you can still LOVE your time away, maximising the pleasure whilst minimising the weight gain?
It will help to start with a bit of reflection.
Two questions
Question 1
The first thing to ask yourself is, does it matter to you if you gain a few pounds on holiday?
You’ll know the answer from experience – will you work best relaxing your usual patterns and then compensating when you get home? If this is you, then it will work fine for you to go with the flow when you’re away and get back on track once you’re back home.
Or will the compensation probably not happen, in which case, how will you feel at the end of your holiday?
If it matters to you not to gain weight whilst you’re away, move on to Question 2.
Question 2
The second thing is, what are the specific situations that lead you to overindulge?
Being specific about the triggers for overeating means you can identify the particular holiday eating habits that cause you trouble, and then address them very specifically.
Examples might be
- The all-you-can-eat buffet
- Meals out
- Your all-inclusive package
- Social eating situations
Make your plan
To gain confidence and a sense of greater control around eating whilst you’re away, you can plan for these specific situational challenges.
You may notice what makes them difficult – is it that you feel pressure from others around eating, experience FOMO, or find that your intentions vanish into thin air when the alcohol starts to flow?
Whatever it is, once you are specific about what drives you to eat in a way that you’ll regret, you can focus in on just that and not worry about the rest of your eating.
This approach really works: Bethan’s holiday experience
Bethan was keen to try out the approach as she knew from experience, that holidays had always meant undoing any progress she had made around eating.
One of her triggers for overeating was the hotel buffet, so we agreed a very simple intention for her.
I got an email from her just after she arrived home, to let me know how it had gone…
“A big help was your advice to never go for seconds at the buffet as our hotel had a huge yummy buffet…so that was a small change to my behaviour but when I got home I’d only gained a small amount rather than my usual half stone!”
This was great to hear, and I wanted to double check whether she’d felt cheated by doing this, so I replied,
“Lovely to hear this! Did this change in any way diminish the pleasure you got from food whilst you were away?”
The email that pinged straight back said,
“No, I think it made me appreciate my choices, and take the time to enjoy them. Rather than chasing after yet another food item to satisfy a restless craving for more. Usually at a buffet I rush from one food to another so I don’t ‘miss’ anything! I had a little tussle mentally, my ‘why not enjoy it all while I am on holiday’ versus “don’t undo all your good work’…I wasn’t perfect but I was much more aware”
If you’d like my professional help
This approach is very individualised, and if you want help to analyse your own eating patterns, you can apply for a free Eating Pattern Analysis call with me.
To apply, click on this link: