So you’ve just come back from your holiday and now you’re feeling guilty about stuffing your face all week at the buffet. Perhaps you missed my last article about preventing weight gain on holiday and now you’re worried that you’ve gained too much weight.
I too have just come back off an incredible holiday to Mallorca and I certainly ate my weight in food every day.
As usual I stuffed myself with pancakes topped with bacon and maple syrup in the mornings and ate everything in sight in the evenings.
I’ve just weighed myself and I’ve gained approximately 2.5kg (5.5lbs). Oops!
Now most people’s initial response might be to crash diet for the next however many days, weeks or months. If you’re thinking the same thing I’m going to suggest that you don’t!
What You Think Has Happened vs. What’s Really Happened
Let’s say you have plucked up the courage to actually weight yourself and you find that you have gained several pounds. You’re immediate thinking might be that all that weight is fat weight, but it’s not.
That extra weight will be made up of three things; extra food weight, water weight and fat weight.
Due to the immense amount of food that you may have shoveled in over the last week or so your body will no doubt be in a slightly more inflamed state due to refined and processed foods and alcohol irritating your digestive system. This will cause your body to store more fluid around the tissues and could give you a slightly bloated look.
There will also be more food stored inside you and that alone will weigh more than the normal amount of food you’re used to eating.
Of course there is no doubt that you may have also gained fat too. But in reality it’s probably not as much as you think.
So What Should You Do?
Firstly don’t panic! You don’t need to crash diet or exercise for 2 hours a day.
Healthy weight loss is done over time and not in a matter of weeks. Therefore plan to lose a small amount of weight per week, consistently over a period of months.
The best place to start is to increase the amount of natural, unprocessed fruits and vegetables you eat. This will help by increasing the volume of food which will help to keep you feeling full and it will also increase the amount of nutrients you’re taking in.
Next, add in some good quality protein every day such as chicken, fish and red meats. Or if you’re vegetarian try eggs, nuts, seeds or dairy.
Exercise
Exercise helps you in so many ways so you should find something that you enjoy.
Movement will help you by increasing the blood flow around your body which will help reduce and swelling or puffiness you may have. Not only that but exercise will obviously use up more energy and thus help to burn the excess stored energy (fat).
It doesn’t matter what you do in the way of the type of exercise but what I will say is don’t go too hard to start with!
Start where your body is physically capable and build from there. The last thing you want to do is to start running 100m sprints if the most you’ve run up until now is to run for a bus! That would be a certain way to injure yourself!
Should You Avoid Anything?
If you’ve been drinking quite heavily while on holiday I would suggest you do your best to avoid alcohol for a while. For me that’s no problem as I don’t really drink unless I’m on holiday. If however you like to drink regularly at home this will certainly slow down your rate of weight loss.
Alcohol is calorifically quite high but will also put your liver under more strain and will lead to your liver becoming more fatty. If your liver is fatty it will have a harder time performing its usual functions such as detoxification.
In Summary
To quickly sum up what I’ve discussed here today, these are the take home points.
- Don’t Crash Diet
- Be Patient
- Increase Nutritious Food
- Increase Exercise
- Cut Out Alcohol
That’s all for today folks. I hope you all had a great holiday and let the post holiday weight loss fun begin!
Speak soon,
Ashley