How To Enjoy Your Holiday Without Killing Your Hard Work....

It's that time of year again when your hard-earned vacation is just around the corner and you’ve been working hard on your fitness and body composition for the last 6 months (or maybe even longer). While you want to have fun on holiday, you also don’t want to come back heavier, pudgy or sluggish, or feeling like you’ve gone back two months in your exercise routine. Or worse still, feeling like you need a holiday to get over the last holiday.

As a Strength & Conditioning Coach & Naturopath in Hong Kong, here’s my advice as to how you can have it all:

-Get in the best shape you can possibly be before you go away; the discipline that got you there will carry over into your holiday

-Exercise early every day before your family or friends wake up. Go to the gym, go for a walk/ run/ swim. Doing a spot of exercise early in the morning means that you won’t interrupt the family’s plans if they want to go sightseeing, you’ll fire up your metabolism and you’re also likely to make healthier choices throughout the day.

-Build activity in throughout the day with the family; that could be a walk, hike, bike, swim, snorkel, kayak or something else, getting active is a great fun way to spend time with your loved ones. You’ll burn energy, have fun, use your muscles and keep that metabolism high.

-Get enough sleep- most of us are sleep deprived, so get to bed early. If you’ve been busy during the day you’ll likely be tired anyway, so snuggle up nice and early so you can get up early (see above).

-Eat well- explore the local delicacies, but skip the crap, don’t skip the ice cream if you want it and if it’s amazing ice cream- you are on holiday after all. Sometimes eating more (but better) can be a good thing for your body as well. Focus on eating good tasty nutrient dense food rather than cakes and Danish pastries at breakfast. Make sure you get a good portion of protein in at every meal.

-Rein in the booze- there will likely be plenty of opportunities to drink alcohol, however who wants to feel rubbish or less than the next day- skip day drinking and keep booze drinking to two drinks per evening max. Booze is the most likely culprit when it comes to putting on weight, feeling puffy and sluggish, so take it easy.

-Rest- often we jam pack our holidays but sometimes it’s good for us to just rest, think and be

-Have fun, don’t stress- we have enough stress in everyday life. It’s amazing how much weight people lose sometimes just by getting rid of stress.

-Use your holiday as the opportunity to do different things; focus on doing fun things, stretching your comfort zones in the process.

Then….Get Back Into It When You Get Back

Don’t waste a minute…get back into your normal fitness and eating routine the very next day. Maybe even experiment with making your favourite holiday dishes.

Procrastinating will mean that two months pass by without even noticing.

If you do all the above, you're unlikely to put on much if any weight or lose any strength. You are unlikely to develop in strength and fitness, but that's not the goal here, the goal is to pick up where you left off when you get home, bouyed up by the motivation of having had a rest.

And if you need help to push your helath and fitness forward or you need extra motivation, drop me a line!

Ally van de Pol is a Strength & Conditioning Coach, PPSC Pain Free Performance Coach, PPSC Pain Free Knees Specialist, Senior Exercise Specialist, Health & Wellness Coach, Certified Naturopath, Certified Iridologist, Certified Healing Diets Coach, Certified Herbal Medicine Therapist