You remember those days, right?
You go on vacation and throw all semblance of weight management out the window? After all, you are on vacation and you want to enjoy eating out, socializing with family over good food, desserts and snacks…..vacation is NOT the time to diet!
With Intermittent Fasting, that mindset is out the window:
~After all, you can eat whatever you want…. (1) It makes you feel good; (2) It helps you reach your goals; (3) It is food you enjoy
~Short fasting windows are easy on vacation
~Fasting 14-18 hours on vacation keeps you from feeling bloated and tired every day (Hate that vacay overeating feeling while you’re trying to have fun!)
~Fasting (even 16 hours) on vacation can give you the energy you need to keep up with all the fun and activity on vacation
~And yes, you can still enjoy whatever foods you want on vacation #eatanythingnoteverything
Hubby and I just got back from 12 days out of 14 of business trips, family sight seeing in Niagara Falls, and some R and R…..
We averaged 17 fasting hours a day (in part, thanks to two longer fasts of 23 hours a day for the two days between trips). We ate 2MAD (two meals a day) most of the time with snacks. Unless you are eating Keto, most people will gain weight on two meals a day and snacks (with no restrictions). We both did. Actually, we “gained” eight pounds each over the two weeks.
Let’s review what weight gain means before I tell you how amazing IF is on vacations (and for losing vacay weight FAST when you return!).
There is a lot of talk about how calories do not matter in weight loss or weight gain. Some even say there is no hormone related to calories—-that it has no bearing on weight loss.
Hmmm….while there are many factors that come in to play in weight loss, calories are part of them. Our bodies run on kilocalories….they are what we burn to live. While it is not as simplified as CO/CI (Calories In/Calories Out) people have you believe….
It is also not completely separated from calories!
This is why people on reduced calorie diets (yes, even on Biggest Loser) lose weight. This is why people who are starved lose weight. They made a huge calorie deficit from their bodies’ needs. And Wallah! They lost weight.
Obviously, people can’t keep weight off when they go to those low calorie numbers since people can’t stand to eat that little….but that is a different matter than weight loss—reducing calories usually does result in weight loss.
(This is why I lost 100 pounds 25 years ago…..HUGE calorie deficits when I got down to 800 calories a day!)
Here is a picture of us on our trip—-just after we had our 60 pound loss together from five months of IF. Slow and steady wins the race!
There are many other factors that come into play, such as metabolism, whether your body is burning fat or glycogen, exercise, muscle mass, etc. But mathematically, a pound is 3500 calories.
Thus, Ray and I didn’t really gain 8 pounds each in two weeks.
(That would mean that we ate like 2,000 calories per day more than our bodies needed—-so if I can maintain at 2,000 calories {not lose}, then I would have had to have eaten 4,000 calories per day to gain that weight, which I don’t think I could do! That is a ton of food!)
So……suffice it to say that if you gain 8 pounds in two weeks, it probably isn’t all real weight gain. And if you lose 8 pounds in two weeks, it probably isn’t all real weight loss. Agree?
However, Daily IF of even 16 hours a day made me feel much better than if I had eaten all evening and again first thing in the morning. #chooseyourspecialscarefully
And when we returned, I lost just under 8 pounds within three days of 19:5 and watching carbs a little (not Keto). (Obviously, not all real weight loss since it wasn’t all real weight gain!)
Such a difference!
How many times have we gone on vacation and come home to a weight gain that we dealt with for weeks upon returning?
Why? Because we can’t muster the courage to eat cottage cheese and chicken breast for two or three weeks to take that weight off again.
I came home and did my normal fasting for three days—and ate chicken with skin, mashed potatoes, salad with bacon, green beans, ham sandwiches, apples, sugar free peanut butter whip, sugar free cherry delight, cashews, pecans, and M and M’s—-and lost the weight immediately (whatever was real or wasn’t of that weight gain).
So I felt amazing on the trip. Enjoyed some awesome restaurants and special treats. Kept fasting hours that were not “weight loss hours”—but weren’t permanent weight gain hours either. And came home to lose it immediately on my normal protocol.
I love IF!
It is truly doable for life!
