How to Get Back on Track After Vacation Without Starting Over (Listen AFTER Vacation)

Vacations are meant to be enjoyed but coming home can sometimes leave you feeling like you need to "make up" for every indulgence. In this episode, I'm sharing exactly what to do when you return from a trip so you can get back into your healthy habits without guilt, restriction, or starting over.

If you've ever come home from vacation feeling bloated, sluggish, or frustrated with yourself, this episode will help you avoid the common mistake of overcompensating and instead focus on the habits that actually help you feel your best.

I'll walk you through the exact order of priorities I recommend when getting back into your normal routine, so you can regain momentum quickly and confidently.

In this episode, you'll learn:
• Why you should never try to "earn back" calories after vacation
• How to mentally transition from vacation mode back to everyday life
• The first habit to focus on when you get home
• Why getting back to regular meals matters more than eating less
• Why consistency beats perfection every time
• How to create a smooth return to your healthy lifestyle without feeling deprived

Remember: One vacation doesn't undo your progress. The goal isn't punishment, it's simply returning to the habits that help you feel strong, energized, and in control.

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Topics Covered: vacation weight gain, healthy habits, post-vacation routine, getting back on track, weight loss mindset, consistency, nutrition habits, hydration, exercise habits, healthy lifestyle, all-or-nothing thinking, vacation eating, sustainable weight loss, healthy routines, behavior change, wellness habits, healthy living

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another Healthy Huddle episode where I give you quick ideas for fast action. This is the Isn't She Powerful podcast. I am your host, Laura B Healthy, and I am so excited to have you here with me today. The most recent episode prior to this one is about vacation. I shared that I would be going on a vacation soon. I was on a cruise to the Bahamas. And before that, before going, there was a couple things that I did to set myself up for success in the in terms of my health and wellness, right? What could I do to make sure that I was feeling my best physically, mentally, emotionally before going on the trip? I shared that episode because this is the time of year where we're all going out and doing things. And the fact is we started a health and wellness journey at some point, probably because we were motivated by external factors such as looking a certain way on a certain date, on your wedding, on your trip that you were going on, on whatever special occasion it is that you were trying to look good for. Not all the time, but that's a big motivating factor for a lot of us. And with that being said, sometimes it ends up that we get a little bit off course right before the vacation because we end up feeling bad about the choices that we're gonna make. We end up beating ourselves up. So in the most recent episode, I shared some things that you could do before going on vacation to set yourself up for success. And in this quick episode, I want to speak to what you're gonna do when you get back from the vacation. Okay, so let's dig into it now. Welcome to the Isn't You Powerful Podcast. I'm your host, Laura B, health coach, educator, and founder of the Be Healthy Lifestyle. I'm here to bring you all of the health education and motivation so that you can sign off each week feeling equipped and empowered to tackle all of your health goals. Come along with me as I teach you the basics of healthy living so that you can have everyone in your life say, Isn't she powerful? I'm gonna say this once and probably many more times. I was gonna say, I'm gonna say this once and one time only, but that's probably not true. I'm gonna say it about 12 times during this episode. You're just gonna get right back into those healthy habits. Instead of trying to overcompensate, that's what so many of us do. Oh my gosh, I ate so much food while on vacation. I don't need to eat for a week. And so then we try to really restrict. We say, I'm not gonna eat any more bread, I'm not gonna eat any more desserts, I'm not gonna eat any cheese, and we let go completely on the opposite spectrum. That's the all or nothing mindset where on vacation you were all in. You were eating whatever, whenever, no boundaries, no rules, nothing. To then being back from vacation and having every boundary and every rule, and you're being super, super restrictive with what you're eating. Neither of those things are where we want to be. Neither of those things are healthy or sustainable. So in the previous episode, I talked about how to not be that all in person, how you're gonna create some boundaries, how you're gonna still have healthy habits on vacation, because I'm here to tell you when you have some boundaries with food and some semblance of a consistent schedule whenever it comes to what you eat, right? Like you're not going completely overboard and eating 12 desserts every single day and you know, snacking all day long and never drinking water, you are having some boundaries with what you're doing. You feel so much better on the vacation and you enjoy it so much more because there is nothing worse than being on a vacation and your stomach hurts or you feel tired, you feel icky. That sucks. None of us want to feel that way. But if you are going completely rogue and you're eating whatever, whenever, never drinking water, never doing anything to help take care of your body, you're gonna feel icky. And that's not what vacation's about. Yes, it is about enjoying the food and and and eating the things that you want to eat, but there has to be some semblance of a boundary with those foods so that you can feel good physically and feel like you are getting what you want out of the vacation in terms of the food as well. When you come back, instead of trying to overcompensate for everything that you did and say, I'm not gonna eat any of that anymore, instead, you're just gonna get right back into the healthy habits that you currently have. You're just gonna say, Okay, I'm gonna make sure that on the way home from the trip, I'm making a meal plan. This is what my husband and I did. We had a five-hour drive to the cruise port that we went on. And so on our way back, I said, Okay, we need to have that conversation. And he rolled his eyes at me, as we all do whenever it comes to meal planning, because even though it is a big piece of my job and it's something that I talk about and I say, you should do this every single week. It should be a part of what you do because not only does it help you eat healthy more consistently, it also makes it so much easier to save money and save time and save energy. It is a crucial piece of running a running a home, in my opinion. But that doesn't mean that we want to do it every single week. I still do do it every single week, but that doesn't mean that I want to do it every single week. So we were on the way home and I I looked at Shane, I said, you know what we need to do? We need to have that conversation. He rolled his eyes and he said, Okay, so we started talking about what do we want to have for this upcoming week. So that is the first thing that I want you to do. When you're on the way back home from your vacation, start thinking about what food do we want to have while you're in that travel mode still. You're either in the car, you're at the airport, you're on the train, however it is that you are traveling to and from this vacation. While you are on the way back, I want you to have that conversation either with yourself or with the person that you share meals with. And I want you to say, what are we gonna eat this week? Let's go go on, let's talk it out, let's think about this. It needs to be a non-negotiable every single week, but especially during the time of coming back from a vacation because it is super easy to say, I'm so tired, I don't know what we're gonna have, forget about it. We'll just order, take out this week. And now two weeks, one week of you being on vacation has turned into two weeks of eating food that you that don't align with your health goals, that don't make you feel good. So it is a really crucial piece of this process is making a meal plan on your way home. Then you're gonna grab groceries at some point. Maybe you order them to be picked up, maybe you order them to be delivered, maybe you take the time to go to the grocery store, whatever that looks like for you and your family, I don't care. I just care that the groceries get to your house. So after you have the meal plan, you're gonna make the grocery list, purchase the groceries, and then do a little bit of prep. What I did was I prepped some protein for my husband and I's lunches. I did not prep the protein for my breakfast. I did not do anything other than prepping the protein for our lunches. That was just the thing that I knew. If I don't do this today, if I don't do this right now, it's not gonna get done. And then I'm gonna end up in a bad situation where I'm just gonna choose junk food or we're gonna be hungry, and I don't want either of those things to happen. So I made sure that I took 15 minutes. It took me 15 minutes to prep our protein for our lunches this week. And then once that was done, I was like, I can handle the rest during the week. Now, the next morning I woke up and I made my breakfast and I just went ahead and prepped what I needed for the upcoming weeks or for the upcoming days so that I didn't have to do it every single morning, but I also wasn't meal prepping a ton on that first day, right? So I spread out my meal prep a little bit, but prepping what you can takes a lot of the load off of having to cook multiple meals every single day or going to a fast food restaurant, hitting the drive-thru, getting what you can, because nobody wants to be in that situation either. Not only is it far more expensive, those foods just don't make us feel good, and those aren't the choices we want to be making on a consistent routine basis. So you're gonna have your meal plan, you're gonna get your groceries, you're gonna prep just a little bit, prep what you can, and make sure that whenever you are doing this, you are prepping a protein and a vegetable. I say that because those are the things that we're most likely to skip on if we need to. It's pretty easy for us to find a carb source, and carbs 100% should be a part of your meals. You should be eating those things. And I like I just said at the beginning of this, I know that so many times we want to say, I'm not allowed to eat that. We're going on a stricter diet, I'm not eating that because of everything that I just did on this vacation. You are not going to live that way. You're not going to take yourself in that complete 180 from vacation. You are still going to be eating carbohydrates because those are crucial for your energy levels. If you don't eat carbohydrates, you don't have energy. So you must do that. But vegetables and protein are easier or harder things for us to eat consistently if we don't have them readily available for us. So when you're making the meal plan, either make a meal plan that includes the vegetables and protein or take it a step further and make the meal plan and then prep some of those things as well. And then finally, the thing that is 100% necessary as you're coming back from vacation is to speak kindly to yourself. It's really easy for us to start grabbing our fat again and overanalyzing the photos that happened while we were on the trip and feeling bad about the choices that we made. And now you start saying really mean things to yourself when you look in the mirror or when you're getting dressed in the morning. We're not doing that anymore. Not now, not ever. That is a thing of the past. We need to speak kindly to your to ourselves because you are never, you're never going to be able to hate your body into a body that you love. If you try to approach your health and wellness journey from a place of hatred, you will never get to the point of loving your body. You have to love it along the way. It's like if you were like you had a crush on a boy in middle school and you tried to beat him up so that he would like you. Nobody's gonna like somebody who's beating them up. So you aren't gonna like yourself if you're beating yourself up either, okay? So you're going to speak kindly to yourself. You're gonna say, thank you so much, body, for keeping me healthy and allowing me to really enjoy this vacation. Thank you so much for allowing me to go play that mini putt-putt game, for me to climb that mountain, for me to go lay on the beach. Thank you so much for being so strong and so healthy and all of these things. You're gonna compliment your body, you're gonna be thankful for your body, you're gonna recognize what it does well for you. And then every single time, if you're if you're on a weight loss journey, every single time you see the scale go down, even by point one points, right? Every time you see it go down, you're gonna say, Thank you so much, body, for getting rid of what we don't need right now. Okay, so I want you to practice speaking super kindly to yourself and being very intentional with the words that you use when you're speaking to yourself. Before you go, I have one ask for you. If this series, this little mini series of what to do before vacation and what to do after vacation was beneficial to you, I ask that you share it with somebody. Share it with somebody who you know is going on a vacation soon that you know needs to hear something that's in this episode or the previous episode or just in this podcast in general. Share it with somebody. It's the best way to help the show grow, and I would appreciate it more than you will ever know. Thank you so much for being here. Clicking play on this episode, subscribing to the show, leaving a rating and review. All of those things are very helpful to me, and they make me smile and make me so very happy. So thank you for that. I can't wait to see you again in another episode. And until then, you know what? Never forget how powerful you are. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. And always remember the more you know, the more you grow.