Well... that was a much longer gap than I had intended between posts. I knew I was going out of town for about a week but it ended up being 3 weeks, I went to visit my maternal grandparents in Upstate New York (believe it or not more than 99% of New York is NOT New York City, only 0.858% of the state is NYC. Yes, I did the math, thank goodness for calculators.) and while I was there my grandfather passed away.
I'll get to the actual elaboration of tip #2 from my first post later but I want to make a note about trips and vacations in reference to weight loss and fitness. Holy cannoli it is hard to stay on track when on vacation or out of town. Granted it depends where you are visiting, for instance, when I visited South Korea in March 2017 I lost 6 pounds while I was there, the food was healthier and I did a TON of walking when we were in Seoul, from our hotel down to subways, back up, and from the subway stations to whatever the destination was, back to the station, down, wash, rinse, repeat. Lots of walking. However once we went to visit friends outside of Seoul and when we went to Jeju Island we had cars available since public transportation was a little more sparse and my step count went WAY down so I ended up having to walk in place to get my steps in. I'll get back to steps once I get into tip #2.
Anyway, Korea was easy for me to keep to my diet and get activity in. This trip to New York was another story. I had to walk in place SO much, and... food. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't go crazy or anything but I also didn't eat as well as I would have had I been at home and for a few reasons. First of all I didn't have constant access to a kitchen (and if I did I didn't want to make a mess of someone's kitchen, even if I tried to clean my mess I knew I wouldn't be able to remember where everything goes) so there was a lot of eating out, which I did do my best to find healthier and more long lasting and filling things (like eggs) on the menus but it is still not the same as eating at home and knowing exactly what I am consuming. I prefer to start my day off with eggs, I'll get into that when I eventually get to tips 5 and 6, but sometimes I couldn't get to food until late lunchtime.
Also, on this trip we were going, and going, and going, but a lot of the going was 20+ minute drives to three or so townships over and back and forth. So a lot of time was spent in the car because it wasn't feasible to walk. When my grandfather was in hospice it was in Corning NY, which was about 23 minutes from their home, but Corning does have a nice downtown strip so my mom and I were able to walk from his nursing home to the strip and back to get our steps in, if I drove myself I would park farther away from where I was going so I could get extra steps in. I tried to take the stairs as much as possible but at the nursing home they had the stairways locked so residents couldn't hurt themselves (I know that locking the stairs sounds dangerous in case of a fire but I believe it unlocks automatically in an emergency situation like that. That particular nursing home was very nice.) and I didn't want to bother the receptionist to constantly let me into the stairway.
Sometimes I would walk around my Grandma's neighborhood, on one occasion my cousins and I wanted some *gasp* ice cream so I convinced them to walk to the ice cream place and back, that was a scenic and fun 30 minutes there and 30 back! I got a small ice cream and didn't feel so guilty about eating it. One day I convinced my cousins to join me on a trip to Watkins Glen and a walk up the gorge and then back down one of the other trails. On another day it was rainy so I borrowed my baby cousin (she is 11) and we went to the mall and walked around there to get steps in.
In the end I managed to not gain any weight on my trip, I didn't lose any either though, but I was just thankful I didn't gain. I did my best to stay within my caloric deficit or at LEAST within maintenance, and I did get all of my steps in every single day.
SO! My advice: enjoy your trip/vacation, don't go crazy gorging yourself but don't stress yourself out trying to stick to your diet or fitness routine either. Maybe eat the thing you really want but just have a smaller portion and think of ways to get a little extra activity in, like taking the stairs or parking farther away from the actual destination. Take advantage of a shopping area by taking a walk down the strip. Do some sightseeing via walking, kill two birds with one stone. Be creative but don't ruin your break from the daily by driving yourself nuts.
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