When you’re on vacation, all bets are off.
After working hard all year, the freedom of doing whatever you want is intoxicating. You can go where you want, drink when you want, and all your ridiculous binging is excused because, hey, you’re on vacation – it’s all apart of the experience, right?
Sure, that’s fine (encouraged, actually!), if your vacation only lasts a week. But when you move overseas and keep this vacation mindset for eight or more weeks, it really starts to take a toll.
I’ve always struggled to avoid deliciously wonderful, yet horrible-for-you foods anyway, and throwing in this mentality that’s pushing me to eat everything in sight has proven to be a losing battle with food.
When you’re in a new country, you want to experience everything, and healthy food and fitness are put way on the back burner. I mean, you have better things to do than worry about your waistline … Like, I don’t know, see the world?
Needless to say, as hard as you wish and as hard as you try, the feeding frenzy is taken to a whole new level while travelling abroad. And here’s how it goes:
Before travelling abroad, you want to look your absolute best, and your commitment level couldn’t be higher.
Working Out
Once you’ve arrived, you’re so overwhelmed with everything you want to do and see, you have zero time to even think about food.
Excited Baby
Plus, you’re doing so much walking around while sightseeing, you’re actually LOSING weight.
But of course, that doesn’t last long, and soon you dive head first into all the local cuisine.
After all, it’s all about the cultural experience, right?
So you eat,
And eat,
And drink,
Day drink
And eat.
To the point where you consume 10 times more than a normal human being.
Suddenly, that beautiful, six-packed beach body you worked so hard for has transformed into a blob, Sausage
Making you extremely self-conscious about your weight.
None of your clothes fit anymore,
You’re too stubborn (and broke) to buy new ones,
So you tell yourself to get back on the fitness track!
But between work and sightseeing, you’re simply too exhausted to work out.
So then you think, “Maybe I’ll start eating less.”
“Surely I can live without all that yummy food, right?”
“It’s not like I’m addicted or anything.”
And when that doesn’t work, you rationalize:
You don’t need to be skinny.
You’re a traveller on the road experiencing life.
You don’t care about a few extra pounds.
Besides, why would you ever need to look “better”?
It would totally be unfair to everyone else.
So you give up and curl into bed with some Netflix and lots of Swiss chocolates.
Because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t turn your back on the things that have served you so well for so long.
You are not alone fellow travellers – the struggle is real.
Live large, prosper and enjoy yourself !!
Embrace the food troubles when travelling