Hey all, I’m headed on vacation in July (7/20 through 7/23). I am concerned about how to manage my drinking and eating while on vacation with friends who love to drink and eat. I used to drink and eat bar food all the time but I barely drink at all anymore and I’m rarely eating bar food. I almost dread the vacation now because I don’t want to derail my diet but time and money have aligned to make this vacation possible with some old friends and I haven’t been on a trip in a very long time so I’m going. Any tips?
Four days isn’t going to destroy you. If healthy options present themselves while you are out then take advantage. Otherwise, enjoy yourself.
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Go have fun. Enjoy the break from the diet. Sometimes a break can be a very good and healthy thing mentally speaking, especially if you are doing this thing long term. A couple of days isn’t going to kill you.
Unless your weight loss is following an extremely strict timeline (like for a meet) a four day vacation is nothing to stress about. For a bit of perspective, if you go an average of 1000 calories above maintenance per day (pretty severe) per day of a four day vacation, one week of 500 calorie per day (pretty mild) deficit would pretty much negate that. The important thing to go back to the good habits you developed when you come home.
To echo Bryan, a reasonable strategy is probably to have light breakfasts and lunches and let yourself indulge a bit for supper when you’re more likely to have alcohol and be in a convivial environment.
Thanks guys, I’ll try to relax and enjoy myself! I think once I get there and have some wings and a few beers I’ll be alright. 
First I hope you have an amazing vacation!!! I hope that we can relieve some of the anxiety you are feeling about your upcoming holiday travel. Being out with our friends can be amazing without drinking and without eating all the bar food. We can partake without straying too much, maybe have a burger or grilled chicken without fries and diet soda or seltzer water instead of a beer, if pressured hold tight and graciously offer to be the DD (this might even make you their hero) OR you can say you just had a test from 23 and me done and you found out 3.567% of your genetics might be allergic to alcohol and you don’t want to risk it;). Remember it does not have to be all or nothing, there is always a happy medium. Remember anything you gain is hard won taking back off. YOU GOT THIS!!!
You can even write out a plan and strategies you can use for the trip that alines with your overall health goal. You can carry the list with you and read it often. This will reduce anxiety, help you stay in control and give a well thought out plan for your trip so you don’t have to make in the moment emotional decisions about food and drink. Depending how much time you want to put into it, you can even make a flow chart as to what to do in certain situations, how you may feel and what action to do next depending on your thoughts and feelings. I think you can have a great time, enjoy the bar and hanging out with your friends all while keeping your macro’s reasonable. HAVE A FANTASTIC TIME!!!
My general tips and tricks for traveling, especially when visiting friends who like to eat a lot of highly palatable food, and drinks are the following:
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Do the necessary research to find a good gym when you’re traveling, and make a plan to get your work in. There’s really no excuse, as you have plenty of notice. Worst case this might mean modification to your program to accommodate a lack of equipment. That’s part of the deal too.
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Eliminate as much fat as possible from every meal you can. This will make all of the “non-party-time” meals very boring, but that’s ok, because you’re saving your “fun” macros for later. And you’re doing this nearly every day, so the reward is coming soon enough.
1a. Partition more protein into these boring meals. You probably need to limit the carbs a bit here as well, just because bar food is going to tend to be on the higher on fat and carbs. And carbs will probably serve as your allowance for drinks. Even bar food meals should trigger MPS though, so you don’t have to go crazy with the protein partitioning.
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Hopefully you’re getting all of your raining in. Try to not skip any training, if you really don’t have to. If you’re going to skip, maybe skip your secondary supplemental movements only. But keep your frequency the same, or as high as possible. Don’t be afraid to compress your training in sub-optimal ways. i.e. if you’re used to training Mon, Wed, Fri – know that it’s ok to train Mon, Tue, Wed, and still get a ton of gainzZz. Same goes for compressing the sets intra-workout. Shorten the rest if you have to, warmup the next movement while your finishing the current one, do what must be done. The loads may go down, but the relative intensity will still be on target. RPE-baby! This is WAAAYYY better than skipping work. And if the loads DO go down (not that they will!), know that this doesn’t mean you’re getting weaker. It just means your carrying more fatigue at that moment – not a bad thing at ALL!
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Beer is just a tough one man. More than 1 beer doesn’t really work on a diet. It’s highly variable and tough to track accurately, unless it’s a very well known national brand, but craft-anything is gonna be tough. I would suggest you stick to plain liquor drinks or dry wine. Sip them slow, you will feel the effects faster, and you probably won’t need to drink as many calories to feel like you’re having a good time. You want to be able to eat your calories, in order to feel more satiated.
You may be looking for folks to give you permission to break the diet and training. But I won’t do that :). I think you’ll feel loads better if you stick to the plan as closely as possible – especially with the training! Training hungover still gets you gainzZz brother!
Even if you miss dietary compliance 2 or 3 days out of the week, that’s still pretty good. But I would say it’s a bigger deal to miss training sessions.
Enjoy yourself AND work hard. You can do both!
Good luck,
Shawn
Seriously, unless you’re a recovering alcoholic or a professional athlete competing on the 24th, or both, is it really worth fretting over?
A hobbyist lifter strategizing portion sizes and beers for the duration of basically a long weekend is crossing from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Dont stress over it. Remember, stress raises cortisol levels, which in turn lowers testosterone, an we all know where that means…
Drink some beers, eat some wings and relax!
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I’ve been cutting for 3 months. I went on 2 vacations in that time. The first one I lost 9 lbs in a week. The second one I lost 4 lbs in 5 days. Literally 80% of my weight lost was from vacations where I didn’t track a damn macro.
I’m not saying you’re going to lose weight but it’s definitely something you shouldn’t stress over. Exercise self control and all – but mostly just enjoy yourself. I don’t mind Miller Lite or Guinness so I just have 1-2 of those when out. If there’s an affordable lean meat on the menu I order that. If something sounds obviously fatty I avoid it. When it’s obvious I way under ate my protein I stop at a CVS and buy their brand turkey jerky and/or the lowest fat protein milk to cap off my day.
I also perform best under the bar on vacation. Stress is a freakin’ gainzZz killer.
Keep in mind JurisSquatter that individual experiences are just that, individual. But FWIW, I’ve been getting nutrition and 1-on-1 training from a BBM coach for the last 64 weeks. The only time I was ever told to not track, and to really not care about my macros, was Thanksgiving. 1 DAY, in over a year.
To put it another way, learning to track and be as close to compliant as possible, in all social situations, IS part of the learning process. My recommendation is that you embrace this opportunity to use your hard earned skills.
Everyone wants to talk about stress being a gainzZz killer. But we all have stress, don’t worry about it. You’re still on vacation either way, you’re still sleeping more. Stress will be low no matter what.
If we we’re to rank training, sleep, food, and “reducing stress” (whatever that means) in order of most gainzZzian to least gainzZian, I think everyone would put reducing stress at the bottom of that list. And if not, I would ask “why?”.
Worrying about maybe being too stressed could be one of the most stress-adding things you could do! (Sounds good right? Totally just made that up.)
Shawn
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