Does your exercise and diet get thrown off during and after a vacation? Mine usually does too!
I’m one of those people who will sit there and tell you that while on vacation there’s lots of exercises you can do, there’s lots of healthy menu options at restaurants and you don’t need that third or fourth (or 10th) beer and then goes full tilt on the beer and cheesecake while on vacation myself. I may hit the gym a few times, depending on my schedule, but I usually eat and drink what I want, when I want.
I just did a four day stint touring around Scotland. It was AMAZING!!! We arrived in Glasgow Friday morning and checked in to our hotel around 11 am after travelling for 6 hours (subways, trains and planes take time). Once we were checked in and were settled, we went down to hotel bar and grabbed a pint each of some beautiful Scottish beer. I had a pint of Belhaven Best and Gina had a pint of Tennent’s, they were very differnt beers but they were both deeeelish! We decided then and there that we weren’t going to worry about what we ate or drank for the next four days because we work so hard at it normally and we were on vacation. This was immediately followed up with a few more beers and some food.
When eating out at a restaurant, I usually don’t “mind” paying the extra $2 most places charge to upgrade (I use that term losely) to a salad from fries, but once again, we decided not to bother worrying about it on vacation and that we were going eat our fries, and man did we eat fries! The other thing we decided to do was have desert with our meals. I never ever order desert. It’s mainly because I’m a gorger and don’t know how to say no when there’s a cheesecake in front of me. That’s right, I said a cheeseCAKE, not a piece of cheesecake. I’ve been known to pound back an entire cheesecake from time to time. My stomach and guts say no, but my mouth just says go.
After having a few pints of beer and some very gross and very greasy bar food, we decided it was time to go out and visit the city of Glasgow and have an actual good Scottish meal.
The meal of highland wild game and true Scottish Malt Whisky was amazing!! I had highland beef and Gina had lamb. We filled our bellies with a some great food and booze and called it a night as we were on to the Highlands of Scotland early Saturday morning.
We spent the next two days touring the Highlands, which is one of my dreams come true. My true dream is to do it on a motorcycle, but that will be be the next time we’re in the Highlands (yes, I’m going back!). We booked a tour with a fantastic company that has a stunning Mercedes 16 passenger van for our tour. Seeing as we didn’t know where the hell we were going, we thought this to be best, and we were right!
The only thing that sucked was that we were relying on the drivers for the when and where we stopped for food and snacks. We weren’t prepared for this at all. If you’re looking to do your vacationing in healthy fashion, these types of things are what you need to plan for. Make sure that you have packed snacks and ask questions about restaurants you’ll be stopping at. Thankfully for us, we didn’t care about our vacation being healthy and we ate everything we could get our hands on.
I did have an amazing wild venison burger and a fantastic salad at a place called the Real Food Cafe in Tyndrum that I would say was the only healthy meal I had the entire trip and I thouroughly enjoyed it. If you’re ever up that way, I’d say check them out!
Over the four days we were in Scotland we spent 28 of our 84 hours travelling and the rest eating, drinking and sleeping. Today is the first day we’re back to our normal schedule and our bodies are kind of hating us right now. I had cheesecake in every city, town or village I was in and I’m glad I did, but I won’t be doing that again for a while… Probably not until November anyway, when we go to Rome for four days.
So far today, I’ve already gone for a light run, had a smoothie, a salad and a sandwich for lunch, and some yogurt and another sandwich for a snack and my body is so confused, it doens’t know what’s going on. I’m going to eat clean and have no beer for the next two weeks to give my body a bit of a break and see how I feel. I can’t wait to hit the gym today and play volleyball tonight.
So, are you one of those people who tries to stay healthy on their vacation or do you go balls out like we just did?