Post-Holiday Shock: How to Cope With Stepping Onto the Scales

Now, a holiday is a way to relax and wind down, however, what my weight-loss clients tell me is that they dread stepping on the scales on their return!

Well don't, holidays are for enjoying, they are for relaxing with family and friends, eating out and letting your hair down.  

What is the worst that can happen? weight gain!! 

But is this really something to stress about? 

Your journey is not about dread and fear over the effects of going on holiday or a family celebration but about life balance. When we go on holiday valuable lessons are learnt that will help a deeper level of understanding and ultimately help you navigate your way to success however long it takes. 

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 The three things that can happen when you step on the scales: 

• Weight gain

• Weight loss

• Weight remains the same

Whatever the result each one helps you understand more about yourself, your self control and commitment to reaching your health and fitness goals. 

Allow this journey to be more than just weight loss every week and more to do with making choices.  

If you gain weight its not the end of the world its just showing you that you have relaxed your routine and the consequences of eating bread with every meal, drinking more wine and snacking more frequently have added up to more calories going in than your body requires so it stores it.

If you lose weight hopefully it’s not because you've got a dickie tummy or that you have reluctantly avoided all the foods you love! but more a case of being aware not to over indulge and with increased activity you are continuing to have a calorie deficit. Not having temptation around like you do at home ( biscuits chocolate and crisps) and increasing protein breakfasts with hearty salad based lunch is often all that is required to continue to lose weight.

If you stay the same this shows that you have got what it takes to balance intake with exercise....this is great news and a positive future indication that once you get to your goal you will easily maintain.

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What will you do differently next time? For some, you won't change your holiday habits, but on your return will go back to using the same nutritional and exercise strategies that helped you lose weight in the first place. Like using myfitnesspal for monitoring your daily food intake or by immediately cutting out all snacks. Or for some a combination of increasing daily activity getting in your 10K steps a day and nutritional changes.

Whatever you adopt by committing to getting back on track within 2 weeks the extra weight gained will be lost.  

For others it's more a case of knowing what to avoid on subsequent holidays i.e. be relaxed one day sampling the local ice-cream but the following day saying no to the bread at the dinner  table, as this will create a balanced affect and offset weight gain.  

So you can see holidays are not to be dreaded, the scales will show one of these three results and whatever the result I want you to learn from it.

Throw guilt out of the window and focus on getting the BALANCE right.  

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