This post is a follow-up to my previous posts on Amusement Park Vacation and a Cruise Vacation. Our most recent vacation combined both a 3 day Amusement Park vacation followed by a 7 day cruise.

I suggest you read those previous posts on many of the strategies I employ to survive travel and those types of vacations. The purpose of this post was that I gained a lot more weight than anticipated, so I want to detail why this was, but more importantly to explain how to recover.

On this vacation I visited a Theme park in a different location, but run by the same Operator as last time. I also traveled on a cruise run by the same operator as last time, but on a different boat, from a different port and with a different itinerary.

Without rehashing the strategies I posted in my previous articles, which I followed again exactly, the reason I believe I gained more weight than anticipated was due to the fact that some food options I had expected to work for me, were not available.

I expected to benefit from having a salad and holding the dressing for diners at the park. I found that I could not find the same quality of salads, if at all and the one I did find, I could not opt for no dressing. So even when I was able to get a salad for dinner, it had inflammatory dressing. A couple other meals I was able to have a burrito loaded with some veggies, but still a little higher in carbs than I would have liked, not to mention the inflammatory oils. On another couple occasions there was no good option, so I chose to eat pizza (at least it is something that tastes good).

So, why didn’t I fast more to get around this? I was already doing a 12-14 hour fast, and with all the activity of walking around a huge theme park, I simply have not trained my body enough yet to do a 24 hour or longer fast with that amount of activity.

Once I got onto the cruise boat, I was anticipating following the same protocol as I had adopted last year. However, I found the menus/ food options to be of poorer quality. I could only occasionally get a decent salad at dinner, but my intent for lunch to have a large salad with nutritious lettuce, nuts and guacamole as my dressing did not materialize. I was told repeatedly that the guacamole or avocados were out and romaine was all there was. This left me trying to cobble a meal from the buffet. The veggies were often sautéed in inflammatory oils and the protein sources were nearly always smothered in a suspect sauce.

Travel is inflammatory on your body, being out of your routine confuses your body, so a 4 to 5 pound weight gain from inflammation was what I was expecting, NOT 11 pounds. I really chalk it up to these seemingly slight variances that can really add up over a week plus. This is why I do not believe in cheat meals or cheat weekends as it does not take long for you to feel the effects and each meal or day compounds on the previous.

So how did I get back to my pre-trip weight in 6 days? It may sound simple, but it really is. I just got back into my routine. I got adequate sleep & rest and I stayed hydrated. I was back into my fasting protocol and back to eating the low inflammatory foods that I usually do. I did not do more exercise or purposely restrict calories or anything silly like that. I simply reduced the inflammation in my body, got back to my homeostasis and all is back to normal.

If you go into a trip like this with the best intensions and plan ahead a little bit, using some or all of the strategies I have shared, you too can eliminate excessive weight gain and recover quickly when you get home.

These are all things I work with my clients on, when assisting them with building their healthy lifestyle. If you would like to discuss further, reach out and let’s have a conversation.