This past Mental Health Week vacation taught me a lot about my health and fitness journey. There are a lot of pitfalls that come along with going on vacation and navigating them can and will be tough.
For starters, we went to an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica (Moon Palace) because who wants to go on vacay and have to meal prep or any other normal life things all week? On one hand, we were at a beautiful resort in the Caribbean with limitless amounts of food and drink at our disposal. On the flip side, that is where the problems lie as well.
If you’ve never been to an all-inclusive resort, you are given a wrist band which essentially acts as your back stage pass to eating and drinking whatever and whenever you want…dangerous indeed. Unfortunately, this throws your entire into conflict as you are constantly fighting your demons and desires. On one hand, you now that you can’t just consume everything in sight but at the same time you want to get you money’s worth.
My strategy to begin was to make sure that I loaded up on proteins to begin each meal. This helped to fill me up. That way I had much less room/desire to eat most of the things that I was trying to limit in the first place. I use the word limit because if you think that you are going on vacation and NOT going to have desserts or drinks then you have another thing coming to you. The key is to try to have some rules in place. Maybe only eat 1 dessert a day or have 2-3 drinks per day. At the same time, WHEN you break this rule don’t beat yourself up about it…enjoy it and move on. After all, you are paying for at least a little escape from the world and it will be over before you now it.
Now when it came to exercise, for me it wasn’t that bad but only because I have a lot more knowledge than the average person. With limited equipment and more people to contend with I had to get creative to get my workout done. I kept things simple and followed the same workout format that we use in the gym but I kept the amount of equipment needed to a minimum. Most hotel gyms do not have copious amounts of equipment laying around waiting for guests to use so take what you can get and make the best of it.
At the end of the day the goal is this:
- Enjoy your vacation as you probably paid a pretty penny for it
- Continue to be as active as possible in whatever way works for you
- Eat the damn cookie…Drink the damn wine…it’s delicious!
- It will end much faster than you think
