Holiday eating survival guide: my top 5 tips

Who doesn’t love a good holiday? Whether it’s a beachy escape, a trip to the slopes or a city break, it’s a chance to rest and reset, to destress and to delight. Taking time off to relax is an important part of wellness – almost as much as all the other things that contribute to a healthy, happy life like eating well and moving your body.

If there is a downside, it’s that eating well can quickly get forgotten and a few weeks of indulgence can easily turn into months if you’re the kind of person who finds it hard to get back on track afterwards.

I want to explore why this happens in the first place so that you can create your holiday action plan, which doesn’t mean you have to deprive yourself while you’re away!

Set yourself up for success

In life, we have many agreements – explicit agreements with others about the things we will do or not do and the implicit agreements we make with ourselves about all sorts of things, including how we will eat and live our lives.

Every time you break one of these agreements (including those to yourself) you cannot help but be impacted – even if you feel it’s not such a big deal. But over time, these broken promises build up and, before you know it, you’re just not feeling great about life. You start feeling life is hard or you haven’t got what it takes, and your motivation to eat well dips.

Holidays are often very different to your everyday life, and this is why it is critical to create a new set of agreements around what you will or won’t do on holiday.

That way, you get to keep your word to yourself, and everything is great. When you don’t – and you’ve, therefore, broken ALL your rules – you are likely to find yourself in the nutritional wilderness, continuing to make those ‘holiday choices’ when you return.

So, the first thing to do is to work out what your new agreements are. You will need to choose whether you have an ‘anything goes’ policy for the duration of the holiday with the explicit intention of returning to your regular pattern when you return.

Or you take a view on the kinds of things you don’t always do but you want to do more of on holiday.

The important thing is to be clear which of these paths you are taking. If you do not actively choose, you are in a grey area, which will ultimately end in you feeling unsatisfied because you’ll likely either feel deprived or that you have over-indulged.

Be clear on what matters most

If you are choosing to stay close to your plan but you don’t want to eat all the food and drink all the drinks and have to deal with the fallout later, you’ll have to consider what matters most to you when it comes to holidays – and do that but no more.

What you might love most about holidays is the freedom of not having a specific schedule, catching up on sleep, reading a few of those books you’ve been promising yourself all year. And it might mean a great suntan, letting your hair bleach in the sun, spending quality time with your partner, and having someone else do the cooking.

When you look back on your summer, it might feel great to know you’ve really rested and recharged, that you’ve laughed every day, and that you’ve enjoyed special family moments.

You might reflect that, although your summer holidays normally include an ice cream every day just because everyone else is having one, really, you’re not that fussed.

It may work for you to bring a snack with you (nuts are very portable wherever you are) and to enjoy these while others are having the ice cream because that’s what you choose to do.

What would make it your best holiday ever?

Spend some time thinking about these prompting statements before you go on holiday to set you up for the best holiday ever. Use these to work out what’s important when you go on holiday, what the deal breakers are that – if they’re not part of the holiday – you will feel it’s incomplete.

A holiday is incomplete without….
When I look back on my holiday, I want to feel…
I don’t want to feel…
When I go on holiday the most important things for me are…
Things I normally do over the summer that don’t work for me or I’m not too bothered about are…
I will know I’ve had a great summer/ summer holiday when… (how will you be able to measure it?)

My 5 tips for holiday eating

1. It’s all about balance

As a nutritionist, I would recommend applying these guidelines most of the time. This is the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time you eat well, allowing space for treats on high days and holidays. It’s possible to stick close to this on holidays – if you choose to. So, let’s recap what healthy eating actually looks like.

At its most basic level ‘eating well’ involves eating real food almost all of the time (rather than processed foods) and getting a variety of different foods into your diet.

Of course, it’s possible to eat quite an unbalanced diet even by focusing on real food so I would add in this extra layer: you would also eat to balance your blood sugar levels. This is the best way of helping you to lose weight and improve health, easily and enjoyably. It works with your body’s natural design. It has been tested over decades and is backed by hundreds of scientific trials.

There are three simple rules
1. Eat regularly – ideally only three times a day!
2. ALWAYS eat protein at every meal
3. Be selective about the amount and type of starchy carbohydrates

2. Try to eat a Rainbow

When I talk to clients about eating a rainbow, I am talking about eating a range of fruit and veg over the course of a week that are different colours.

Why? Coloured vegetables contain important plant chemicals called phytonutrients and these are bursting with disease-fighting antioxidants that can reverse some of the damage caused by our environment.

Every different colour is linked to a specific group of plant chemicals and what we know about them is that the sum is greater than the individual parts. They have a synergistic effect. Simply, the more colours you can get in over the course of a week, the better it is for your health.

Sometimes holidays mean it’s easier to do this – usually those where salads abound – and other holidays are notable for an absence of veggies on the menu. Do your best.

3. Easy picnic salads

Holidaying at home or self-catering? Packing up a salad before you head out for the day is a great idea. You might have seen mason jar salads on social media….

They’re a kind of upside-down way to make your salad but ensures the whole lot doesn’t go soggy by lunchtime. Simply empty it out onto a plate when you’re ready for it and the ingredients you put in first (the wetter ingredients) end up on the top, while the more delicate ingredients like the salad leaves end up on the bottom without being squashed.

4. Have a snack before hitting the town

Alcohol is essentially sugar, which spikes your blood sugar, leading to weight gain and cravings. It is, however, arguably a holiday essential.

The key to not letting alcohol undo your good work is to have a little something with protein on before you go out. Try something like a little cottage cheese or unsweetened nut butter on an oatcake (if you can find them) or even a small handful of nuts. The protein will help offset the sugar in the alcohol.

5. Low carb ideas when abroad

I say this a lot…we need carbs, but the amount and types of carbs we eat is important. To keep our blood sugars nice and stable, and therefore support our hormone balance, energy levels, mood and weight management, we don’t want to overdo it on the carbs, and we want to be opting for low glycaemic load ones, (i.e. whole food carbs like fruits, veggies, grains, pulses, oats and not the highly refined, processed ones).

There are plenty of options to keep your carbs in check whilst enjoying delicious, local foods in all the popular European hot spots. For example:

Cyprus, Greece and Turkey – You’ll be spoiled for choice when it comes to grilled meats. Go for meat kebabs (or halloumi if you’re vegetarian) with grilled vegetables or a generous salad on a side.

France – With a love of heavier, often fattier dishes, it’s usually easy to go low carb in France. Try a charcuterie plate followed by cote de boeuf or entrecote (beef steak) without the fries but with green beans, sautéed spinach or green salad.

Italy – it’s not all pizza and pasta. You’ll find great cuts of meat and grilled fish with some amazing salads like tricolore (tomato, avocado, mozzarella)

Spain – home of tapas! Opt for lower carb options like jamon y queso (cured ham and cheese board) followed by steak, pringa (slow-cooked meat) or pinchitos (meat skewers) with a side salad or veggies.

Most importantly, enjoy your summer holidays whether you’re venturing abroad or having a staycation in the UK and remember, it is possible to enjoy all the deliciousness of holiday eating without going totally off-track and coming home with a big dose of guilt.

Happy holidays!