376: How To Count Macros On Vacation

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 376.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and it is summertime, my friends, which means if you're anything like me, we have vacations that are either happening or are planned to happen, and sometimes it can feel like a challenge. If you are really thinking about focusing on your health and fitness, it can feel like a real hard balance between enjoying the vacation, because I think we all want to enjoy our vacations. We spend money, we spend time, we think about these, we want to enjoy them, and at the same time, we don't want to come home and feel like we set ourselves back weeks and or months. And so I think most of us are trying to find what is the healthy balance look like? How do I enjoy my time and at the same time not feel like I threw everything away that I've been working so hard the rest of the year for? And that's what we're going to talk about today, because, and I think this is really important to start this conversation off with this point, there's not just one right way to handle food on vacation. There's lots of different ways. And as I tell my MACROS 101 clients, I don't really care what decision you make, I really care about how you make the decision. And so that's what we're gonna be talking about a little bit today of how do we make the decision about what our plans are for vacations? How do we be intentional about crafting that experience in a way that we feel really on board with? We're really intentional about, we are ready to own the choices and own the consequences that come from those choices. That's really what the goal is, because you get to decide what vacation looks like for you. You get to decide what balance looks like for you. The problem that I see with a lot of people is they don't make any of these decisions beforehand, and they think, oh, I'll just make those decisions in the moment. And you don't make the best decisions in the moment. Most of us don't. When there's pressure, when there's people looking at us, when the food's sitting right there in front of us, we don't tend to make the best decisions. And so the more that we can think and plan ahead, think through some of the decisions, think through our priorities, the more in those moments you're gonna be able to make better decisions that more align with the priorities that are whatever is important to you, right? That's not my job. My job is not to tell you what is important. My job is to help you figure out what's important to you, and then help you to backtrack from that and make decisions that align with those things that are important. 

Decide what your vacation approach is going to be 03:16

So again, there is no one-size-fits-all vacation plan, but there is a version that works best for you. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So step number one is you need to decide what your vacation approach is going to be. There are different levels, I would say like a continuum if you want to think about it in that way, of how far we lean to the enjoy vacation, right? That's on one side and prioritizing that versus on the other side, not getting back and feeling like you threw weeks or months away on something that you've been working really hard on. So on one side of the continuum is just basically the YOLO mentality. Don't care at all. I plan to make bad choices. I'm just gonna eat whatever I feel like. I'm just like not even gonna think about my health and fitness journey the whole time I'm on vacation, right? So that might be far to one side of the continuum of the just YOLO mentality. On the other side, we have some people who go on vacation and what is really important to them is to stay on track with their health and fitness goals. That is the most important thing. That's the top priority. And so everything is made from the decision of is this going to set me back further from my health and fitness goals or is it going to align with it? So that person is going to be a lot more rigid, a lot more strict with their eating. They're probably going to track. They're going to probably think about this a lot. So you can see those are kind of two extremes on the continuum.

Most people that I talk to, those people that are listening to something like this, you don't really desire to live at either of those extremes. We don't want to be hyper vigilant, hyper focused, not eat a croissant when you're in France because your health and fitness goals are the most important thing in your life, right? Most of you don't really want to be on that side. And you also don't want to be on the side where you just don't think about it at all. Like you just eat anything and everything, make all the bad choices, and you're just happy with that. Most of us are trying to find somewhere in the middle between those two. And some of us are smack dab in the middle. Some of us are maybe further towards health and fitness goals being a priority. Some of us are a little bit further towards enjoying the vacation being a little bit more of the priority. And I don't really care where you fall. I just want you to think about it now. I want you to think about if I had to prioritize, this is a really good thought experiment. In fact, I'll give you a good thought experiment. If I told you you could only have one or the other, you could only enjoy your vacation or stay on track with your health and fitness goals. And I told you, you can only have one, which would you pick? Now, of course, this is a thought experiment because we live in a both and kind of world and you can have both. You can stay on track with your health and fitness goals and you can enjoy your vacation.

So we want to find a way that both of these can happen. But the reason I pose this as a thought experiment, because it helps you to orient which side of the continuum you fall a little bit closer to. And that's going to be really important as you start to think about what decisions you want to make on this journey or on this vacation. If you're like, okay, Amber, in that frame, I had to pick just one. Like I could either enjoy my vacation or I could stick with my health and fitness goals. And I had to pick. And I think enjoying my vacation ranks a little bit higher. Cool. That's going to tell us where your priorities fall. And as we start to create a plan for what success looks like on your vacation, you know that enjoying your vacation is a little bit more of a priority to you. If you said, no, I really want to get home and feel like I didn't set myself back weeks, days, weeks, months, whatever. That's more important to me. And I'm willing to enjoy my vacation, but maybe that's secondary. That tells us a lot, again, about your goals. And of course, we have to think about this. We're talking about vacations. That's a very broad term. For me, there's a difference if I'm going with my husband to Europe on a trip versus if my family and I are driving up to visit family, you know, seven hours away, right? Those are different trips for me. And I probably have different priorities for those trips. So of course, this is always in context of whatever vacation it is that you're going on. But I think that's a great thought experiment is like, if I had to pick which one would I weigh a little bit heavier than the other. And from that place, we can start to create a plan and think about what it looks like with that as the priority to find balance overall. 

Start with the end in mind 07:50

Okay. So we're zoomed out. We're thinking about what's most important to us. Stephen Covey said, start with the end in mind. And that is what I encourage my MACROS 101 clients to do is to start with the end in mind, meaning let's go out to the end of your vacation. When you're getting home from that trip and ask ourselves a really good question, which is, how do I want to feel at that moment? What is most important to me? When I get home, do I want to feel like I enjoyed my trip? I enjoyed the cuisine. I don't have any regrets about skipping food that I really wanted to try. And that's how I want to feel. Or do I want to feel like when I step on the scale, the numbers haven't swung very, very far. I want to feel like I prioritized protein or I feel really confident that I'm going to be able to transition back into my health and fitness plan, right? It doesn't really matter what the answer is. I'm just giving you examples, but asking yourself that question of how do I want to feel when I get home will again, inform us of what we need to do between now and the end of your vacation to be able to create that feeling, what decisions are going to create that feeling, what activities are going to create that feeling, how you handle food that is going to create that feeling. We always want to be working backwards from that feeling. And then we can choose your approach. Again, not the right approach, but the approach that's going to work for you for this vacation. And that last part was really important. The approach that's going to work for you for this vacation, because as I alluded to before, vacations are different and they have different purposes and you might handle this vacation a little different than another vacation. 

Debrief with yourself daily 09:34

Something else that I think is really important. So we've gone out, we've decided how you want to feel. We can start to backtrack from there and say, what decisions are going to help me create that feeling? What focus on food is going to help me create that feeling? Is tracking or not tracking going to help me create that feeling? And that starts to answer a lot of the minutia questions about exactly how to handle different situations. But one thing I really encourage you to do as you're going through this experience is to debrief with yourself daily. So let me give you an example. If I say, I want to get to the end of my vacation and I want to feel like I didn't say no to any food and I didn't overeat on any food. So I tried things and I feel like I didn't overeat, right? So that's the feeling that I'm wanting to create by the end. Sometimes if you're just waiting until the very end of the vacation to feel that way, you've kind of waited too long. Instead, what I like to do is do a daily debrief with myself of how am I doing on generating that feeling? So after the first day on vacation, I may have a little meeting with myself and say, Hey, what went well today? How do I feel at the end of the day? Do I feel like I found that balance that I'm looking for? What could have gone better? And then this is a really great question to ask yourself. If I could redo this day, what would I have changed? So then you do that on day one, you figure out, Hey, this worked. This didn't work. I actually feel like I was able to eat the food that I liked, but I overate on, you know, that ice cream and you know, I didn't find that balance real great. Okay, great. That's feedback. That's information that we can use on day two. You know, you should say, if I was, if I could go back, I would have split that ice cream with somebody else. Fantastic. Now we take that information into day two and we can, you know, see if we can hit that feeling on day two, the end of day two, we debrief. How do I feel today? What went well? What could have gone better? If I could redo the day, what would I do? And then you do that again on day three and on day four and on day five. And what you're able to do in that moment is make slight little pivots that are going to help you to have a better experience overall, instead of waiting for the very end of the, of the vacation and saying, well, did I, did I nail it? Did I hit it? It's like, no, you've been doing that debrief with yourself the whole way through. 

Okay. So those are some things I want you thinking about. Some decisions I want you making before you even go on your trip, right? Creating a definition of success. How do you want to feel? What does that look like to be able to create that? Where on that continuum are you trying to find balance? And then, you know, we go on the vacation, we do that debrief daily. And then I wanted to give you some other strategic ways to be able to maybe think about how to find that balance while you're on vacation. These are just some tips and tricks that you can try out. Again, some of these may work for you. Some of them might not, but that's the beauty of doing a daily debrief of your experience is like, take the things that I share with you that work and then toss out the rest. These aren't magic. They don't work for everybody. However, these are things that I've tested out myself on vacations. I've had clients test out and for a lot of people, they're really helpful and they really work to find that balance. 

Have your day anchored with one healthy meal 12:58

So I have 10 strategic tips for you right now. Tip number one is to have your day anchored with one healthy meal. I find that this is really helpful in setting the tone for the day and or creating that balance. It's like having one meal where it's high protein, lower carb, lower fat, plenty of fiber, lots of veggies, right? Something that we may consider a more healthy, nutritious, whole food based meal, not high calorie, high protein, all of those good things. And having at least one meal a day that's built around getting healthy nutrition into your body. And then the other days, maybe other days, other meals are more play. You can play a little bit more. Maybe that's where you're having a little higher fat meal than you would have normally had, or you're trying that cuisine from the location that you're at that is really exciting, or you're having the pizza or whatever. But if you have that anchored one healthy meal a day, it makes sure you're getting nutrition into your body. You're getting the vitamins and minerals and fiber and protein into your body and it kind of anchors your day. So that's one, my first recommendation, my first tip for you.

Pack smart snacks 14:12

Tip number two is to pack smart snacks. Whether you're going on a road trip, on an airplane, wherever, I am always packing my own snacks. I'm packing protein bars, beef jerky, dried fruit, nuts, depending on where I'm going. I went on a trip recently with my daughter and her cheer team. And I knew I wasn't going to have a whole lot of access to protein because of what we were doing and where we were eating. So I packed hard boiled eggs. I packed tuna packets. I packed beef jerky, just ways to be able to get protein that I knew would be easy. I packed edamame. I packed, I'm trying to think of like all the things that I packed for that trip. But because I knew I was going to have access to a refrigerator, I was able to pack a whole bunch of protein sources. So again, whether I'm on a road trip or I'm going to a hotel or I'm going on an airplane, I'm probably packing things that just make snacking a little bit easier, both on to and from getting to the vacation. But then having a protein bar or packing protein powder, that's another good one that I always pack, is taking protein powder, easy, easy to pack, just mix it with water. And I now know that I'm getting extra protein in during the day. So number two, pack smart snacks.

Use intermittent fasting strategically 15:31

Number three, using intermittent fasting strategically. So I'm not a big intermittent faster. It's not anything that I ever teach or preach. I come from the perspective of if it works for you, knock yourself out, love that for you. There's nothing magical about intermittent fasting. So it's not going to create more of a caloric deficit. However, again, if it works for you and you like it and it makes it easier to create a caloric deficit, I'm all for it. One place that I do use intermittent fasting is on vacations. I tend to like to eat two meals a day when I'm on vacation because they tend to be larger, higher calorie meals. And so I will utilize that strategic intermittent fasting to, instead of having three high calorie meals a day, I'm having two high calorie meals. And that just allows me to eat less calories, just simplifies things. I'm not having to make choices at three different meals. I'm just putting those into the two meals. So maybe that's like I'm having a breakfast and I'm having a nice dinner or a big dinner, or maybe I skip breakfast and I'm eating a lunch and a dinner or any variation of that, that works for you. But this is a way that I keep my calories a little bit lower because I know when I'm eating on vacation, most of my meals are going to be higher calorie than they would be if I was eating them at home.

Prioritize Protein 16:47

All right. Number four is prioritizing protein. This is probably the most difficult macro to get when you're on vacation, because when you're going to restaurants, when you're eating out, most of those meals are high carb, high fat. Fat tastes delicious, which is why restaurants use it. And then most things are high carb because it's cheaper. Carbs are way cheaper than protein. And so you can understand from a restaurant's perspective, they want you to like the food, thus they do it high fat and they want it to be as cheap as possible. Thus they do high carb and protein is really expensive. So you would see where you end up having problems getting protein if you're eating out all the time. So prioritizing protein when you're ordering things, looking for things with protein included as the main part of the meal. And then, like I said before, with packing snacks, I like to pack protein powder. I think that that's a really easy way that I know that I'm going to get 20 grams of protein, 20 plus grams of protein in. All I have to do is mix it with water and chug that down. And now I've already hit 20 grams of protein. If I want to knock myself out, I can do two scoops of whey and I can get 40 grams of protein. But anyway, prioritizing protein is going to help you feel more full. It's going to help you feel more satiated and it's going to help you to be able to eat less calories overall because we're prioritizing that really important macronutrient. 

Slow down and savor 18:10

Okay, number five is to slow down and savor. This is a great opportunity to practice mindful eating, especially if you're at a place where you're super excited about the food. I know some of us travel and we're just really excited to try the food and to eat the food and that's a big part of the experience of travel. If that's the case, enjoy it. Slow down. Taste the food. Sit there and don't just slurp on your ice cream and chat with someone. Enjoy it. Lick it. Feel it. Taste it. Allow it to just sit in that moment and actually savor your food. It can be a really powerful experience and when we can tap into that, usually we tend to eat less. If you're just eating it just to eat it and just to get through it, that's one thing. But if you're actually sitting down, mindfully eating, savoring, enjoying, which man, take it in. You're on vacation in Mexico and you're able to sit there and listen to the mariachi band while you're having your tacos. Enjoy being present and taking it all in. So slow down and savor it. 

Practice portion awareness 19:19

Number six, this is an awesome time to practice portion awareness. One of the things I say all the time is that I don't want you tracking macros forever. However, I do think tracking it for a period of time teaches you so much about your food. One of the things that it teaches you is portions. Most people have zero idea what a serving of a banana looks like or a serving of rice or a serving of chicken or whatever. So hopefully as you're tracking, you're starting to learn portion sizes. You're starting to learn to eyeball portion sizes. Practice that now. Whether you're tracking or not, that's a decision that you get to make of whether you want to track on your vacation or not. That goes back to that first conversation we had of how do you want to feel and what is your priority and what's most important to you. You get to make that decision. But whether or not you're tracking, we can be paying attention to our portions. We can be paying attention to making sure that we're building our plate with a protein, a carb, and some fat and some fiber, making sure that we're having that balanced nutrition, just using our eyeballs and just estimating and looking at the portions. So I like to think of vacations as a little bit of like a pop quiz. If you've been tracking and you've been logging your food, well, here's an opportunity as a pop quiz to test it out. How good are you at portion sizes? Is that something you need to practice more or maybe better than you thought you were at it? Even if you're not weighing, even if you're not measuring, even if you're not tracking.

Be mindful with alcohol 20:48

All right, number seven is being mindful with alcohol. We all know that alcohol is a lot of calories. It just is. It is a lot of empty calories. Like it doesn't do anything for your body. In fact, it does a lot of damage to your body. That being said, for a lot of people, vacations are synonymous with alcohol and you want to be able to enjoy that. So again, I'm not telling you can't have alcohol. I'm saying, what does the balance look like for you that you will be happy about? Not only in the moment, but tomorrow when you wake up and when you get home from your vacation. And I think when we make decisions from those two vantage points, here's what I mean by this. I think a lot of us make decisions in the moment from the vantage point of what do I want right now? And maybe having alcohol sounds really fun right now with my friends at the beach, enjoying this vacation. That sounds really fun right now. When you make that decision from both the what sounds fun right now, what will make me feel good tomorrow, and what will make me feel good in a week when I get home from this vacation, those are probably different decisions. And so in that moment, you can make a much better decision if you're asking yourself the question, what do I want right now? What do I want for tomorrow? And what do I want for the end of my vacation? And then making a decision from that place. Sometimes you may choose to have the alcohol because that's the priority for you and you're willing to enjoy right now and maybe pay a price for it tomorrow and or when you get back from vacation. Maybe you decide that it's not worth it and you decide to skip it. Or maybe you find some balance in between there where you alternate alcoholic drinks with water, or you set a certain drink limit per day, or you choose some lower calorie options. You look at the menu ahead of time and choose some lower calorie options. There's lots of options here, right? There's lots of choices that can be made. You just need to make them. And a lot of times I find people go into these decisions and they don't actually consciously make the decision. The decision just happens. And that's what I want to prevent. I want you to make a decision, not for just it to just happen. Make sense? 

Two-bite Rule 23:02

Okay. Number eight. I call this the two-bite rule. I've had this rule for a really, really long time. I am really big on if I'm going to eat the food, it better darn well be really good. Especially if it's high calorie, it better knock my socks off or it's just not worth it to me. And there's plenty of foods that just, it's not worth it to me. One I can think of off the top of my head is pie crust. Pastry, not a fan. Like it's fine. But for the number of calories that are in a pie crust, for me, I just know it's not worth it for me. So that's just a really silly example that for me, I've found something that it's just, it's not worth the calories for me. So the two bite rule is I will try two bites of something. If it's like something new, I'm trying right to try two bites of it. And then I put my fork down and then I decide, is this worth it or not? And if it's worth it and I'm like, this is delicious. It's amazing. I'm loving this. I know it's super high calorie. I know it's calorically dense. I know it has zero protein in it and it's delicious. I'm going to savor this and indulge and enjoy it. Fantastic. I pick my spoon up and I continue eating. Sometimes I put my fork down and I'm like, yeah, it's not actually that good. Like it's fine. It's not bad, but it's just fine. It's not anything special and not, you know, I'm not over heels for it. And I know it's a ton of calories. So, you know, I had my two bites. I tried it. I can say I tried it and I put my fork down and then I pass it on to somebody else or send it back or whatever you do with it. But that two bite is like, I tried it and then I made a decision on, is this worth it for me? And then I went forward with that. I didn't just keep eating it because it was there or because it was in front of me. So that's the two bite rule. And I use it all the time, especially on things that I'm, where I don't know if I'm going to like something or not, or I'm trying something new for the first time. Two bites, put the fork down, make a decision. Is it worth it to me or not? And then that guides you on whether you keep eating or whether you're done. 

Stay as active as possible 25:08

All right. Number nine is to stay as active as possible. And I actually find a lot of times on vacations, this is actually easier than sometimes even when I'm at my house, because we're walking a lot, we're traveling a lot, we're doing outdoor activities, we're hiking, we're doing these things. Now, sometimes I'm going on vacation and we're like sitting on the beach and maybe there's not as much activity level, but I am mindful of, okay, even if we're doing a beach vacation, can we go walking down the beach? Can we walk to, you know, a restaurant or can we do some sort of movement? Can we maybe get a workout in, in the morning before we go sit poolside, whatever, right? I'm just always thinking about how can I stay active? How can I move my body? One, because I know I'll feel better on vacation when I'm moving my body. It's just, I'll just feel better. And then two, so that we're, you know, we're utilizing those calories. This is not a, I really despise the whole like earn your calories idea. So that is not what I'm saying. I'm saying I feel better when I move. I feel better when I work out. I feel better when I am not just like laying by the poolside all day long. So I'm really focused on what can I do to continue to stay active during my vacation. 

Be intentional about where to splurge and where not to 26:17

And then number 10 is, and this kind of goes back to the two bites rule, but I think it bears pointing out is just be intentional about where to splurge and where not to. I think most of us like splurging on vacations, on things that we may not eat, we may not buy, we may not go on in a normal life. Like that's what makes vacations fun is because it's out of the ordinary of our normal life. So most of us want to splurge. The problem becomes when it's like every single thing is a splurge, then that actually doesn't become a splurge. It just becomes a new normal. Splurges are fun and special when they happen not every single time. If it only is happening spontaneously once a day or something like that on some sort of lesser cadence, that's what a splurge is. And so deciding where you want to splurge and where you want to save calories, maybe you want to go out to dinner and you want to try an alcoholic beverage that they have that you're really excited about. So you're spending extra calories there. So maybe you're splurging on your drink. And so maybe on your food, you pull back a little bit and you have the grilled chicken and broccoli. So this is like we're splurging on some things, but we're saving on others. And this is where being really intentional about the decision-making process is really important. Where do you want to splurge? And where do you want to save? And then making those decisions and moving forward. Vacations are a break. They are not a free-for-all. There's a middle ground that allows you to enjoy it, live life fully, have an awesome vacation without coming back saddled with a whole bunch of regret about the decisions that you made. 

Getting back on track 27:54

Okay. The last and final part that I want to talk about is reintegration because let's be real. Sometimes coming home is the hardest part because now we're getting back to real life. We're going back to our fitness journey. We're going back to the scale. Oh my gosh, the scale and that reintegration man can be a little challenging. So let's talk about it. First, I want you to expect that the scale is going to spike. Just expect it. It's probably going to happen. And remind yourself that the scale doesn't just measure fat. It measures water. It measures muscle. It measures tissue. And so when you see that scale spike, likely a lot of that is going to be water weight and or like extra food weight and or extra digestion. Okay. When we travel, it's stressful. You're going to have more water weight. When we travel, we tend to eat more carbs, more water weight. When we travel, we tend to eat more sodium. All of these things contribute to more water weight, sleep worse, more water weight. So all of the things that happen on a vacation often lead to us retaining a lot more water. And it just takes time for our body to renormalize and to flush out that water. So my rule of thumb is to give yourself the same number of days to recalibrate with the scale as you were on vacation. 

So if you were on vacation for seven days, I'm expecting it's going to take about seven days for your body to recalibrate and establish a new normal. That number that you see when you come back on the scale on day one back from your trip, day two, day three, day four, it's probably is going to be inflated due to water.Once we get past that seven days, now we've kind of, we can kind of see where our body is post vacation. So give it, give yourself as many days to normalize as you were away and allow yourself to flush out that water, get a more accurate picture of what's going on with the scale by giving it a little time and a little distance. 

Have a clear post vacation plan 29:55

Number two, it's really important to have a clear post vacation plan. And I don't think enough people think about this. So we did that thought experiment of how do I want to feel when I get home? But I also want you thinking about what is reintegration going to look like? When am I going to get home? What day am I going to get home? What time am I going to get home? What am I going to do when I get home? Am I going to start tracking that very next day? When am I going to go to the grocery store? Do I have a workout planned for the days that I'm coming home? Because one of the things that I see a lot of people do is they are so strict and rigid and on track. And then they go on vacation and they, you know, lose a little bit of that rigidity. And then they come back and they flounder to let go from unstructured back to the structure. It's almost like a part of that you is like trying to rebel against it. Maybe you didn't like that structure. And so it's hard for you to get your brain to go back to that structure that you didn't like, which caveat side note is one of the reasons why I'm so big about creating a plan that you don't want to rebel against. Creating a plan that you actually enjoy, that you like, that you want to get back to is always going to work better than forcing yourself into a strict, rigid plan in order to get results. So just a little side note there, because if you notice yourself not wanting to get back on track and get back to your plan, it may be because your plan is not actually built well for you, or it's not actually built in a way that aligns with you, your life, how you want to live it and your priorities.

So that's something to look at. If you find yourself resisting, that could be part of it, but having some sort of clear post-vacation plan of what reintegration is going to look like so that you don't get home. And I see this a lot with clients is like they get home and then it's like two, three, four, seven days before they get back to tracking, get back to doing their workouts, get back to eating normally, right? Whatever that looks like for you. And here's one piece of advice. Don't wait for Monday. Okay. Start with the day that you get back from your vacation. We build momentum and we lose momentum very quickly. And so if you're waiting until Monday, it's so easy to just put it off and wait until the next Monday and the next Monday. And then that, you know, becomes months from now. So don't wait until Monday, have a clear post-vacation plan, know how you're going to get back on track. How are you going to, when are you going to start tracking? Do you have a Walmart delivery that's going to deliver to your house the day you get back? Do you have your meals planned for that day? Do anything that you can to set yourself up for success ahead of time. Because we all know when you get back from vacation is like not when you want to be making those decisions. 

Restart your data collection without judgment 32:28

And then the last thing that I would say is to restart your data collection without judgment. So I talk a lot about this in MACROS 101 of how we collect data with curiosity and removing the judgment from it. But do your weigh-ins. Know that they're maybe off and that they may not be reflective of exactly where you are. They may have extra water weight, but do your weigh-ins, get that information, get that data, see how your body's responding to eating more food or eating higher carb or getting less sleep or having more stress or whatever it is. Start tracking your intake, take progress pictures if you want, like getting that data and that information and then removing that judgment from labeling as right or wrong or labeling it as good or bad and just looking at it with curiosity can be really powerful. 

One of the things that I hear from clients a lot is that as they get really good at taking data and they start to see the ebbs and flows, the normal ebbs and flows of their body, they really start to get to know their body. They start to get to know what happens to my body around my menstrual period. What happens when I don't get a lot of sleep? This was something I saw just posted recently in our MACROS 101 group. Somebody was making the connection with finally being able to see what happens when she doesn't get enough sleep. She can see it reflected in her data and it starts to help you to make those connections with your body and to know your body. Who cares how sleep impacts somebody else? How does sleep impact you? How do you notice your hunger and fullness cues when you don't have enough sleep or when you eat out at a restaurant or when you skip a day working out or whatever it is? That data starts to help you to make connections with your own body. So when you're coming home, restart that data collection and do it without judgment. We're not judging it. We're not making it right or wrong or good or bad. We're just looking at it with curiosity. 

Intentional vacation planning creates balanced joy 34:18

So to wrap this conversation up, I just want to remind you that you get to choose how your vacation looks. You get to decide what's most important to you and as long as you're making decisions from that place, I'm good with whatever decision you make and you should be too. The problem comes when you're not actually choosing, when it's just happening and we're not actually making conscious decisions. So that's why I really encourage you before you go on a vacation, get really clear. What's the outcome I want to create? How do I want to feel? What decisions will allow me to feel that way? What parameters do I want to put on my vacation to help me to create that outcome that I want? And then doing that daily debrief with yourself to ask yourself, how am I doing? Like checking in with yourself. How am I doing? What could I do better? What am I doing awesome? And then you're continually adapting and improving so that at the end of the vacation, you come home feeling like a boss. Vacations, God willing, are a part of life.

I hope that you get to go on lots of vacations and enjoy yourself. So your plan has to work alongside with the things in your life. This is a big deal for me. This is what I teach my clients over and over is we can't just create a plan that is optimized and perfect and everything that you need if it totally disregards how you want to live your life. We want to find a balance. Yes, you want results, but at what cost? If I told you, you could get the body you wanted, but you could never, ever go on another vacation for the rest of your life. I think most people listening to this podcast would turn down that offer because what we want is balance. We want, yes, an outcome, a body, a physique, whatever it is. And at the same time, we want it to work alongside with the lifestyle that we want. We want to go on vacation. We want to enjoy ourselves. We want to try that croissant in France and we want to still feel good about ourselves and we want to still look good in our clothes and we want to feel healthy and vibrant and active.

And that is a balance and finding that balance can feel a little slippery at times, but I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, you can find it. It just comes back to being intentional and making decisions and then iterating when things don't go the way you want it and not telling yourself that you did it wrong or bad, but just getting up and trying again. So I hope that you go on lots of vacations this summer and I hope that you utilize some of the things that I've talked about in this episode so that they can be some of the most successful, fun, memorable vacations that you've ever been on and also allow you to come back not dripping in regret from what you did on those vacations.

If this episode was helpful, I would be forever grateful if you took a few minutes of your time to leave a rating and review on whatever podcast platform it is that you're listening on. That really helps new people to be able to find the podcast and to get this free content out into the world. So thank you for those of you who have done that and if you haven't, please take a couple minutes of your time to do so. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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