#73: Vacation & How to Stay on Track with your Training

Are you thinking of putting your fitness on pause for the summer? 👇

Vacation season is here, and the temptation to put your fitness goals on hold till fall is huge. 😎

But as women in perimenopause and post-menopause, getting back in shape in the fall is no longer a matter of couple weeks of discipline because our bodies don't respond the way they used to. 

Taking the whole summer off from training means losing the precious strength and muscle tissue you've built, and getting it back will take time and work. 

So, how about avoiding the decline?

You CAN hold on to your muscle and still enjoy the summer - and this episode explains how. 

Plus, you'll get some tips on how to avoid the summer weight gain.

Enjoy the show!

Mentioned in the show: check out my latest Instagram post for some exercises you can do while on vacation >>

Transcript

#73: Vacation and How to Stay on Track with your Training

Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I am a certified menopause fitness coach helping women in perimenopause and menopause to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are going to be talking about vacation and how to survive without undoing all of the progress that you have made so far.
And it's kind of a funny time for me to be talking about this because I just got back from vacation. I've spent the last about three weeks actually Uh, first in Greece on a catamaran sailing around with my friends, or actually motoring around cause there wasn't much wind. And then came back for a whopping three days and repacked to go for a long weekend for midsummer weekend here in Finland on another boat.
So, so I haven't been doing a whole lot of exercising, but let me tell you, I have been Lived the struggle of trying to stay fit and on track in vacation. So this topic is very close to my heart. I mean, summer's only getting started, right?
So we have all heard that consistency is King and that is definitely going to be a theme here today in this episode, because as we know, 10 days of doing everything right, isn't going to make a whole heck of a lot of difference. And the same way, 10 days of skipping everything that you're doing right, is also not going to make a whole heck of a lot of difference.
But the problem that I see happening is that people will just sort of. Skip everything for the summer, right? They've been consistently going to the weight room. They've been watching what they eat. And then summer is a free for all. And I'll tell you that if you spend the whole summer, just not paying any attention to what's going on, you will feel it in the fall.
And as we are in midlife already, it is not as easy as it used to be to just kind of rein it in in September and then get back to fitting into your clothes the way you used to. And that's why it is probably particularly important for us to learn habits that allow us to enjoy the summer, but not put us into some deep hole that we have to dig ourselves out of come fall.
Now, I also want to say that I don't want you to go to the other extreme. I mean, there have been phases in my life and looking back on them, I'm like, wow, I really had kind of a warped way of thinking about things, but phases in my life where on a Friday night or a Saturday night, I would not go out with my friends because I wanted to go to the weight room and go running.
And I think that's kind of the other extreme of letting. Working out, dominate your life and, and actually deprive you of the fun things. Because in the end, the reason that we're doing this, the reason that we're taking care of our bodies, the reason why we're taking care of our muscles is that we want to be able to enjoy our lives for as long as possible.
Possible. We want our health span to be improved. We not only want to look good today, but we also want to be functional 10, 20, 30, 40 years, 50 years from now. So we've got to find some kind of a balance here.
So today I just wanted to kind of discuss some ways that you can try to stay in balance or not go totally off the rails as you go on vacation. And having just been on two amazing vacations where food and alcohol and having fun were very much at the center of Focus. It's very fresh in my mind, the challenges and how hard they are when you are on holiday.
So the first thing to say is that there are really two sides of this. One is your eating and the other is your exercising. And by eating, I mean calories in because it also includes all the things that you drink. And it is really hard when you are on holiday to stay on track. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know how much I, talk about protein and keeping your protein levels high and.
That is super challenging when you are relying on, let's say, um, hotel food or eating out or even, you know, going to your parents because they're not necessarily thinking the same way as you are. And of course, you don't want to go on vacation and be like, Oh no, I can't eat there, can't eat there. No, you have to cook this for me.
I mean, you're going to be like the most uninvited guest in the future. So this has to be done in kind of a subtle way. So I'll just, uh, tell you some of the things that I did, and maybe these will help you think about how do you want to manage this when you go on vacation. 
First of all, protein. That was one of my. Only goals really, when I went to Greece and 10 days of eating everything prepared by other people and one of the ways that I made sure that I was going to get in my protein is I actually took protein powder with me and that may sound really, really geeky, but it was actually it. Easy to incorporate that into my day because for example, at breakfast, there would be plain yogurt.
I throw protein powder into there. Uh, in the middle of the day, I would just have my protein shake. So it wasn't like ruffling any feathers. Yes. And when I pulled out the bag, my friends asked me about it, but of course they know they know that I do this. So, um, so, but that was an easy way to do it. So pack the protein powder.
And the nice thing there is, of course, it took up some space in my luggage when I was going there, but it was empty when I came back. So it was room in my suitcase for some of my shopping purchases.
So there are kind of three main things, or actually four main things that I think about when I think about eating on vacation, when I'm not controlling the food. One is protein, getting in enough protein. The second is choosing lower fat options. Having all my dressings on the side because man, you know, if you have salad, but it's got a ton of dressing on it, then you may as well have something, something a lot more satisfying that'll have the same amount of calories and fat.
And then I limit my liquid calories, or at least I want to be really conscious that, Hey, now I'm choosing to drink this and therefore I am having a lot of calories. And you need to remember, because I hear this all the time that, Hey, this is healthy, right? Uh, so I can eat a lot of this. I'm eating really healthy, but healthy.
Can also mean a lot of calories. Salmon is healthy, but it has a lot of fat in it, a lot of calories in it. If you're eating salmon every day or many times a week, then you are going to be consuming a lot more calories than if you're eating lean chicken, for example. I mean, just something to be aware of.
Avocado is healthy, but it also has a lot of fat in it. So, I choose avocado, for example, as a spread on my sandwiches rather than choosing butter. So I'm making a healthier choice, but I'm not just eating avocados like, you know, like apples or something like that.
So how did this show in my actual choices there? Now, Greece is famous for certain foods like moussaka and, Oh, I'm terrible at these names, but anyway, these like baked things that have a lot of cheese and, and they're delicious. And yes, I did have that on one day, but since we were in the islands and there was fresh seafood to be had.
I was choosing grilled whitefish, which was amazing for dinner almost every night. I think four nights out of the seven that we were sailing, that's what I had for dinner. And then instead of having something like fried calamari, which was on the menu, which could have been really delicious too, I had steamed mussels.
I love mussels. It's like steamed in what vinegar broth or something. I mean, not vinegar, but garlic broth. And, uh, so that doesn't have much fat outside of what the muscles have themselves and muscles have about one gram of protein per muscle, like minimum. So that is a great source of protein. And if you like muscles, de lish.
And then if I ordered a salad, I always have the dressing on the side because you never know how much they soak the salad in dressing. So I have it on the side. And sometimes it turns out that I eat most of it. Sometimes, you know, I don't eat any of it because sometimes the salad is just so good on its own and part of it is what your taste buds get used to.
If you get used to eating salad that doesn't have that slippery dressing on top of it, do that 10 times and it'll feel weird in a way to have the dressing on there. So you can teach yourself your taste buds to enjoy new things.
And then when I am out traveling, I try to avoid all you can eat places. So for example, if you're going to go to breakfast, I'd prefer a place where you choose your breakfast entree over where you Can we keep going up and up and up? And of course you would go up less often, but it is really hard not to go have a little more, have a little more, have a little more. So that just helps avoid that temptation.
, and then the other thing that I've had to learn is not to feel guilty about leaving stuff on your plate. And I think this is a really good rule that I've. Actually implemented here at home with my kids, which is that if you choose it, like if they go into my kitchen and they know what my spaghetti sauce tastes like, and they heap it on their plate, I expect that whole heap to be gone because it's not like they're going to taste and be like, Oh, no, I don't like this after all, because they've had it a hundred times.
And they can always go back for more. So I want them to choose a portion that they are going to eat, but a restaurant is a whole different situation. You may have humongous portions and surprisingly in Greece, the portions were really big. By the third night, we started sharing main courses. Because we just noticed that, oh, we were like rolling out of the restaurants if, if we ate the whole main course, because it's really hard not to eat it when it's really good and you've paid for it and all the things.
But so maybe sharing is 1 option, maybe just leaving it on the plate is another option.
And one other trick that I've started using, and this is totally opposite to what I used to do, which is that when I start eating, let's say there's a salad, right? And it's got salmon and, and, um, some delicious vegetables, maybe egg, that kind of thing. What I will do is I will start. by eating my favorite stuff and the high protein stuff.
And, uh, and that way, you know, when I'm hungry, I'm eating the good stuff, like the stuff that I would eat anyway. Right. Cause if you, if you, for example, love strawberries and you leave them to last, you're going to stuff yourself with those strawberries at the end, whether you have room for them or not.
Right. If you start with the strawberries. Then, okay, you've already had them. Now, what's the next thing on the plate that you like? Hopefully it's the protein thing that you have chosen. So your salad hopefully has some protein on it. So maybe it's the turkey or the chicken or the salmon or whatever. So you eat that next.
Then you go for the next thing that you like and what you end up noticing is that as you start to get full, you're like, Oh, there's, there's nothing on this plate. That's like so, so, so appealing that I would want to stuff myself. And that makes it easier for you to put your fork down instead of just over eating.
So that's one of those habits. It's really helped me. And the next thing that one needs to realize, and this is maybe something that we don't pay enough attention to, is how many calories you are drinking, you have that latte. At breakfast in a hotel, it's probably whole milk or at least low fat milk, certainly not skim milk, and that has a lot of calories in it, especially if it's big, I mean, that can be a couple hundred calories.
In there, uh, if you have fruit juice, you know, you're thirsty in the morning and you have a couple of glasses of orange juice or apple juice or whatever that actually has a lot of calories. Yes. Vitamins as well, but also a lot of calories. So you always need to be kind of weighing that. Is it worth, maybe you have half a glass or one glass, not three and drink water. for your thirst. Instead, maybe you learn to drink coffee without having milk in it. I mean, I have not gone to that extreme, but my boyfriend, for example, he'll have milk in his breakfast coffee. But after that, no milk the rest of the day, it's probably better for your teeth too, that, you know, you just have the coffee than, than having the coffee plus milk that you're sipping all day at work. 
And guys, the biggest one is the alcohol that will really throw you overboard. And okay, I know there are a lot of fitness people out there who don't drink. And I have to say, I'm not one of them. I drink a lot less than I used to nowadays I don't. drink at home. Like I will not have a glass of wine at the end of the day because it really hurts your sleep. So you can listen to my sleep episode to hear more about that. But you know, you're on a boat, you're on vacation, you're with your friends, noon comes around and it's time for that first gin and tonic, right?
And then if you let that keep going through the whole day that you have a gin and tonic now, Then maybe go for a swim and then you have a glass of wine and then maybe it's so hot, you have a beer. Think about, each of those drinks being at least 200 calories. Some drinks have more than that. But. Let's just make things simple by thinking that every time you have a drink, it's 200 calories. And if you have five of those over the course of a day, which can really easily happen if you're on vacation and hanging out with friends and you know, whatever, nice day, that's like a thousand calories.
If your daily calorie amount that you're aiming for is 2, 000, you've already, added 1, 000 calories to your daily total just from your drinking. And it's easy to go way over that. So, Start actually paying attention to how many drinks you have just so you're like, okay, there goes another 200. There goes another 200. There goes another 200. And, uh, it might make you think about whether you need that GT at noon, or maybe you have that at five instead or something. Who knows what it is that it makes you do. And the other thing about alcohol that ends up happening is that it lowers your inhibitions.
And you start to eat a little bit more so you end up with kind of a compounding effect of alcohol, not only the calories that you're consuming with the alcohol, but also the calories that you consume because you're having those nuts or those chips, you know, you start to get the munchies a little bit. Especially on a hot day and, and then, you've got extra calories. Plus if you've had a few drinks, had some chips, you're not so likely to go for that walk. So yeah. And I'm just saying, you know, I do this too. I noticed this in my own behavior. Now, it's just a really good thing for you to be aware of that. That is something that will bring on a lot of calories very, very quickly. Okay.
So we've gone through the calories in part, and I would say that is the part that is going to make the biggest difference in how you feel and look after your vacation. If you've put on A pound or two of fat on top of your muscles. You are going to look not as tone, not as lean. Okay. That's just the way it is.
Um, but now if we want to talk about training, so if you're on vacation for a week, 10 days, two weeks, and you don't go to the gym, that is not going to cause a severe, you know, backlash in your training. You may notice that you are maybe a tiny bit weaker when you go back. Um, but I think you will recover that lack of strength in a week, maybe two.
Okay. For me, what happened was I didn't train at all while I was on the, in Greece. I went back to the gym when I got back. And I was able to lift all the same weights that I was able to before. And then now after this long weekend, I went back to the gym yesterday and I was already able to start making progress, go forward from where I was before the vacation, so it's not something you need to be super alarmed about.
So, yes, muscles are a use it or lose it kind of tissue, but if you're at least moving a little bit, like walking, carrying stuff, you know, you're carrying your heavy suitcase, you're whatever, you're, you're carrying the groceries. Moving around so you're not bedridden is my point, then it should not be some radical rate of decline.
So if you are paying for your vacation, like I did to go to Greece, I mean, I saved up money for a while to do that vacation. The last thing I was going to do is be worried about my muscles. I wanted to enjoy the heck out of it. And I did, and I did not. Suffer, suffer in air quotes, um, much of a backward slide as far as my fitness because of that.
Now, movement is important. So I normally do the 8, 000 steps a day and that's often on my walk pad. So it's not that I'm like walking fast outside. It's not exercise. It's simply movement. So what I did try to do was. not sit still the whole time. And this is much easier to achieve when you're on vacation.
I mean, if you're on a boat, even just standing because the boats, you know, moving a little bit underneath you, your muscles are having to do a little bit of adjusting all the time, or if you. just busy yourself, walk over there, talk to somebody standing, walk over to the other side of the boat, talk to somebody else standing, those kinds of things.
So just trying to move. If you're on a beach, how about if you make a sandcastle? How about if you walk along the shore?
How about if you go stand with your toes in the water, watching the swimmers, you know, and shift your weight from one foot to the other. I mean, just not to be sitting totally still, just laying like a lump on a, uh, bump on a log.
And then if we talk about your muscles, so now if we look at the whole summer, not just, you know, your particular seven day, 14 day vacation trip, where, as I said before, you don't need to be so worried that, Hey, I couldn't make it to the gym there. All right. Let's say the whole summer. Now, for example, this week is a super good example here.
Where I live. The days where you can actually be in a t shirt and shorts are limited. There might be six of them in a summer, literally, there might be six of them. And this week they are expecting really warm temperatures. So I am going to be outside as much as humanly possible rather than at the gym. So I am training accordingly.
I normally go four days a week to the gym. And this week I'm going to do. Three days, I could even do two days, but I think I can manage the three days. So you can reduce the amount of times that you go to the gym. The most important thing is that you, uh, have an intense enough training session where you are actually challenging your muscles, pushing them close to failure.
Research actually has shown that about one ninth of your normal training volume, is enough. And when they talk about training volume, they're talking about how many sets, you're doing for each muscle group, you know, so one ninth should be enough for maintaining the muscle. It's likely that we, as you know, middle aged people who are in perimenopause, menopause, we need more than that.
But in any case, that should at least make you feel like, okay, okay. So I can, I can actually go to the gym less. So if you're doing four days a week, normally all winter, and now you have this amazing, you know, you want to go to the beach with your kids. You want to go to the pool. You want to, I don't know, do some hikes with your friends.