231. Replay: Sticking to Your Plan – Even on Vacation

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 231. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Sticking to Your Plan – Even On Vacation. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, the kids are out of school, the weather is amazing, and you are going on vacation.

But you might be worried because in the past, going on vacation meant going off the rails, you’re on vacation. So you just want to have fun, right? You deserve to live a little, if this means coming home 10 pounds heavier and hating yourself, is it really all that fun?

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to offer up some helpful tips for sticking to your plan, even on vacation so that you can come home feeling good about yourself.

But first one thing I wanted to talk to you guys about really quickly is coaching, if this is something that you might be interested in, if you’re looking for some help and some guidance, and some support, to lose weight, to get healthier, to feel better, to have more energy to improve your strength to improve your running, then coaching might be a good fit for you.

It is not for everybody, I get that some people like to do stuff on their own, they don’t want to invest time or money into a coach that’s going to hold them accountable. That’s going to make sure they do what they say they’re going to do that’s there to you know, help them to get results.

But also is there to kind of call you out on some of your BS, because sometimes we get lost in our own stories, our own excuses, our own reasons why we can’t get the results that we want. And being a coach, I can see through a lot of that stuff, and help you to see through that stuff as well. And start taking responsibility for your own results.

Some people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to take responsibility for their own results. They’d rather just blame other people or blame their life situation or their stress at work or whatever for what it is that’s keeping them stuck and not able to lose the weight or stick to a plan or whatever it is.

But as a coach, I can just tell you right now that I can help you to work through all of that stuff. Okay, so if you want to hit the easy button on getting better results and becoming the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me, you and I will jump on a zoom call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.

It isn’t for everybody. I’m gonna be honest with you. There’s some people that I talk to and they’re just like, yeah, this isn’t really a good fit for me. And that’s fine. That is fine. There’s a lot of people that it is a good fit for them and a lot of people that get really good results.

And we have a lot of fun doing this too. It’s not a suffer fest. We’re not suffering our way to getting healthy and losing weight. We are actually having fun. Okay. So if you want to learn how to become the best version of yourself, go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. We’ll jump on a call, and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool.

Okay, so today’s episode is a replay. So it’s about sticking to your plan, even on vacation. And this episode originally aired back in June of 2021. And I recorded this after taking a trip to Florida. And I’m mentioning this now because in this episode I talk about like COVID and the COVID travel restrictions being lifted and being able to travel freely again.

And I wanted to make sure you had a little context of like when did this all take place. So this was in you know, June of ‘21. And people were starting to travel more freely and so it was a good time to be traveling. I also really wanted to touch on this topic of what to do when we go on vacation because so many people I work with so many of my clients, they really stress out and they worry about traveling.

They worry about going on vacation when they’re trying to stick to a certain food plan. They’re trying to lose weight. Because in the past when they go on vacation, they tend to blow it and they tend to just go crazy. They gain a bunch of weight and they come back feeling terrible, hating themselves.

We don’t want to do that there’s a different way to approach vacation. And I go over all of that. In this episode, I was actually looking through my notes for this episode today when I was thinking about recording this. And I was like, you know what, this is really good. I’m just going to replay this episode. It’s very relevant.

This is exactly what I wanted to say to you guys here today. So I’m just going to replay this. So without further ado, I’m gonna let this play out here. So here it is the replay of episode 76 Sticking to Your Plan – Even On Vacation, I hope you enjoy it. Alright, cool.

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 76 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, I’m talking about how to stick to your plan. Even on vacation. Listen, it’s vacation season, right? The kids are out of school, the COVID travel restrictions are easing up and you, my friend, are going on a trip. Amazing, right?

But what that usually means is that you go completely off the rails eat and drink your way into oblivion and come back hating yourself. Am I right? At least that’s what I used to do, you probably don’t do that. But if you’re if you’re one of those people that’s thinking there’s just no way you’re gonna be able to get through this vacation without gaining 5 or 10 pounds and coming home feeling like crap, then I’ve got some good news for you.

Because listen, it doesn’t have to be like that. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be offering up some helpful tips for sticking to your plan, whether it’s you know, a food plan or an exercise plan, even on vacation and being able to have fun and enjoy your vacation too. Because you can do it all you absolutely can.

But first, be sure to check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. If you haven’t already checked us out over there. I created this group so we could have a conversation so you could ask questions and get help and support. And we can encourage each other and support each other through our big goals.

And it is a fun group. It’s a lot of fun. We have fun doing this. If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong. I say that all the time. Just go to Facebook search for Running Lean community. And join us join in on the fun.

And here’s another quick five star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Leanne. She says, “A must-listen for runners. I found this podcast when searching for a podcast for runners with an emphasis on diet and nutrition. Patrick’s topics each week were just what I was looking for to improve my running performance. I also worked with Patrick as a personal coach.”

Yes, she did. Leanne is amazing. And she goes on to say, “I was able to take my running to new levels and learn from Patrick that I could do much more than I thought I was possible as a runner in my early 60s. Thanks, Patrick, for your commitment to the running community and for providing these weekly podcasts that are fun, inspiring, and full of tough love.”

And Leanne is the most awesome, thank you so much. Leanne was really, really awesome to work with, by the way. And yeah, I hope this is fun. It’s supposed to be fun. And if you would like to share in the fun, and you get something out of this podcast, it would mean a lot to me. If you could take a moment and go to what is it like Apple podcasts where you can leave a review, just tap the stars and jot down a few words if this is if you’re getting something out of this, I’d love that.

And then listen, if you ever want a little help, losing some weight or, or improving your running performance or getting leaner, getting stronger, you know, running faster running longer than you ever thought you possibly could I have got you covered. As a one-on-one coach, I work with runners every single day, who want to become more who want to become the healthiest, most badass versions of themselves. This is what I do.

You know, a coach doesn’t just like tell you what to do. A coach is somebody that works with you and figures out the best plan for you, and holds you accountable for sticking to that plan. This is why the coach is so powerful because it’s very hard to stick to things on your own. Right.

I mean, this is was always my experience. It’s very hard. I know what to do. It’s very hard for me to stick to it on my own. But with a coach, I have that accountability and the encouragement to do the hard stuff. And I’m willing to like push myself harder with a coach just like when you’re at the gym and you’re you have a personal trainer, they’re saying come on, you can do one more, you can absolutely do one more.

But if you’re on your own, you’re like, I’m good. So coaching isn’t for everybody. So what we’ll do is we’ll you can go on the website, you can fill out a quick application, there’s like one question on there I want you to answer but then we’ll jump on a quick zoom call you and I will have a conversation. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you.

That’s all, we’ll just have a convo and we’ll talk about it. And if it’s a good fit great if it’s no big deal, you haven’t lost anything yet. There’s nothing to lose by doing this. So just go torunningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we’ll see if coaching is the right fit for you. All right, cool.

Let’s get on to this topic today because I’m kind of excited to talk about this. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. So I just got back from vacation, I was on vacation, and I took a vacation. I was in Florida for eight days, I went to this place that I absolutely love. And it’s just such a cool place. And it was one of these places that my ex-wife and I used to go to, in fact, she was the first one that took me there, she used to live in that area down to Florida.

And she’s like, oh, we got to go vacation this place. And we went there many, many times. And I just fell in love with this place. And honestly, it was a, it was a big decision for me, whether I wanted to go back to this place or not.

Because when I think of the beach vacation, I think of this place, and it’s just the there’s restaurants and shopping and a beach and a pool, like everything is just right there within walking distance, it’s on this little island, like you’re just, it just feels like you’re, you’re away from it all, you know.

And I just love this place so much. And I thought do I want to go back to the place that I went to, but I used to vacation with my ex-wife? And I talked to my coach about it. And she was like, Patrick, you can absolutely do this, you want to do this. If this is something you want to do, you should do it and make new memories, and create a new way of thinking about this place.

Because I always associate this place with her, you know, and or us, you know, as a couple or whatever. So, and the other thing is, I’ve never taken a vacation by myself before. You know, listen, I’m 54 years old, I’ve done a lot of traveling, I’ve gotten to visit family and stuff like that by myself, whatever.

But I’ve never really gone on an actual like week-long vacation, alone and just to like be by myself. So this was all out of my comfort zone, you guys, and I gotta tell you, I’m so glad I did it. I’m so glad I did it. Because I learned so much about myself, I learned that I can absolutely have fun, and be content and, and feel so good being alone.

And honestly, I was never really alone. I would go out walking on the beach every day, go for runs, there’s people all over the place. Every night, I would go out to dinner, sit at the bar, talk to people talk to the bartenders, whatever, and I was just having so much fun. And it was so chill, I came back so relaxed, I just feel so amazing.

So vacations are amazing. We need to take vacations, they’re so good for us, they’re good for our, for our body, they’re good for stress relief, they’re good for our mind, they’re good for our soul, you know, like all there are all these amazing benefits of taking a vacation. So I’m really glad I did this, I’m glad I went by myself, I have created all these new memories.

And, and, and I can absolutely do this again and I’m looking forward to taking another vacation by myself. I really enjoyed this I loved it. I’m very content being a lot, I’m okay with that. And, you know, to be able to be okay with being by yourself. I think that’s a sign of, you know, self-confidence of self-awareness of, you know, evolving as a human. So, I felt really good about my decision to do this. And I’m glad I did. So vacations are awesome.

I just got back and I wanted to share some stuff with you guys because a lot of people that I talk to I’m coaching people all the time and they tell me, oh yeah, I’m getting ready to go on vacation. I’m really nervous about it. Because and then they say they go on to tell me how in the past, what they would do is they use vacation as a way to just say eff it to everything right?

And they get into that mode of just like screw everything. They eat whatever they want. They go completely bananas on everything, you know, drinking, eating desserts, the all you can eat buffets, whatever it is okay. And, and then they always come back feeling terrible and hating themselves.

They come back feeling very regretful about all the stuff they did, you know, I’ve never seen anybody go on vacation, eat and drink their way into, you know, 10 or 15 pounds heavier or whatever it is, and then really feel good about themselves afterward. You know, most people do not feel good about themselves if they just go completely off the rails on vacation.

So what is the alternative, you know? So if you’re the kind of person who is sticking to some sort of diet or exercise plan right now, so maybe you’re in a mode of like, I’m trying to lose weight right now. Or maybe you’re training for an event, and you’re concerned about what might happen.

If you take a break from your normal life, so if you if you’re training for a marathon, let’s say, and you’re, you take a vacation, this is going to kind of be a little bit more challenging for you to stick to your training plan, right? So if you if you’ve got a long run to do on the weekend, where you’re going to be, you know, in, in Maui or something like that, like, are you going to be able to stick to your training plan? Right?

Or, you know, if you associate vacation with eating everything in sight, and drinking like crazy, every single night, then, and you want to lose weight, though? Like, is this in alignment with your goals? Like, is this gonna work for you? Okay, so these are the kinds of things we want to kind of think about here.

And I have a friend who was training for a marathon, and for a spring marathon this year, and we did all these training runs together. And, you know, he was doing great and really on track, and then he went on vacation. And you know, he didn’t run much, he kind of cut his runs shorter, ate and drank differently, let’s say, you know, I don’t know how much he ate and drank. But I’m assuming it was different from what he was doing before.

But this person came back from that vacation feeling not very confident, and the running was really hard. And he felt defeated. And he’s just like, you know, what, I’m just gonna do the half instead, yes, I switched from the full marathon to the half marathon. And listen, there’s nothing wrong with this, that’s totally fine.

You know, like, if that’s what you want for yourself, that’s fine. But if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I want to run this marathon, and I want to take this vacation, and how can I do both? You know, how can I stay healthy? How can I continue to eat right? Or maybe lose weight, or whatever it is? Stick with my exercise plan? How can I do all this? While I’m on vacation? Right?

So if that’s you, then this podcast is absolutely for you. If you’re the kind of person that’s like, you know what, when I go on vacation, all rules are out the window, then, but you probably don’t need to listen to this. Because you’re gonna just do your own thing. And that’s totally fine.

But we, I think a lot of times, you get it into your mind that going on vacation means that everything has to be different, you have to stop exercising, you know, like, oh, I’m working so hard all year long. You know, I just want to go on vacation and just relax, you know? And so I’m just gonna say no, to everything that I’ve been doing up to this point, well, it doesn’t have to mean that at all.

Okay, you get to decide what vacation means for you, you get to decide what your vacation looks like for you. And if you’re saying, well, I’ve always done this in the past, this is the way I’ve always done it. That doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it the same way. You know, not if you want something different for your future. If you want something different for yourself in the future, you may have to stop doing the same things over and over and over again, that has got you where you are today, right.

So my suggestion is to think about, you know what it is you want for yourself when you go on vacation? Who is it that you want to be when you get home from this vacation, okay? Another issue is that a lot of people seem to equate overeating or eating other sugar or overdrinking with fun.

In other words, I want to have fun on this vacation. Can I just have a little fun? Which means what does that mean to eat ice cream every day? Twice a day three times a day eat dessert every night. Binge up on the all-you-can-eat buffet. This was so me. I’ve been to all these resorts where they have like an all-you-can-eat buffet and there’s always that dessert section it’s like whole tables and tables of just like desserts.

I would eat as much food as I could possibly have. So stuff from all the food you know, because it’s all you can eat everything and I go back and eat all the desserts like I would have to try them all because you know this one looks good. So does that! So I would just like I would make two trips three trips to the dessert section. Okay, so maybe that’s just me.

But then I would feel like crap the next day. So today this is not my idea of fun. Okay, but if your idea of fun means you have to like drink a lot, you know, and eat a lot or eat all the sugar eat all the crappy food, then, you know, I think we just have to get get it into our heads. What do we mean by fun? What does that mean to us?

You know what, what does it mean to have fun on vacation? And I’ll talk about this more in a minute. here, but I just want you to start thinking about this like, what? What is it that you want for yourself? For your vacation?

Okay, so one of the most important things that I suggest people do when they’re getting ready to go on a vacation is deciding ahead of time. How do you want to be when you come home, like how do you want to feel about yourself, when you come home from this vacation?

Do you want to feel good about yourself? Or do you want to feel, you know, bloated, and regretful, and ashamed and guilty? Or do you want to feel confident, and proud of yourself, because you get to decide? One thing I suggest people do is to decide ahead of time, whether they want to maintain their weight on vacation, continue to lose weight, or gain weight on vacation because you can actually choose one of those three options.

One of those three things is going to happen. Anyway, but if you go into your vacation, thinking, let’s say you’re trying to lose, you’re saying that you’re in the middle of losing, like 50 pounds or something, right? And you’re like, well, you just have this thing in your head of like, yeah, when I’m on vacation, I’ll probably still continue to lose some weight, but then you eat whatever the hell you want to while you’re on vacation, and you come back and you’re like, what happened? I, I was doing so good.

And then you know, I went on vacation, and now I’m up five pounds, you know, and then you feel like crap about yourself, you beat yourself up about it, you end up quitting on yourself. It’s all because you didn’t have an intention going into your vacation, you didn’t have a plan, I always want people to decide ahead of time what they want for themselves. So do you want to lose weight, maintain or gain because you get to choose, this is going to determine how you show up each day?

You know, if you’re if your goal is to maintain weight, during your vacation, you can kind of just do what you’re doing, you know, maybe indulge a little bit here and there. If you want to, if you’re okay with gaining weight on vacation, just know ahead of time I’m going to gain I’m gonna allow myself to gain like five pounds on vacation.

And then you know, bang it out. Have fun with that, you know, do it, do it the way that you want to do it, just know that that’s your goal. And then when you come home, if you’ve gained 10 pounds, you didn’t do it right. Okay, you went a little, a little too excessive on that, okay? Or if your goal is to lose weight, that’s gonna determine how you show up for yourself every day, it’s gonna determine what you do, you know, each day of your vacation, okay?

So do you want to here’s another thing to decide. Do you want to keep up with your training? Exactly, you know, do you want to keep with your strength training with your running? Maybe you’re doing some cross-training, cycling, or something like that swimming? Do you want to maintain your training? Do you want to back off a little bit? Or do you want to just quit altogether?

And there’s no right or wrong answer to these things. It’s just that you have to make a decision ahead of time about what you want for yourself. Don’t say you’re going to stick to your plan, I’m going to keep exercising and, and eat right. But then go completely off the rails because that’s, that’s not being in alignment with your goals. That’s not having your own back.

When you do this, you destroy your self-confidence. You kind of undermine your own progress, you lose motivation. It is very demotivating when you let yourself down like this. So my suggestion to you, I want to encourage you to make a decision ahead of time, and then stick to that decision, whatever that is for you. Okay, do you want to continue with your exercise and an eating plan? Or do you want to like, you know, be a little more lenient, because you get to decide?

No right or wrong answer, you get to decide, just decide ahead of time. Planning ahead is one of the most important things you can do to help you stick to a plan, whether it’s whether you’re on vacation or not, honestly. And when we talk about planning ahead, you may have heard this before. But when we plan something ahead of time, especially like 24 hours in advance, we’re using a part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex.

And this is our thinking more modern, like the cognitive planning part of our brain. And when we use this part of our brain to make decisions, where we’re making good decisions, and we’re, we’re thinking through with the consequences, and it’s like the planning part of our brain. And so we always want to use that type of brain, that prefrontal cortex part of our brain, the modern thinking brain, to make decisions when it comes to what we’re going to eat how much we’re gonna drink, whether we’re going to stick to exercise playing the next day and things like that.

The alternative is we use a part of our brain called the amygdala, which is our fear center, or our primitive brain fight or flight part of our brain. This is the part of our brain that is a tiny little almond size part of our brain that’s like super ancient, and it’s designed to respond to urges and things like that, you know, very primitive.

So when you’re feeling like, I really want some cake, and you haven’t really thought this out with your prefrontal cortex, you know, your amygdala is gonna be like, eat the cake. Go back to the dessert buffet, come on, and just do it, you want to do it, you know, it’s like the good, the little angel, and the devil on your shoulders. You know, this kind of analogy is a good analogy.

So we don’t want to be caught in the moment trying to use our, you know, fear center or fight or flight or urge center to make these kinds of decisions for us. Okay, whether we’re going to work out or not, whether we’re going to eat right or not, we want to plan ahead. So that’s why it works. And it does work beautifully if you plan ahead.

So the key is to plan ahead and then stick to your plan. That’s it plan ahead, stick to your plan. This works with everything in life, you guys, every single thing you want to accomplish in your life plan ahead, stick to your plan. So I’m going to give you guys some tips and some things and I’m going to share some experiences that I had with my recent trip because I was very cognizant about this planning ahead, I really wanted to make sure that I was I wanted to stick to my plan, and I wanted to do some certain things.

So I’m going to just kind of go through what I did. And hopefully, this will give you guys some tips that you can use for your vacation. I hope you’re going on vacation soon, too. So the first thing I did was to make sure I planned my food. So I was very conscious of where I was going to stay. I wanted to stay at an Airbnb that had a kitchen like it had to have a fully stocked kitchen, a fridge, and all that stuff.

I would look at some places and they had like a hot plate or one of those tiny little mini-fridges that you can hold like, you know, 12 you know, cans of soda or whatever. And I’m like that is not going to cut it for me like I need to buy some food and I need to like I want a stocked fridge, I want to be able to cook for myself, at least one meal a day I wanted to. My plan was to cook my first meal. So I eat twice a day, around noon, then around 6 or 7pm.

And I wanted that first meal to I wanted to cook that at home every day, I wanted total control over that first meal every single day. So I made sure that the place I was staying at had a kitchen. That was important to me, okay. And then the very first thing I did when I got into town was I took an Uber over to the grocery store and I stocked up I bought everything I needed for the whole week. So I bought all the food, you know, Lacroix, eggs, bacon, sausage, butter, avocado, sour cream, like all the stuff that I typically would eat. And I and I just stocked up. That’s the only time I went to the grocery store the whole time I was there. And it was awesome.

Because I just knew that I had, you know, everything I needed for that first meal was there. And then I made that first meal at home every day. So that was one thing like planning ahead was really important for me to make sure that I did that. And I went to the store and that I stocked up.

And then for me, I made a decision that I was going to eat out every night, you know, so I went to different restaurants. I sat at the bars and I talked to people, but I would check out the menus ahead of time and you know, occasionally I would ask if they could do substitutions and things like that. But for the most part, I ate you know the items off the menu as they were prepared.

And I ate haha. Oh my god, it’s so amazing. Like the seafood down there is totally amazing. So I had fresh grouper, salmon, scallops, shrimp tacos. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So I actually made a point to go, I was eating some carbs when I was down there I made a point to like, be okay with that.

You know, I had some rice here and there I had some plantains that came with my tacos, you know and I eat the corn tortillas that came in. It’s not a big deal. You know, a few carbs here and there. But I made a point to never indulge in sugar. I did not want to do that. And so I did. And I totally stay away from sugar.

So eating out for me was amazing. And you can like, just plan ahead as much as you can with this. Know where you’re going to eat out if you can, how often you’re going to be eating out, check the menus, you can even call the restaurants and ask if they can do substitutions and stuff like that. Just tell them you have an allergy to, you know, certain foods or carbohydrates or something like that, and they’ll totally work with you. Okay.

Another thing that you can do when we’re planning food is packing snacks, making sure you bring some kind of snacks, just in case you need something, you don’t ever want to get to that place where you’re hungry, and vulnerable to temptations, right. So pack your own, like healthy snacks like nonperishable stuff, nonperishable stuff, if you can, if you need it.

Okay, so I actually brought some snacks for the plane, because, you know, I got up early, and I usually don’t eat till noon or so. But I was going to be traveling from like, basically, you know, eight o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. And I knew I was going to want to eat something in there.

So I brought, I got like a bag of this zero sugar, beef jerky. And I was like, Oh, this would be good. This would be like a little kind of lunchy type of thing I could do on the plane. But even if you’re taking a road trip in a car, like, you know, you can go to fast food places. It’s not ideal, but you can make it work. You know, you can get protein-style bunless burgers, you can get salads with chicken, you can make it work, or I think we get into this mindset of I don’t know what to do. I’ve never done this before. And I think this is not a good mindset to be in, like, so what if you’ve never done it before?

Guess what, a lot of people don’t know what to do. Why don’t you ask yourself this question instead, I wonder what’s available. I wonder how I can make this work. I wonder how I can get creative and make something work for me. Because chances are, you can absolutely make it work.

I’ve seen people get fried chicken at like, Chick-fil-A or something like that. And just like kind of peel the breading off of it and eat it and it’s delicious. You know, like, there are things you can do if you need to. I was talking to somebody last night about getting pizza. And like I did this recently where we were I was with a group of people and they all ordered pizza. And you know, there was nothing I could really order.

And so I just took the toppings off the pizza and kind of rolled them up. It was like cheese and pepperoni stuff like that. And I ate that. And I ate a lot of it. And it was delicious. And it was just left with some, you know pieces of crust with sauce on it that other people were like, Oh, can I eat that crust, I’m like sure. So it was a win-win for everybody.

Get creative. You know, even if you’re like on a road trip and you stop at a gas station, you can find something to eat like, for me I do, you know pretty low carbs I would stay away from, you know, chips and pretzels and stuff like that. But there’s like beef jerky, and nuts, pork rinds, hard-boiled eggs, pickles, like there are all kinds of stuff you can, you can find even at a crappy place like a gas station. Obviously, if you can bring your own stuff, that’s a better way to go.

Another suggestion that I have for you would be to plan your workouts ahead of time, okay. So if you’re going to want to stick to like a running program, if you’ve got a running schedule, let’s say you’re running three or four days a week, you want to get your miles in, plan ahead, plan ahead, what you’re going, where you’re going to run, how far you’re going to run where and the routes that you’re going to run.

The routes are important because a lot of times you may be in an area where I don’t know you don’t know the area. And maybe I don’t know if it’d be unsafe, but hopefully, you’re not staying in a place that is unsafe. I did this a while back when I was in Mexico, and the property owner was like, we don’t suggest you go run out on the streets around here. And I was like, ha, okay, and they said, but there is like a path that you can run around the property.

And so I did that I ran around it was a huge property. So I ran like the perimeter of the property. They actually like I think 75% of it was like a walking path anyway, so I just ran around the property and did a lot of miles on that vacation. And, you know, totally doable, you know.

Another thing you can do is like I go to Google Maps and I check the Street View and I’m like, is there a sidewalk here? You know, is this doable? Like, oh, this looks like a bridge. Is there a sidewalk on this bridge? I don’t want to be stuck on some bridge where there’s like, no, no shoulder and I’m in traffic and you don’t ever want to run on the street. You know, if there’s a lot of traffic and stuff like that, if you’re staying at a hotel or someplace, you can ask the concierge about local trails, about paths, you know, running routes, they know about all this kind of stuff.

Or maybe you’re at a place with a gym. And your only option is to like, you know, run on a treadmill, is there a treadmill available for you, you know, so when I was in Florida, I’d love running down there. Number one, I mean, there’s this long stretch of beach that I ran on every single day. So that’s amazing. I made a point to do that.

But then there’s this bridge that takes you from where I was staying over to Sarasota. And I would, I would run across the bridge and then run around the marina and stuff. And it’s just like, the views are amazing. And they got this nice ocean breeze was hot down there, but got this nice ocean breeze and just beautiful. And I plan all this ahead of time, I knew I was going to you know, run and I made a plan to run every day when I was down there.

And I did, I ran at least five miles every day down there, I did a 10-mile run, I think I did a few seven-mile runs. And really just really enjoyed it. You know, I made a point that this is important to me that I wanted to keep up with my running. And so I did it.

Another thing that I suggest if you’re doing any kind of strength training and you want to keep up with it on your vacation is to make a plan ahead of time for this as well. So if you’re staying somewhere with like a gym, you can use the hotel gym, hotels are so good. Now, they’re pretty well equipped with all this kind of stuff. But if you’re not staying at a place with a gym, you can find a local gym.

And a lot of times they’ll let you come in and just you know drop in on a class or use the gym, or maybe you belong to one of these big LA Fitness or 24-hour deals where you can just go to one of these places, those are all good too.

A couple of things that are kind of different is like find an outdoor fitness park or a playground because sometimes they have, you know, equipment that you can use to do pull-ups and you know, push-ups or bench presses or something like that, you know.

Sometimes they have those little parkour type of courses that you can kind of use to do fitness and you know, things like that it makes it kind of fun, you get outside what I did for my phone, because I didn’t have access to a gym where I was going, there wasn’t a gym in the area. And I didn’t really want to have to, you know, Uber, you know, 10 or 15 bucks every single day if I wanted to lift weights, so I decided to bring my resistance bands.

So I have this set of small, lightweight resistance bands, and you could just throw them in your suitcase, they’re super easy to bring with you. And I did, you know, a couple of workouts just to maintain my strength training while I was on vacation. And I felt really good about that. It wasn’t exactly the same, you know, but I could put enough resistance on those bands to make it pretty hard. And one of the days I was there, it was Memorial Day. And a lot of people were doing that Murph workout, which, if you don’t know what it is, it’s, it’s pretty tough.

It’s a one-mile run. And then it’s 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats. You’re supposed to do it with a weighted vest on or some sort of resistance. And I did it pretty much just with bodyweight because I didn’t have like a weighted vest or a way to do that. And I gotta tell you, that was a kick-ass strength workout.

But I felt good about doing that I felt good that I did this for myself, you know, it was a hard workout. And that one was awesome because I felt really good about sticking to that plan and sticking to my strength training because when I came home from my trip, I felt just as strong as when I left. I didn’t want to lose momentum.

I’ve been building some strength lately, I’ve been putting on some muscle, some pounds, you know, I didn’t want to lose any of that. So I wanted to keep up with it. And I absolutely did. In fact, the day that I got home the day after I got home from my trip, I went back to the gym, my gym here, and had a killer strength workout and I felt so good. I’m so glad that I kept up with it while I was on vacation, okay.

And then if you’re doing other kinds of workouts, you can find a way to do that too. Like, find a local yoga studio. If you’re doing yoga, or do yoga in your room. You can do strength training, just using bodyweight exercises if you have to as well just do it in your room. You know, other things you can do is just get out there and walk as much as possible. You know I walked on the beach every single day I walked along the beach at sunset every single night.

You can do things like rent bikes, go canoeing, go swimming, go do some rowing, stand up paddleboarding, wherever kind of, you know, hiking, whatever kind of trip you’re going on, there’s stuff you can do to stick with your plan, okay? But it all requires you to do a little bit of planning ahead of time. So that’s, that’s my really big encouragement.

And that’s my biggest, I want this to be your biggest takeaway. Plan ahead, plan ahead what you want for yourself, plan ahead, about your food, plan ahead your exercise plans, and then stick to your plan. Okay, decide who you want to be when you come home, and then stick to your plan.

And listen, you can actually choose to indulge a little bit on your vacation, you can choose to, you know, drink more than you would or, you know, eat a little bit differently if you want to just do it in a way that where you have your own back, do it in a way that is intentional. And you’re doing it with purpose, not just giving into cravings, urges, and temptations.

We don’t ever want to give in to cravings, urges, and temptations because that’s not how we build resilience. That’s not how you build new habits. That’s how you just are keeping yourself stuck to where you have been for most of your life, we got to change the way we think about this stuff, we got to change our mindset around all this stuff. Okay, planning ahead is how you do that.

Okay, so maybe you drink a little bit more, that’s fine. You know, I would suggest choosing your drinks wisely, you know, stick with the drinks that don’t contain sugar, hobbies, tropical drinks. So I went out to eat every night, I sat at the bar, and I watched them making all these drinks. And it was just like, oh, sugar, I’m going to pour some of this sugar in there. I’m going to pour some of this kind of sugar in there. And then here’s some liquor, which is mostly sugar.

Like, it was crazy how much sugar in these drinks, you know. So yeah, just make good decisions about alcohol. Make good decisions about the kinds of foods you want to eat. Like I ate more carbs than normal. I planned it. I knew I was going to do this I stayed away from the sugar. You know, I had rice at this place that made it as a side to the I had a big steak one night, which was amazing.

And as a side, they had cauliflower and potato mash. So it was like half potatoes have cauliflower. And I was like this is perfect. You know, there’ll be a few more carbs than I would normally but totally fine. Like it’s not, it’s not going off the rails here you guys, you know what I mean?

There’s a big difference between eating a couple of plantains with my tacos and eating, you know, a half a gallon of ice cream every night like I used to. Speaking of which, where I stayed, there’s this amazing gelato place and this used to be my nightly thing, I go to the gelato place every single night and order this huge big thing of gelato with one of those waffle cones. It’s just like ridiculous.

And, and I thought, Well, I’m gonna just one day I was like taking a walk around the little towns and the shops and stuff. And I’m like, I’m just gonna pop in here and see if they have some kind of sugar-free gelato option. And they did. They had sugar-free chocolate gelato, I’m like, I’m so getting some of this, which I did. And I really enjoyed it. And that was a way for me to indulge in something and not go off my plan. You know what I mean?

Like, we can do this, we can have fun, and stick to our plan. We can enjoy our vacation and stick to the plan. Decide who you want to be when you come home. For me, I wanted to be basically the same person I was when I left. I wanted to continue to feel good about myself, I didn’t want to feel crap about myself.

So my plan was to, you know, maintain my weight, maintain my running, maintain my eating as much as I could as much as I had control over. Indulge a little bit here and there, enjoy every bit of it. And come home feeling amazing, which I did. I feel like I’m proud of myself, proud of myself for taking a vacation by myself, proud of myself for going to this place that you know, had all these old memories.

I’ve created all these new memories, proud of myself for sticking to my exercise and eating plan and proud of myself for coming home feeling good and having my own back through this whole thing. Right, I’ve built more confidence because I did this all right. You can absolutely go on vacation and have fun and have an amazing time and stick to your plan.

Let’s make vacation more about the experiences of creating amazing memories with your family with your friends and relaxing and enjoying the outdoors and the adventures and creating all these experiences that will last, that’ll stay with you for a lifetime. Let’s make our vacation more about that and less about how much sugar we’re gonna eat. You know?

Because is that really the key to a vacation? Is that the most important thing for you? I’m going to say no, it’s eating and drinking your way into oblivion is not the purpose of the vacation. Right? It’s the reset, recharge, you know? Come back feeling rested and refreshed and good about yourself. Okay. All right.

Well, I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, I would love it if you would share it with a friend. And I hope you take a vacation soon. And I hope you enjoy it. I hope you decide ahead of time, who you want to be when you come home. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.