Going on a summer holiday is one of the top reasons for starting a diet. The minute the holiday is booked, no matter where you’re going, thoughts of swimming pools, warm weather and beaches start to fill your head. From those thoughts you move on to worrying about getting the best body for the swimwear at the pool or at the beach and then the dieting begins.
Although dieting for a summer holiday is one of the most common reasons for wanting to lose weight, it is actually one of the hardest times to lose weight. This is because it is a time pressurised issue, you have a very solid deadline to get to your target weight by and if you don’t make it you might not enjoy your holiday as much. The other issue is that you’ll be looking at clothes and wanting to sort out holiday clothes to take with you, which means you will have to decide what size to buy which places even more pressure on your shoulders.
According to recent research two thirds of women go on a diet before a holiday, with the majority trying for an 8lb weight loss. Failure to lose those pounds can leave you searching desperately for a quick fix as the holiday gets closer and if you don’t make your target you could be left feeling self-conscious on your summer break.
It is a difficult situation but there are ways around it and the important thing is not to get too stressed over it. This time of year, diet companies recognise the effort by thousands of men and women to diet for a holiday and release new or restart advertising their most popular diet products. Some of these products are worth trying and could help you get in shape for your departure on holiday while others are just a waste of money. There are many natural, simple and effective ways to lose weight and some helpful products too, so don’t panic, get dieting.
Dieting for a Holiday
You should treat dieting for a holiday like dieting for any other reason, don’t let the immovable deadline stress you out, just focus on the simple and healthy things you can do to reach your target. It is important that you don’t stress too much as stress can actually be a cause of some weight gain, as stress for some people leads to an increase in their diet or they begin eating to ease the stress. It is obviously key you don’t start eating more so remain calm and come up with a plan of action to follow to help you reach your weight loss goals.
At the end of the day no matter the reason for your dieting, losing weight comes down to simply burning more calories than you consume. Every single piece of food has a calorie amount attached to it, the daily recommended amount of calories for men is around 2500 while for women it is slightly lower at 2000. Usually on a diet you are supposed to restrict how many calories you take in and try to burn off some more in order for your weight to start decreasing. You can read more about calories on the NHS website.
There are a million and one ways to get your calorie count reduced, from simply eating less and exercising more to boosting your metabolism with a diet pill or making short term sacrifices such as giving up alcohol or chocolate. If you really sit down and plan out all the changes you could make and how to fit them in to your lifestyle you can see dramatic changes in your weight and fitness levels. Allowing you to reach your targets and fully enjoy the holiday that you’ve booked.
Using The Holiday As Motivation not Pressure
It is fairly simple in theory but in practice it can be difficult to control your appetite and resist the temptations of the foods that you are used to. However in the weeks before a holiday you have to maintain your willpower and determination, continue to eat less and exercise more to see results in time. The advantage of dieting for a holiday is that you have a great motivation to succeed, the image of yourself by the pool or on the beach looking great in your swimwear, this is a great motivation that is often missing from merely dieting just to lose weight.
You can use this motivation to make simple changes to your lifestyle in the build up to the holiday. Picturing yourself, at your ideal weight, on the beach on holiday can be used to motivate yourself to walk to work rather than taking the car. You can use that motivation to visit the gym a couple of times each week or play some more sport at weekends or evenings. There are hundreds of different ways that exercise can be used to help you lose weight and it doesn’t have to cost anything or take up too much of your time.
Simply walking to work, walking your children to school or taking the dog on a slightly longer walk can have huge weight loss effects if maintained for a good few weeks before the holiday. These are all free, simple to do and won’t affect your daily routine or lifestyle too much. Walking is also a great calorie burning exercise so if you combine it with eating less your daily calorie count could fall dramatically, increasing your chances of seeing weight loss by a long way. You are likely to be busy in the run up to a holiday planning and preparing so use it as an opportunity to walk to bureau de change or walk around the shops as you look for holiday clothes.
Short Term Sacrifices
Dieting in time for a holiday means you may be more prepared to make sacrifices in order to boost your chances of losing weight in time for leaving for the airport or train station. As you will only be dieting for a very certain period of time, usually not a long period of time in the majority of cases, it may mean giving up some luxuries or making a sacrifice is easier to handle.
You may be willing to give up having chocolate or drinking alcohol for a month or slightly longer before the holiday in order to reach your target weight quicker. While during a normal diet you may be less inclined to make these kinds of sacrifices as it could go on for an indefinite amount of time, a holiday diet has a very clear end date which may make giving up some luxuries easier to bare.
Alcohol and chocolates are two good examples of things to give up as they are often items which are luxuries and not required and they both contribute to putting weight on so cutting them from your diet completely would make a big difference. Other examples could be giving up on the weekly takeaway until the holiday or not having so many snacks or fizzy drinks. Taking time to look at your eating habits and identifying what is making you put weight on is a great of realising what to cut down on in order to lose weight.
Eating the Right Things Before a Holiday
Naturally a lot of weight loss or weight gain comes down to quantities and the types of foods that are in your diet. There are hundreds of diets on the market, some that tell you to cut down or completely cut out certain food groups or others encourage you to only eat a certain type of food but at the end of the day the best kind of diet is one which is personal to you.
The best way of achieving weight loss is by sitting down before you start the diet and look at the foods you eat, the kinds of calories that go with them and think about what could be cut out or eaten less to help you to lose weight. There are things that can be replaced with healthier products like fruits or yoghurts while you may decide you can live without certain fatty foods in the few weeks of dieting before a holiday. In the majority of cases, looking in detail at the foods and the amounts of them that you eat, there will be plenty which could be forgotten about or replaced which would contribute to a healthier lifestyle and a healthier body.
Good things to eat when you are on a diet are things like fruit. It is important to try and get your five a day because fruits and vegetables can help weight loss but they also come with other health benefits including helping your body run smoothly on the inside but also help your skin look smoother on the outside. Drinking a lot of water can also help during a diet as water is a natural appetite suppressor, water also has zero calories as well as working to help our blood carry essential nutrients around our body which will help increase potential weight loss.
Getting a Helping Hand
After a period of time dieting can get very difficult, starving yourself and eating less of the foods that you enjoy eating can be a draining process. This is why a lot of people look for help in the shape of diet products or supplements and also explains the huge number of products that claim to help the pounds melt off.
It goes without saying that if you’re considering a diet pill or supplement to help tackle your weight it requires some deep research and investigation in order to make sure you’re spending your money on something that works and is safe. The last thing you want to happen is for you to be ill when you leave on holiday. Having said this if you find the right diet pill for you then it is possible you’ll find them a really helpful way of making the dieting process a little bit easier and hopefully increasing your weight loss a little too.
There are a range of different ways that diet pills can work, some of the more useful and effective ways are by suppressing your appetite or boosting your metabolism. Appetite suppressing pills can help you lose weight in a more natural way through simply eating less, the idea being that the tablets will help you to feel fuller for longer therefore wanting to eat less which in theory will boost weight loss. Metabolism boosting pills involve increasing your body’s rate of metabolism which is the rate at which fat is converted into energy, the theory behind this is that a quicker metabolism means more fat is converted and less is left excess within your body.
Whichever diet pill you choose to go with it is really important that you research the pills thoroughly in order to save you from wasting your money. This means looking at customer reviews, expert reviews of the product, finding out about the company that sells them and what potential side effects you might experience. Review sites such as dietpill-reviews.co.uk are good places to start your research as they feature well written and detailed reviews, take a look at one of their product reviews and go from there, here is for example a Slimsticks review.
Maintaining the Diet Once the Holiday Starts
For many once the holiday begins the dieting stops, especially if you have been lucky enough to reach your target weight in time for the holiday. This is completely understandable, you want to enjoy the holiday and a week or two off from work to the maximum however for many people it is case of wanting to enjoy the holiday but also not wanting to let the hard work of losing the weight before the holiday go to waste. It may sound unlikely but there are ways to enjoy the holiday while managing to control your weight and make sure you are not back at square one once you return from your vacation.
The great thing about a holiday is that you are in a new place and there are no work commitments so you have lots to discover and lots of time to do it. Get your trainers on and go for a walk around the local area, this is great exercise and you’re exploring and enjoying your new surroundings which might lead you to great shops, places or restaurants. Doing more exercise also means you can relax a bit more with the foods that you eat.
Once you get in the restaurants, being on holiday will make you increasingly tempted to eat the luxury and unhealthy foods. You’re welcome to eat more normally than you would during a diet, you are on holiday after all, however there are still degrees of healthy foods. Many fast food restaurants offer grilled chicken fillets which are tasty yet not hugely unhealthy while a plain hamburger with relish, onions and mustard is not a bad choice either. Avoiding extra sauces like tomato sauce or mayonnaise or adding any extra salt can help you avoid extra calories too.
If you managed to reach your target weight before leaving for your holiday then you’ll be keen to show off your slimmer frame around the swimming pool or on the beach. While you are there you should take the opportunity to have a swim. Swimming is great exercise and is one of the best ways to burn calories while still having fun.
Swimming works so many of the major muscles in your body and is a great cardiovascular workout, depending on how intensive your swim is you can burn between 100 and 500 calories in just half an hour. If you are on a family holiday, swimming is an opportunity to have fun with the family while getting a bit of exercise and burning a few calories. Find out more about the benefits of swimming by reading this fact file.
Healthy Food Around the Globe
Hundreds of thousands of people will be leaving theUKover the summer months in the search of warmer climates and sun soaked beaches in foreign countries. The nature of holidays is to eat, drink and be merry which doesn’t exactly sound like healthy or even dieting behaviour. However there are ways you can still eat out and enjoy great local cuisine while still being as healthy as possible. Here are some great culinary dishes from around the globe that you can enjoy without fear of coming back home a few pounds heavier.
The Caribbean
If you are lucky enough to be visiting the Caribbean for your summer holidays, one of the most popular fruits in that area of the world is the pineapple. It is one of the juiciest fruits and has a great flavour as well as coming with many health benefits. Pineapple is a great source for the vitamin thiamine, which is useful for developing healthy muscles which consequently can help you towards weight loss. Pineapples are also good for improving the nervous system and some scientists believe they help prevent the growth of cancer cells.
The Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is a popular holiday destination for people in theUKand one of the healthiest foods you can eat around the med are olives. Countries all around theMediterraneanare keen to eat from the source so rather than simply having olive oil, they’ll have olives. Olives and olive oil have some great health benefits, they are a source of good fats and omega 3, which can contribute to lowering your cholesterol. Dozens of health-protective nutrients have also been identified in olives.
Australia
Only a small number of people in this country have ever been lucky enough to travel to the other side of the world but Australia has some interesting eating habits which are worth mentioning. If you’re interested in experiencing what kangaroo tastes like then your bravery may be rewarded with some good health benefits. According to researchers at the University of Western Australia kangaroo meat is full of a good fat which encourages the body to make muscle and not fat as well as helping to reduce blood pressure. Maybe it is worth making the huge journey to the other side of the world if these health benefits are true.
Mexico
Mexican food is famous for being hot and spicy. Chilli peppers are at the heart of much Mexican dishes which, as long as you can handle bold and spicy flavours, might be a good thing as chilli pepper actually helps to lose weight. Chilli contains capsaicin which is a spicy compound that apparently helps fight cancer, relieve congestion and protect the heart. Fresh chilli peppers are also good sources for many vitamins and antioxidants.
So wherever you’re going on your summer holiday it might be worth researching some of the most popular foods and ingredients in the country you’re visiting just in case they have any hidden health benefits that might help you to stick to your target weight while you’re away.
Holidays and Weight Loss
While the prospect of a holiday can be a pressurising element for weight loss, it doesn’t have to spell disaster for holiday or mean you have to pick out swimwear that doesn’t show much skin. Instead of panicking try using the holiday as a great motivating factor in losing weight and inspire yourself to do more exercise, eat less or perhaps even sacrifice some luxuries with your dream beach body in mind.
You don’t have to go dieting crazy and rush towards the weight loss deadline, instead treat dieting for a holiday like dieting for any other reason and keep one simple equation in your head, burning more calories than you consume. There are hundreds of ways to get your calorie count down and it doesn’t have to mean rushing, panicking and extreme dieting in order to reach your goals in time. If you want an extra helping hand there are always diet products, pills and supplements available to support you on your journey.
The mad rush to lose weight doesn’t have to be left at the airport either; you can keep an eye on your weight and look out for healthy food options while you are on holiday. You can still enjoy the holiday and make the most of it but you can also enjoy, once you have returned home, stepping on the scales to see you are not back where you started.
If you can reach your target weight before you head off on the plane or train you’ll feel much happier and confident in yourself and the holiday will be that much better because of the effort you put in before you left.
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