Thursday 20 June 2013

Food and Vacation

In my previous post I discussed about how to exercise during your breaks and in this post we will be looking at what I did about my eating during my time away in India.
Going back home and sticking to my eating habits has always been a challenge for various reason, the first being I’m constantly catching up with friends and family most of which is either over coffee or dinner and sometimes even breakfast!! So I find it difficult to avoid eating outside. The other thing that messes up my entire eating plan is home food. I miss my mom's food especially because when I’m on my own I rarely cook and even if I do cook it's nothing like my mom's food so I'm always looking forward to my mom's food.
This time I knew I had to handle both of the above issues without missing out all the fun or my favourite food. My plan for the vacation was

Selecting only the favourites:
I would always decide the food I ate based on two things 1.) how much I really liked it and 2.) how much I really missed eating it, so if it was something I like but I would easily get in UK I would not even look at it, basically I used up my calories only on Indian food I really loved. I skipped the Indian bread, rice and desserts instead I chose daal and other Indian vegetable/ meat recipes my mom made (I’m going to share some of easier ones here)

Portion control:
Just because I liked something doesn’t mean I overate, 95% of the times I shared my food. I would share it either with my sister or T, sometimes I would eat half portion and keep the rest for a later meal. If I knew I was going out for dinner I would eat a light lunch basically I would keep within my calorie count

Food swapping:
I think I have shared this before with all of you here. I did this whenever I went out coffee or snacks with friends. I switched to small cappuccino no sugar, popcorn instead of chips, vegetarian warps instead of burgers and grilled instead of fried..

Saying No
One very important thing I did this time was I said ‘NO’ if I did not want to eat something I was firm and I did not let pressure get the better of me.
Two weeks on a vacation and I’m happy to say I'm still on track. What do you do when you go on vacations? I would love to know so that I could add it to my list for next time.

Keep Reading I will Keep Writing 
Tanvee

2 comments:

  1. Those are really great strategies and ones that I try to follow as well. I'll have a similar post coming up soon :) Of all the points you mentioned, I think the last one is most important - saying No. I have to do that in my regular routine here in Kuwait so I'm getting better at it. Before, however, it really was the hardest thing for me to do. Practice makes perfect :)

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  2. this was the first time I practiced saying No with my family and extended relatives, the last time I went (about 1.5 years back) I put on a bit just because I could not say no..this time I had actually practiced it here :) (I know it sounds funny but I would actually tell myself 'no giving in to anybody when I get back even if people think I'm rude, no wasting all my effort just to make everybody happy and me unhappy)

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