We often think of vacation as a means of getting away from our restrictive lifestyles, and who can blame us? What if I told you that you can still have that refreshing and exciting vacation without compromising your weight loss goals and your healthy lifestyle? Listen for four amazing health tips!

Whether it’s Aunt Mary’s lasagna or an International Pie Eating Contest that you envision while on your vacation, I will show you how to use your food journal, healthy and positive visualization techniques, as well as other healthy diet tips in for for your to reach your health and diet goals. Using these four amazing, healthy lifestyle (and vacation!) tips, I will show you how to plan for a fun, relaxing, and healthy vacation with a positive and productive mindset.

It’s never too late to lose weight-- whether you vacation in Italy or in the backyard with your grandchildren! Let’s make your vacation a positive, exciting, and healthy memory where you reach your diet goals rather than a trip that you need to “recover” from after coming home!

If you like what you heard today, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. The more reviews we receive, the more women will learn about the podcast and learn from these lessons. If you know someone who is struggling with food, send them a link to the podcast and maybe they can find something here they haven’t heard before!

Listen to the Full Episode:

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

How does visualization impact how I view taking a vacation and how does this impact my health goals and expectations?
How can I use a positive, healthy mindset and my food journal to take a vacation from my everyday life without sacrificing my healthy body or weight loss goals?
What are the four health tips that I can follow in order to maintain or even lose weight while on vacation?
How can I lose weight or maintain a healthy lifestyle through the anticipation of challenges and obstacles?
What are the six essentials necessary to create my strategic and healthy plan?

Featured on the Show:

Review “Simple Meal Planning” on Episode 31 to reinforce planning strategies for healthy lifestyles!
Review how to use a food journal in order to maximize and reflect on your weight loss goals.
I absolutely love my “qwerky” typewriter! Get yours here!
If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming episodes, send me an email at pat@beauprecoaching.com
If you like what you heard today, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave a review.
Join me in my closed Facebook group – It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight.

Download the Full Episode Transcript:

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Full Episode Transcript

With Your Host

Pat Beaupre Becker

You are listening to, It's Never Too Late To Lose Weight. A podcast with Pat Beaupre Becker, Episode 33.

Welcome to It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight, a podcast for women approaching 60 who have been successful at everything, but reaching their weight loss goals. Tune in each week for tools and strategies to help you lose weight, create a strong body and support a healthy mind. Here's your host, master certified weight and life coach Pat Beaupre Becker.

Hello, my dears, today I am so excited, because I want to tell you that you can go on vacation and lose weight. And I want those of you who have vacations planned, between now and the end of the year, to especially listen up. You can grab a note pad, take notes so that you can create your own vacation plan.

Now, clients who work with me while they're planning and traveling on vacations, which happens quite often, are amazed when they return home, having not gained any weight and/or having lost weight.

Now, the reason they're so shocked and amazed is because, in the past, the way they approached vacation included lots of “deserved” indulgences, escape from work, distressing with food and leaving the mundane activities of daily living behind. That's how they looked at it.

Now, if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that the results you achieve in your life will be determined by what you think, the sentences in your brain, how you feel when you think of those sentences and what you do in relationship to that feeling and in relationship to that circumstance.

So here's what I mean. If you see your vacations, if you think about your vacations as a time of renewal, connecting with friends and family, connecting to nature, and being present with joy, you will have a very different experience of your vacation, than if you thought, "Oh, it's a time to let loose. I don't want to think, just going to eat and drink everything that I normally don't eat, because my normal life is just so restricted." Now, you could already be retired and so vacation is not so much about getting away from work, but you could think of it as an opportunity to see different parts of the world, to break up your routine, or sharing time with friends and family, or maybe you want to take advantage of opportunities to extend exercise with more swimming and hiking and biking. Sometimes it means sitting around on the beach, reading trashy novels, or it could mean exploring faraway places and cultures.

Whatever opportunities you have to take a vacation are up to you. Whatever form your upcoming vacation will take, it is crucial to look at your goal, how you think about that vacation, and what your expectations are for yourself, and the time you have on vacation. So what about this? What if you started your vacation with a vision of the day of your return, so you can just imagine you arrive home, you open the door, you drop your bags in the hallway, you go to your bedroom, and you flop on the bed. You feel really tired, but really good. You didn't overindulge. As a matter of fact, you ate incredibly healthy, tried new foods you never had tried before, and you actually exercised more than you expected, and you can truthfully say this was the best vacation of your life and why? Because you connected to people, and you connected to yourself, and you treated yourself with respect, you didn't suffer due to over drinking, overeating and been punishing yourself for taking one more portion or one more spoonful.

Instead, you risked walking a little more, jumping into that cool ocean or sitting under the waterfall, or just sitting around the campfire with your grandchildren singing songs, not necessarily eating S'mores, but maybe you planned on having a S'mores, and you just had it without guilt. So how do you create this vacation?

I'm going to give you four tips so that you can decide, in advance, if you want to lose weight on your vacation or if you want to maintain your weight on your vacation.

The first tip is to start with a vision. Exactly what we just did. I want you to create a mental formation of returning home. What is the result that you want to have? Do you want to feel good? Do you want to have lost the same weight that you were losing before you vacation? Are you happy just to come back the same weight? Whatever it is you want, you create that formation of yourself arriving home, being proud of yourself.

The second tip is to create a plan that you can deliberately practice each day on vacation. Now, some of you might be like, "Oh, this is just work," and it is going to take a little bit of effort beforehand, but remember, if your goal is to see yourself coming back from your vacation feeling really good, then this is what will help you to do that. This is what will create that situation.

So we're going to create a plan and there're six essentials that I want you to consider when you're creating your plan. One is, what is that goal? Is it to lose weight? Is it to return the same weight? Is it just to maybe just not eat so much dessert or maybe not drink so much or not drink at all, or maybe to have one glass of wine every night or maybe it's to continue to eat the same as you do in your daily life when you're not on vacation, whatever it is, your goal, right, that's the most important thing.

Now, the essential number two is decide what you're going to eat and drink, so if you're staying with your family, and you're cooking for yourself, how do you want to prepare your food? If you're traveling to the south, what are the foods that you can get there and where will you be able to get those foods? If you're traveling to Europe, you want to do some research, you want to see what kinds of food are actually common and available to you, and then you decide those are the foods you're going to enjoy, and you want to seek out as much whole foods as possible. You commit to using your food journal and decide what you will eat 24 hours in advance to the best of your ability. Now, you want to allow for exceptions, If that's what you want. If you want to have a dessert, then you plan to have that one dessert, but you plan 24 hours in advance and then you just get to enjoy it.

The third essential is to review what kind of beliefs, what kind of thoughts -- sentences in your own brain -- you need to believe and practice in order to choose activities other than eating, right, choose things that are going to keep you engaged in the life around you instead of indulging in overeating.

Now here are some examples of things you probably don't want to believe, because they are disempowering, and you can just imagine when you think these thoughts, how they feel to see if, for you, they are disempowering.

So, thoughts like: I need a break from everything healthy. I deserve to eat and drink whatever I want on vacation. Look, I can always get back home and go on a diet. I have to eat all the different foods offered to me and all these different places come on. Why bother to even try to control myself on vacation? Hey, vacations are supposed to be filled with indulgences and letting go. What is the point of denying myself anything on vacation then it's not a vacation. I try to be good all year. I can be bad for a brief time. I just want to stop thinking, I don't want to control myself," right?

Those disempowering beliefs and thoughts are going to lead you to feel like you just have to have something extra to eat, that you have to overindulge.

Let's look at some different beliefs that you can consider and practice and plan to practice in order to succeed in reaching this goal of arriving home, you either having lost weight or staying the same weight.

Here are some examples of beliefs or thoughts you can practice for success: I'm looking forward to being with friends and learning new things. My goal is to relax while taking really good care of myself. I'm going to attempt new activities, maybe I'll go swimming, maybe I'll go diving. I choose to eat food for fuel. I'm going to return home proud of myself. I feel better when I choose real food, and the right portions. Hey, this is going to be a learning experience. I choose to eat on plan. Hey, I choose to eat whole healthy foods all around the world. I will include all exceptions in my plan. I will eat for fuel, not for entertainment.

So those are some ideas. You might have your own thoughts that make you feel empowered, that actually will inspire you, to have confidence, to know that if you choose those whole foods, you are going to feel better and that you are going to get you what you want.

Now the fourth essential of your plan is to list any obstacles that you can count on that you know is going to challenge this practice of this thinking, right? Maybe it's Aunt Mary's Lasagna, or maybe it's an annual pie eating contest with all of your best friends from college, or maybe you're just going to be spending all of your vacation in a hotel. Maybe you know that your family dinners are just centered it on an overabundance of food and drink. Whatever the obstacle that's going to create a difficulty for you practicing those thoughts and carrying them out.

You want to take the essential number five, which is to create a strategy for each obstacle. So maybe you let your best friend know that you won't be participating in the pie eating contest this year. You can allow your friends to be upset with you, without you having to indulge, if that's what you don't want to do. Maybe your sister pushes your buttons. You know there're lots of insults that you feel are disguised as compliments, and they really irritate you.

How are you going to react to them? You want to create a plan. What would be your strategy? Let's say you're staying in a hotel or maybe packing your breakfast and maybe figuring on buying your lunch and getting a refrigerator for your hotel room is going to help you be successful. Now, I want to ask you if you're with your family, you probably have family members who are vegetarians or maybe allergic to certain foods and there's no drama when people really consider them and their needs, and I want you to do the same. You have your needs. Just let people know what it is. No drama, lots of fresh fruit, salads, grilled meats. Come on, what is the problem?

Central item number six for creating your plan is to create a list of things you want to do that aren't centered around food. Maybe you're going to a place, and you want to visit a museum or learn about the culture. Maybe you want to get to know someone in your circle better. Maybe you just are going to be willing to let someone know more about you. Maybe you're going to jump into the ocean, even if you feel scared, maybe even walk around in your bathing suit, even if that feels a bit uncomfortable. Think of the things you enjoyed doing as a child and seek out some lighthearted fun. So you want to create a list of all those things so that, you never know, you just take out that list and if nothing comes to mind, you can pick something on the list.

So those are the six essentials for creating your plan.

Now, once you have that plan, the third tip you want to do is to review each day to see what's working and what can be made better. So, for example, let's say that sister who triggers your emotions, and you feel upset, right? Maybe you want to write about her. Maybe you want to come up with some thoughts that you can really believe about her, that the things that you love about her, the things that are funny and also true. If you can broaden the way you look at a person or a place, you may just find that there are better feelings that you can have along with the negative feelings. Allow both the negative, and the positive to live side by side.

So, fourth tip is when you get home, you want to evaluate the trip. How did it go? What did you learn? What surprised you? What were some strategies that were effective, and what strategies weren't? Celebrate your wins and see what you can learn about maybe where you miss the mark. I really believe if you use deliberate practice to take a different kind of vacation, you can come home refreshed, healthy and empowered, and once again, how? Creative vision of yourself achieving that weight loss and coming home. Two, make a plan that includes identifying the obstacles and coming up with strategies to overcome those obstacles. Number three, review your plan at the end of each day, and number four, review the entire trip and make sure to celebrate your wins.

Life is to be lived and life is to learn, so if you struggle with losing weight in your fifties and sixties, a vacation can actually be an opportunity to learn real self-care, and you can leave self-sabotage behind. There are benefits of maintaining the momentum that you started before you go on vacation, right, versus coming back and starting all over again, and when you deliberately practice things, you're not only learning something new, but you also build and expand your capacity to do more or maybe even to just plan more efficiently. So I want you to really enjoy this vacation. I want you to surprise yourself. Decide what it is you want to do on this vacation and have a fabulous time. Now, I want to talk about my favorite things.

I recently found a store called b8ta a that supports the manufacturing and sales of unusual and innovative products, not necessarily that you can buy everywhere, right? So I actually tested this little keyboard called the Qwerkywriter and it is a typewriter that's inspired by a mechanical keyboard. It is, in look and feel, like a perfectly honed Underwood Manual Typewriter. I'm going to use it right now. I get such satisfaction when my fingers are hitting the keys. Is it nostalgic? Yeah, I guess so. Even the sound is deeply satisfying. What do you think? I don't know if you can hear it but I just love it. So I wanted you to know that I thought this was going to be like a crazy purchase, like who needs a new keyboard and why would I need a keyboard that looks like a typewriter, but I have to tell you I love using it and I use it now as I dropped all my podcast notes, and I don't think there really is a memory that is true of the keyboard that sounds and feels as good as this one does.

But you know what? The illusion of the Qwerky typewriter, it's just perfect for this 65-year-old brain and fingertips. So if you want to look it up, you can go to www.qwerkywriter.com, and they will be a link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening to. It's Never too Late To Lose Weight, the podcast that knows that you can change your brain at any age, as long as you're willing to be intentional, kind and use deliberate practice and losing weight on vacation can be just the beginning. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle in your 60s in a strong body and a healthy mind and with joy and purpose, oh gosh, it's available to you -- and your mother! I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of It's Never Too Late To Lose Weight. If you liked what you heard and want more head over to never2late.info/guide, to download your quick start guide to jumpstart your weight loss plan and begin creating an amazing life you love.