Travelling to a foreign country, spending time on a beach, going out at night and drinking too much, while there is an abundance of delicious foods you must and want to try.
Have you been in a similar situation? Holidays aren`t the right time to restrict yourself, but how do we get rid of the extra fat? How do we get back to “normal” and feel like we used to feel?
There is a lot of damage you can do during a vacation. I will show you some methods to counteract this damage and get rid of it as fast as possible.
I am not talking about what you can do before or during your trip! This time we start the moment you hop on your plane back home!
The flight back home
I could start with telling you about how a plane is not the best environment for any one, but you probably know that already. It is especially bad, if your immune system is already weak, but there are supplements you can take to improve your situation.
This includes Vitamin D3, Vitamin C, Zinc, Magnesium and Glutathione, but most people can`t or won`t take a box full of pills on a trip. Maybe they take a hand full of pills to get on a trip!
I provide you with some methods, that anybody can do on their flight home, or on any plane. They don`t require any red or blue pills, or going down a rabbit hole.
- Drink a lot of water
-> The cabin air is really dry, so your body requires more water than usual.
-> Avoid alcohol before or during a flight, because it is dehydrating.
-> You have to go to the bathroom more often! Moving around in a plane is always a good thing and peeing is a way to get rid of toxins.
- Keep warm
-> The temperature on a plane can be changing a lot during the flight, so ask the flight attendants for an extra cover.
-> Ask for tea. On a plane the standard tea is black tea, which has caffeine, so ask for another one like chamomile tea.
- Reduce the noise
-> A plane has around 80 decibel, so get some earplugs with noise cancelling and listen to some chill music or audio book.
- Ground yourself on a plane
-> These days you are flying in a huge microwave. The moment you land on the ground every passenger turns on their cellphone, turns off the flight mode, or even worse, some airlines allow wifi for their whole flight! Even if it is currently unknown what effects this will have on our body, I guess you can imagine that this does not sound like the best environment to be in.
-> To ground yourself on a plane you have to put a foot on the metal casing of a seat. Barefoot. This will help with radiation on the flight. Touching the plance works also.
After the flight
During holidays people put on a ton of weight, from drinking one two many cocktails and eating too much at the “all inclusive” buffet.
I rarely put on even a pound while travelling, but that is worth writing a separate article for.
How to get rid of the extra pounds as fast possible?
You can use the rapid fat loss principles from a previous article, or you can try another method, which I recommend after travelling, or after prolonged partying.
This is a customized method from Brad Pilon`s Eat stop eat protocol.
The moment you arrive at home you start with an intermittent fasting setup for several days, depending on how you feel and how much weight you want to lose.
This intermittent fasting setup is not the regular fast for 16 hour and then you have an 8 hour eating window. No, this is a 20-24 hour fasting period, or fasting day!
How does this work?
To get rid of the extra body fat, you use this fasting approach. You skip your breakfast and lunch. The dinner consists of mainly vegetables, meat, fish, and some potatoes! Do this for a maximum of seven days, or until you are back to baseline. Depending on how much weight you have gained during your vacation, this can take longer.
- no calories for 20-24 hours per day
- one or two meals in the evening
- during the day: Only water, black coffee and tea or a little bit of sugar/calorie free drinks and gums
- The meal should be very high in protein and micronutrients, usually you could eat what you want, but we want you back feeling good
The diet is very restrictive and should not be followed for more than a week. In one week you should already be back to feeling good again, it usually takes me one or two days to be back.
Depending on how much weight you gained and want to get rid of, the fat loss can take a bit longer. There are many ways to continue afterwards with a less restrictive and more “enforceable/flexible” diet to pursue and reach your goals!
If you really like the feeling and results fasting provides you, you can either try a different intermittent fasting method, or do Brad Pilon`s Eat stop eat protocol. It basically comes down to only doing the 20-24 hour fasting days once or twice per week.
How does a sample day look like?
Wake up and drink some water! Sparkling water has a better hunger blunting effect, so you definately need to try it out.
Drink some black coffee and preferably from good quality fresh coffee beans less in toxins. Coffee has an amazing hunger blunting effect, if it is made from coffee beans.
After you have fasted for 20-24 hours, you eat your first meal. You could eat at 8pm on a Monday and on the follwing tuesday Tuesday your eating window starts a bit earlier from 6pm to 10pm with a prolonged dinner.
Eat “clean” foods. Get a lot of protein and micronutrients and take some antioxidants, like Vitamin C, Krill oil or glutathione
Protein is the most filling macronutrient and also the one with the least amount of calories per gram. One gram of protein has only four calories, but in reality it is more like 3.2 calories per gram, because of the thermic effect of food.
You can eat up to a 120g of protein or more in this meal and trust me, afterwards you won`t be hungry anymore.
For example: 400g of chicken breast with a 250g vegetable mix, 500g of potatoes and a dessert with 50g protein powder and 250g raspberries. Still hungry?
Why does this work?
You are skipping all of your meals till dinner. This automatically creates a huge caloric buffer and if you don`t eat all of your daily calories in one meal… You will be in a caloric deficit and lose fat!
There are people who can eat an insane amount of calories in one meal, but this is not only about fat loss, it is mainly about getting back to feeling good after all those mojitos under the sun. That`s why during these days all of your foods should be “clean” and unprocessed foods, that are filling and satisfying.
This is not the only magic fasting has! Yeah you can create a caloric deficit way easier than with 6-8 meals per day and yes, you can drop some unwanted pounds, but fasting also triggers a process called: Autophagy.
Autophagy gets triggered after a while without consuming any food. It is already ongoing during your sleep and if you don`t consume any calories during the day, you can prolong this mechanism.
Ever heard of detox diets? Detox diets are mostly crap or not working, but the closest thing you can actually do to detox your body is fasting and “Autophagy”.
An easy explanation of what this mechansim does is: It cleans up and recycles old cells.
Associated with autophagy are numerous health benefits, for example life extension or helping with several diseases like dementia.
There are many more benefits to fasting.
So you feel like crap after travelling and you have a load of toxins and free radicals running wild? Fasting and taking antioxidants will help you feel better.
What else can you do?
Drink more water than usual, because that is one way to get rid of all the crap in your system.
Sleep is very important to recuperate as fast as possible and also in reducing hunger throughout the day.
You can also try to walk barefoot outside to ground yourself after flying. Many health gurus recommend grounding as a method against jet lag.
There is one negative thing with this protocol though. I have to admit, that the frequent walks to the bathroom, since your body is flushing out all the toxins, stored water from carbohydrates and more, is super annoying!
With these tips you shouldn`t worry about red wine and gelato in italy, kanebullar in Sweden, sushi in japan or any other delicious treat on your vacation. So enjoy travelling!
Additional resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12428033
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219002/
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