Vacation Strategies

[reinhard]

Since it's that time of year again (and I'm going on vacation myself next week) I thought it might be nice to start an official thread to collect people's No-s vacation strategies and experiences.

I've used two strategies over the years, one pre-habitcal and one post-.

My pre-habitcal strategy was just being a little laxer about the definition of compliance on a vacation N-day, or as I put it on the home page, "My policy is: vacation days are like non-S days, with extra tolerance for screw ups." And it worked reasonably well.

But since the habitcal that doesn't quite seem satisfactory. I want my greens to be greens, my yellows yellows, and reds reds -- not something ambiguous. And I especially want "stats mode" to be meaningful.

So what I do now is clearly divide vacation days into N and S days. If it's a vacation of about a week, I try for 50/50 (weekdays). I usually manage 3/5 weekdays, and I don't think I've gone below 2/5 since I started doing this (quantitative habitcal analysis pending ).

Although I generally advise deciding up front whether a day is an N or S days, vacations can be surprising. All of a sudden some great culinary opportunity can present itself that you might not get to enjoy again for ages. Or some great family moment. So I'll let myself take any vacation day when there's something sufficiently tempting as an S-day, but if there's not, I'd much rather put down "green" than "yellow" on the habitcal, so that gives me sufficient incentive to resist lesser temptations. It lets me enjoy what's really worth enjoying, and ignore the rest. Again, stats mode is particularly helpful in this regard -- every day over two a month starts not to look so good.

Whatever happens, I never give myself "red" for vacation days, because
I think that would just be demoralizing and ineffective.

If you don't use the habitcal, one thing to do would be just try to keep about half your vacation week days N-days. Just keep a simple tally. And enjoy the rest with a good conscience. I've actually found I don't even like going more than 3-4 straight S-days.

I use the same 50/50 N/S vacation day policy for "shovelglove." (I put in in quotations because I don't usually have access to a sledgehammer on vacation and just do 14 minutes of pushups, squats, etc. instead).

Looking forward to reading about your strategies, experiences, and concerns!

Reinhard

[masher]

[quote="reinhard"
So I'll let myself take any vacation day when there's something sufficiently tempting as an S-day, but if there's not, I'd much rather put down "green" than "yellow" on the habitcal, so that gives me sufficient incentive to resist lesser temptations. It lets me enjoy what's really worth enjoying, and ignore the rest. Again, stats mode is particularly helpful in this regard -- every day over two a month starts not to look so good.

Whatever happens, I never give myself "red" for vacation days, because
I think that would just be demoralizing and ineffective.
Reinhard[/quote]

Thank you for this! I love Habitcal and this strategy makes perfect sense.
I look forward to trying it on hols.
Maybe some day I'll learn how to do quotes....sigh

Masher

[guadopt1997]

This sounds like a very rational approach, instead of having an entirely red vacation or even dreading to leave one's routine...

Thanks, Reinhard. Have a great vacation!

[howfunisthat]

This is very timely, as I'm leaving for a week very soon. I'll be gone over four weekdays so I'm planning to have this coming weekend consist of two Green days and I'm moving those Yellows to Tuesday & Wednesday. Then I'm taking Thursday & Friday as the two extra Yellows for August, and then I'll once again be back to a weekend. I may not need to make the days Yellow, but just knowing that if I decide to have ice cream one day or snacks on two 14-hour drives, I'll do so without guilt.

I know that moving Yellows around isn't generally recommended, but this plan seems good to me. I know the food battle that rages in my mind during & after vacations so if I know I can't fail, I'll be able to avoid the sense of failure that usually accompanies the end of a vacation.

I'm looking forward to hearing more vacation strategies!

janie

[kccc]

See http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5297

"S-worthy" treats and limiting snacking really make a difference for me.

I like adding the 50/50 goal and keeping the habitcal.

[Spudd]

Personally I take every day as an S-day when it's vacation. But I almost always exercise a LOT on vacation - we walk around 10km a day on vacation, normally. So I don't worry about it.

The exceptions to my exercise-a-lot vacations are:
- taking a vacation day to just relax at home (mental health day)
- all-inclusive Caribbean beach vacations

But these happen so rarely that I figure any weight I gain will be negligible in the long run.

[Nay]

I have always lost weight on vacation, except for the time we went on a cruise -- dang, the food on cruises will trip anybody up.

But, normally, on one of our 2-week vacations, we do moderate hiking, sightseeing, and outdoor stuff. We often eat only 2 meals a day because neither of us wants to take the time to go to a restaurant or fix a meal 3 times a day. We do snack, but never have seconds and rarely have sweets. I do treat all vacation days as S days, but built-in restrictions (no fridge, hassle of stopping at stores, etc.) mean that food isn't in my face all the time as it normally would be. It's amazing how much that helps. During a 2-week vacation I will lose 3-4 pounds.

[gratefuldeb67]

Hi Reinhard
I just wanted to chime in before you go to wish you and your family a wonderful vacation!
I'm hoping to have a few days with Richie upstate in New Paltz at the end of the month. Since it's only a few days, I'm just taking them as S days, but even as S days, we have generally been a *lot* more discerning about just eating junk randomly, just cos it's "there".. Our loose rule of thumb which works well for non weekend S days on vacation, tends to be to shoot for two S events per day.. If it turns out we have three it's still no biggie in the large picture of things, and we can enjoy our trip.
Hope you all have a great time!
ps.. Belated Happy Birthday to your eldest Daughter! Wow!! Five years old already!!! I remember when you were still an expectant Dad!
Debs x

[reinhard]

Thanks all for your responses!

It's interesting that there's a successful contingent of "just take them all as S days" vacationers. I've done this myself for shorter vacations, and I think if you're moving a lot it's a psychologically very healthy strategy. But I think less physically active/less psychologically healthy vacationers might get unhinged by it on longer vacations. And though I think I personally could probably swing it as far as that goes, I'm too OCD about my habitcal now .

Thanks for your kind wishes, Deb! Hope you and Richie enjoy yours as well.

Reinhard

[kccc]

I do think you need different strategies for short and long vacations.

A short vacation, like a long weekend, can be "just take them all" (but be mindful of "S-worthiness").

A longer one requires a bit more structure, and needs to include "green days".

[Remy]

My strategy when on a 3.5 month vacation last year was to keep to two s days for the week but have them when they suited. I felt 3.5 months was too long to not have some structure - all s days would have been a bad move for me!

I did this because I was new to No-S and wanted to build habit. I didn't have access to a computer for some of the time so wasn't using habitcal. (I know I could have done it manually but i chose not to.) It seemed easy to remember how many s days I had that week.

On the n days I stuck to the rules but was more casual in the type of food I ate and I allowed some fairly large plates! I know the type of food isn't important to the No-S diet but I generally don't eat fries a lot or have croissants for breakfast. When I had those types of things on the holiday I certainly didn't feel I was on a "diet" and I really enjoyed the freedom of choice.

[MDScot]

Just back from 2 1/2 weeks on vacation ( nice I know). I planned on all of these days as being S days, and was mostly sensible - apart from my intake of candy and sweets which steadily increased over the two weeks.

It has taken me almost a week to get back on the no-sweets part of the diet, which was quite a surprise to me. Next time I think I will at least try to keep some vacation days as no-S days, maybe simply reversing the usual ratio.

[reinhard]

Just got back from vacation. Played it "textbook perfect" as described above: took 2/4 NWS days.

Glad to see no (obvious, still plowing through the new posts) catastrophes have happened here on the boards during my absence and the discussions have been humming along nicely without me.

Reinhard