Don’t Lose Your Gains on Vacation

Don’t Lose Your Gains on Vacation

Hello summer!  Summer is here with vacations, barbeques, and pool parties every weekend.  You busted your butt to get a cut physique and the season for the reason is throwing a constraint on working out to maintaining that killer body.  There is so much to do in the summer that our body will take a back seat to our activities and when that happens we fall back to our old bodies before the season of fall even gets here.

If you do not go out of town your workout routine can remain almost the same with a few hiccups here and there with the beer and barbeques.  The key is to make sure you maintain your eating schedule perfectly to counteract the bad days of summer leisure living.  Make sure your meals are low in sodium to reduce bloating and keep a “dry” look.  Pick the grilled food accordingly so you can keep your shirt off for the entire day.  No chips!  Always monitor your carbohydrates by calculating active days to non-active days.On an active day take in more carbohydrates, on a less active day take in fewer carbohydrates.  Both will help maintain your body you were worked so hard for over the winter months.

Now, vacation is the tricky devil.  Whenever we are out of place, our routines are out of place, and since fitness goers are creatures of habit, some place new and irregular is not an atmosphere of our regular habits.  Your routine must adapt to the new environment from your workouts to your eating.  Thanks to most hotels having workout facilities anyone can get a decent workout with the limited equipment that the hotel has provided.  If not, design a body weight routine in your room that can be performed at least three times a week.  For your cardio, go jogging in the morning and take in the sights, or go swim at the hotel pool.

Vacation eating will be your toughest battle, so much food to taste, to enjoy…to indulge.  For fun sakes have at it, but remember to maintain your macronutrients while you’re away.  Take in the food but get your proteins, carbohydrates, and good fats into your system.  What usually happens when vacation hits is food consumption tendencies drop more than they pick up.  Muscle has to be maintained.  Food is calories, calories are energy – no calories, no energy, and that leads to muscle atrophy.

The key to summer physiques is to maintain.  Fall and winter is your time to build and pack on the muscle meat.  You’ve worked hard the rest of the year, so take the summer easier and enjoy what you have created, but do not let it go.  If you let it go you start all over again and the key is keep getting better and better.  Enjoy yourself and show off as much as you can.  No point of having a Ferrari and keeping the cover on it.

Fitness Tip: Before hitting the beach or pool party, do as many push-ups as you can three sets in a row.  Get a good pump before taking the shirt off.

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