My 5 best tips for a healthy summer holiday

Are you going away for the summer and do you worry about how you’re going to manage to bring all you new good habits with you? Let me just tell you, you’re not alone! One thing is dealing with healthy choices in a safe environment like your home but that’s nothing compared to the temptations you meet when you go traveling. In this post, I share my best tips for staying healthy over the summer. I’m sure you’ll find that it’s easier than you imagined.

MY 5 BEST TIPS FOR A HEALTHIER SUMMER HOLIDAY

1. Keep it simple
You don’t need all kinds of health products to eat a healthy grain free-LCHF-paleo diet. What you need is vegetables, meat, fish, eggs and healthy fats like butter, olive oil or coconut oil. Unless you’re going hiking in the Himalaya this year, those things will be accessible pretty much anywhere you go.

2.  Bring your must-haves
If you have certain must-haves that you feel you cannot live without, bring them! For me that includes bringing my beloved Cod Liver Oil and my probiotics. They just work wonders for my delicate stomach and who wants to deal with stomach aches, constipation or diarrhea during the holidays? Well, not me! When I travel, I keep them protected in a cooler bag in my suitcase and I always make sure I have a refrigerator at my end destination.

3. Always bring emergency food
The long drive or flight is the biggest challenge, in my opinion. You never know what they’re going to serve on the plane but it’s rarely anything you would label “real food”. I always bring an emergency lunchbox consisting of organic salamis, chunks of cheese, vegetables like carrots, bell peppers, fennel or cucumber and some nuts. That may not be the most balanced of meals but the important thing here is that it’ll keep me happy and satiated for 3-4 hours and I won’t feel tempted to eat strange things because they’re on a tray in front of me.

4. Bring nuts and seeds for making crackers or crispbread
If you’re spending the holiday in a summer house with a kitchen, consider bringing nuts and seeds for making your own chia seed crackers or crispbreads. What you do is you measure your ingredients at home and put them in an airtight  container. Then you just have to mix it with water and bake them in the oven. I used to think that I could buy seeds everywhere and I was so surprised one summer in France when I couldn’t find linseeds. So I learned the hard way.

5. Be realistic and lower the bar
This is the most important part, in my opinion. Lower the bar for how perfect your diet should be. Accept that everything cannot be as clean as at home. That’s okay! But don’t think that because the local grocery shop doesn’t have organic butter from grass fed cows, you might as well eat bread and ice cream for the rest of your vacation. Lower the bar but do yourself a favor and hang on to your over all principles. When we’re in Thailand, the food contains quite a lot of sugar. It does and if I couldn’t accept that, I shouldn’t go there. So I accept that I get sugar (and other stuff) in my food but I get by it by ordering lots of vegetables and protein like meat or fish. It’s not perfect but it’s okay.

So that was it! Personally, I don’t find that food choices are the biggest obstacle on a vacation. I find dealing with old habits much harder. Like the habit of eating ice cream with the family. There’s no harm in eating an ice cream unless eating one ice cream becomes a slippery slope towards eating more and more sugar. If that is the case for you, you have my deepest sympathy but remember that you can find the well testet sugar free guide to get back on track here.

Have a great summer and don’t forget to relax and enjoy the sun, the fresh air and spending time with family and friends. That’s every bit as important as eating a healthy diet.