June 24, 2025 • 27 mins
Episode #210
In this week's episode, Terri shares some insights from her recent vacation in Barcelona, and how her experiences of vacations and summer socializing has changed since she started fasting and eating low carb.
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Summary Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:42 July’s Transformation Topic at TFM
01:40 Terri’s approach before
03:57 Terri’s approach now
05:18 Making how you eat part of your identity
06:57 Terri’s approach to fasting in the summer
08:48 How Terri navigates food and fasting on vacation
10:50 Navigating “special foods”
13:33 How to deal with FOMO
15:06 The importance of sticking with the identity you are developing
16:45 Strategies for including some off-plan foods
23:20 The problem with a ‘no holds barred’ approach
25:20 Simplify things by creating a strong identity
Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. You should always speak with your physician or other healthcare professional before doing any fasting, changing your diet, taking or adjusting any medication or supplements, or adopting any treatment for a health problem. The use of any other products or services purchased by you as a result of this podcast does not create a healthcare provider-patient relationship between you and any of the experts affiliated with this podcast. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Developing how I eat as
part of my identity means
that I eat during the summer the
same way I do during the winter, the spring,
or the fall.
Now, of course, there might be some food
options that are available in the summer
because-- you know, fresh vegetables
or different things, but how I
(00:20):
see myself as an eater,
what types of food I eat overall,
does not change throughout the year.
[music].
Welcome to another episode of
The Fasting Method podcast.
This is Coach Terri Lance and
(00:40):
I am coming to you today solo.
I wanted to do a little bit of
a kind of introduction
to a topic that we're going to be talking
about over the next month at
TFM. So if you are part
of the TFM Community or if you've
been thinking about joining the Community, I
just wanted to give you a little heads up
(01:02):
about our upcoming topic of
'Summer Socializing and Vacations'.
Now, some people might question, "Why would
this be important to me in this fasting
journey?" And yet it is
probably one of the most typically
asked questions.
"How should I navigate my vacation?"
(01:23):
"What do I do during the summer?" "How could
I possibly keep up with my
fasting schedule or eating appropriately
once it becomes summer?"
So we are already into summer at this
point, but we've got quite a bit of it yet
to go. And so we wanted to talk more about
this.
So I thought first I would start a little bit
and tell you how I used to
(01:45):
navigate summer and vacations.
Early in my adult life, I was
a middle school teacher.
So summer was freedom to me.
It meant no longer having to go to work every
day. Now, of course, at some point, I started
taking college classes to get my
master's degree and things, but summer really
(02:05):
just kind of spelled freedom
to me. I didn't have to get up early,
I didn't have to do lesson plans,
I didn't have to face a hundred
middle school students every day.
So it was really this
kind of exciting time, and,
unfortunately, where I was in my health
journey, it meant playtime
(02:27):
when it came to food.
It meant whatever I wanted to eat, whenever
I wanted to eat it, wherever
I would eat.
It was really just, again, like that
time that I kind of framed up as
freedom, freedom to get to just do
whatever I wanted and enjoy myself,
because the school year was really difficult
(02:48):
and I deserved this freedom.
And then vacations.
Much like summer, vacations,
to me, meant freedom, getting off
my normal routine, not having a schedule.
Now, folks, my eating routine
already was very problematic,
but vacations just seemed to kind of give
(03:09):
me that license to go
even more overboard - eat dessert
at every meal, eat dessert
for my meal, anything I
could think of to just really enjoy
the food of vacation.
It meant snacking all day.
It meant high-volume meals,
(03:29):
stuffing myself.
And again, it depended on where I was going,
whether I was going to the ocean
and eating a lot of big,
seafood type meals, or going somewhere
else for vacation and trips.
It always involved focusing on
food. Much of my focus and
the people around me, our focus was on
(03:51):
food.
And again, it was definitely not healthy
food choices that I was making.
So, I go through this transition of
my personal health journey.
I learn about nutrition that works for
me, I learn about
my type 2 diabetes and
my obesity, and
I learned to fast.
(04:12):
Now what do I do?
It's summertime and
I go on vacation.
So how do I approach these
things now?
Let's talk first about it
being summertime.
For me, summertime no longer
represents that same type of freedom it
did. First of all, I work a different type of
(04:34):
job where I work year round so I don't have
that same intensity during part
of the year and then that
'justified freedom' behavior during
the rest. So it's not
that that affects my summer choices, it
is the gatherings, the
cookouts, the going places
with people that revolves around food.
(04:56):
It's people being more likely to
invite everyone over for a big cookout
where everyone brings things.
And of course, half of the people bring
desserts, and the other half bring
things that I don't eat.
So summer socializing still
can be really challenging.
So what does it mean for me now?
(05:18):
I know I'm oversimplifying this,
but some of you have paid attention, you've
heard me say this before, but, for me,
developing how I eat as part
of my identity means that
I eat during the summer the same way
I do during the winter, the spring, or
the fall.
Now, of course, there might be some food
(05:40):
options that are available in the summer
because-- you know, fresh vegetables
or different things, but how I
see myself as an eater, what
types of food I eat overall, does
not change throughout the year.
The volume of what I eat doesn't
change now throughout the year.
Summer is not a time to justify
(06:02):
over consuming.
It's not a time to justify
extra desserts or extra
snacking.
It is just another season of the
year, but my identity is someone
who eats rather low carb,
mostly whole foods, and
(06:23):
focusing on time-restricted eating
or eating only meals.
So, in actuality, my summer
eating does not vary a lot from
how I do it the rest of the year.
It doesn't mean that it doesn't vary with the
other people in my life and the
opportunities, but, because it's
congruent now with my identity
(06:45):
to eat whole foods and
to eat low carb, that sticks.
When I go to a cookout, I make sure there are
going to be food options there that work for
the way I eat.
Fasting. I guess I didn't talk at all about
that yet.
For me, fasting happens any
time of the year.
I am not in a phase of my life where
(07:06):
I'm doing consistent rounds of
fasting. I might fast for a month
or two and then stop for a while,
and then pick it up again later.
It doesn't really have to do with the
season. So I might do a round
of six weeks of fasting in the
summer, or it might be in the fall,
or the winter. It really doesn't matter to
(07:27):
me. Some of that may
be affected by how many social
opportunities or vacations or things
am I going on, but fasting,
again, for me, is not different
in the winter than it is in the summer.
So I don't see these as two totally
different beasts to tackle, so
to speak.
(07:49):
[music]
[promotion] Have you ever said, "I know
exactly what I need to do to lose weight, I
just can't make myself do it." If
so, you are not alone, but have
you considered this?
What if making yourself
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In my experience not only as
someone who has personally lost 80 pounds,
(08:10):
but also as someone who coaches clients
to lose weight, that's exactly
the missing piece of the weight-loss
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My name is Heather Shuker.
I'm a coach with The Fasting Method.
And if you would like me to teach you
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stay consistent, you're in luck.
(08:32):
This July 15th, I will be teaching
a Weight-Loss Workshop, a three day workshop.
I am going to be covering the principles,
the pitfalls, and the protocols necessary
for sustainable weight loss.
I hope to see you there. [music]
So I've talked some about how
I eat now in the summertime and
(08:53):
much of that involving around
social activities.
So I wanted to focus a little bit on
vacations.
And, for me, I know we all use these
terms differently, holidays versus vacations
and things, but when I think of the word
vacation, I think kind
of leaving home, having time off,
(09:13):
going somewhere, spending time with other
people.
So how do I navigate vacations
now in this phase of my life?
First, I'll talk about the fasting part.
Some of you might be surprised,
but I don't do
fasting while I'm on vacation.
(09:33):
I have a lot of other things that I'm
navigating. I'm navigating other people's
schedules, I'm navigating activities
that revolve around food,
and I'm navigating my own
stressors and things that go into vacation.
So I do not do fasts.
I don't do 24-hour fasts.
I don't do 42-hour fasts.
(09:55):
I don't that during my vacations.
What I do focus on is,
still, time-restricted eating.
So, for me, this summer
and my most recent vacation it was
two meals a day.
Actually, for the past couple of years,
much of my time has focused on three meals
a day, but, more recently,
(10:17):
I've adjusted that and I'm focusing on
eating twice a day again.
It's helping me manage my insulin levels
and helping me actually to feel
better. So I've moved back to two meals a
days.
So I recently went on vacation,
which meant I'm going to eat two times a
day. I did to a different country,
(10:38):
so there were a lot of different
opportunities as far as what foods were
available.
And you can imagine, almost anywhere
you go on vacation, there are
special foods specific
to that area.
My experience is often that
those special foods that really get
the focus from people are not
(11:00):
whole foods prepared in
healthy ways.
They're often highly processed foods,
they are often fried foods, and,
for many of us, they are
snack foods and sugary
desserts.
So being someone who eats rather
low carb, who does not eat sugar,
(11:22):
and who doesn't eat much processed
food, what was I to do
while going on vacation?
Fortunately, we went to
Barcelona where there was a lot of
fresh food.
Every restaurant (and we did eat
in restaurants for all of our meals)
had really good fresh food options.
(11:43):
And because tapas is
so popular there, I
could get specific things
that fit my dietary approach
while other people at the table were getting
other things that fit for them.
And, interestingly, we shared
a lot of those tapas dishes because,
(12:03):
again, they were whole food, protein
focused, not carbohydrate focused,
so they worked well for me.
They were fatty meats, so they worked
well for me.
What I did have to look at differently
than the other people that I was traveling
with is that, because
I don't eat desserts,
I don't eat sugar, I don't eat
(12:26):
those kind of processed foods,
everywhere we went, every
20 feet on every block,
there was a place selling
pastries all times of day.
People have it in the morning, people have
it with their lunch, people have them with
dinner, people have them late at night.
Pastries everywhere.
And, again, about every block, there was
(12:48):
a gelato store.
So that could have posed a challenge
for me if this were
a time in my life where I
hadn't created this identity as someone
who doesn't eat those things.
But because I've already created that
identity, it just didn't fit.
It's kind of like, for me, I don't go into
(13:09):
a cigar shop because I don't smoke
cigars.
Now, if I'm hanging out with someone who
smokes a cigar, I might sit outside with
them while they smoke a cigar, but I'm not
going to engage in that behavior just because
someone else is.
So that is how I looked at
the gelato, the pastries,
the desserts. They were very abundant
(13:30):
everywhere on this trip.
Now, some of us who are navigating
this journey and kind of sorting through
our identity around these things and
figuring out how we're going to navigate
meals that involve other people,
that involve special occasions with family
and friends or vacations,
(13:52):
sometimes we feel like we
don't really have many options, that everyone
else around us is engaging in these foods, so
we should join them.
Some of us express experiencing FOMO
(the fear of missing out) if we don't engage
in those same foods.
I can honestly tell you, I don't know what
gelato in Barcelona tastes like, and
(14:14):
I'm okay with that because, again,
my identity is that that no
longer fits for me.
Saying that doesn't mean I don't
want it, it doesn't mean I
don't think I would enjoy it.
I certainly would. [laughs] If we go back
to how I used to do vacations and
summer socializing, those kinds of
(14:35):
food would have been my focal point.
They would have been involved in every
opportunity of eating for me.
So, again, please don't hear that I just
have this special characteristic or
I just don't like these things.
That is not the case at all, but they
no longer fit my identity.
So when everyone else at the table orders
(14:56):
a dessert, or on our walk home
everyone stops to get gelato,
I'm okay.
Those things just no longer fit
for me.
Now, some of you may be at a point where
you've made some changes to how you
eat and you're not sure
how much you want to
allow any kind of variance while
(15:18):
on vacation or while at a
summer social event.
And so I always share with people,
I think it's, one, important to kind of stick
with your identity that you're developing.
If you are developing an identity of someone
who does not eat highly-processed foods,
and the options to have on that vacation
or at that summer social event is highly
(15:40):
processed foods, that just doesn't fit for
you. It's not congruent with your
identity that you're creating.
But if you're someone who says, "You know, I
just wanna eat those things less often.
I know that I can't engage them every day
or every week even, but
I want them on special occasions or I
want to enjoy them on vacation,"
(16:01):
far be it for me to interfere
with that. I'm not here to judge anyone.
I think it's important that you
figure out what the right balance
is for you.
For me, it would be very challenging
for me to go on that week's vacation,
eat those things and come home and stop
eating them.
(16:21):
So, for me, it's actually easier to say,
"They just don't work for me anymore.
That's not part of how I do food."
And so they just never happened while
I was there.
But you might decide that you're going to
enjoy some foods there that you don't eat
typically in your normal routine, but
you're going enjoy them while you're in that
summer socializing event or while you
(16:44):
are on vacation.
I do have a recommendation that I always make
to my clients and members in the Community.
And that is think about the
frequency and the timing
of when you're going to engage those items.
Now again, I'm using some history
for me to kind of create this
(17:04):
strategy, but I know myself
and how I felt about these foods.
And if I had arrived on
a Sunday and immediately
gone to get one of those highly
palatable desserts or
snack foods, something really
decadent, in my mind, I would
(17:24):
have started my vacation with it.
And that would have set the tone for me that
this is what it's about.
It would have set me off for this is
the reason I'm here, this is
what's fun about being here, this is what's
enjoyable about being here.
So what I encourage people to do is
kind of check themselves and see.
If that tends to be your approach,
(17:47):
might it be better for you to
postpone when you have those
items while on this vacation
or while socializing?
Might it be best for you to arrive on
Sunday and not have that special
item?
Let's say you're leaving on Saturday, not
have it until Thursday night and
(18:08):
Friday night, or maybe even just
Friday night. Maybe you can enjoy that
special thing that you've been kind of
dreaming about about that location.
And you can have it, enjoy it,
no guilt, no shame, and, the
next day, you get back on a plane and
you are on your way back into your own food
environment.
(18:28):
So kind of postponement
as a way to contain
the impact of that food rather than
starting it right away when you get there.
Because again, if I go back to my earlier
days, I would have started it on
Sunday. I would have then had it on
Monday. By Tuesday, I wouldn't have eaten it
(18:49):
at lunch. By Wednesday, I might have had
it for breakfast.
It would have just been an all-day affair
every day.
And many of us know what happens when
we approach our vacations like that.
We don't really feel all that well
while we're there.
For me, it probably meant a lot of
lethargy, low energy, which
(19:10):
then of course made me think I needed to eat
more of it to get more energy.
I can't even imagine what it was doing to my
gut health so I'm sure my
system wasn't functioning well, and, of
course, at the time, I was unaware but
the devastating effect that that was
having on my blood sugar levels and
my insulin.
That goes without saying.
(19:32):
But how did it maybe affect
how much I actually enjoyed
my time there?
I used to focus on, "When will I
get that food next?" "Where are we
going to eat?" "What can I eat?"
Again, eating an overabundance
of food so that I was so
full and uncomfortable when the meal was
(19:53):
over, I was then ready
to crash, go to sleep, and not
feel well. But that felt
to me at the time like just a normal way to
do this.
So now by using
my TRE, or
eating only meals, time-restricted
eating (so, for me, this time,
(20:13):
two meals a day, other times in my
life recently would have been three),
not snacking, not grazing,
and then focusing on really good,
nutrient-dense food in those
meals, not highly-processed things,
not things that caused large insulin
spikes or lots of inflammation for
(20:35):
me, and stopping at the
end of the meal.
Now, I am someone who does drink coffee.
I did enjoy a fair bit
of coffee in Barcelona.
So that to me was part
of my fun. I tried different coffee
shops, I tried different coffee drinks,
I had to learn new ways of ordering coffee
(20:55):
drinks. But once the meal
was over, I might sometimes have coffee
at the end of the meal, but then it was done.
There was not going to be a dessert or
a snack later for me.
And I tell you, I felt great
on the vacation.
My energy level was high.
I wasn't inflamed.
I wasn't having gut issues.
(21:17):
And so, in reality, not
giving myself those brief moments
of pleasure eating all of those
problematic foods for me, I actually
felt better while on the vacation.
And I felt congruent
with my value system.
So, all in all, what I'm really
encouraging is for you to
(21:39):
kind of approach your summer socializing
and vacation trips,
camping, expeditions, and
things, is be working on (wherever you
are in this journey) the
identity that you are creating or have
already created about the
healthy version of you and how you
eat.
(22:00):
Do you snack and graze or
do you do time-restricted eating?
Do you eat two meals or three
meals? Do you eat early?
Do you eat late?
What is the standard for you and how
will you navigate that with the other people
that you're spending this time with?
And then think about what
you eat.
(22:21):
Are you someone who focuses on a particular
approach? Do you tend to eat
paleo, or vegetarian, or
vegan, or
ketogenically, and how will you
navigate this during the summer social
event or on this vacation?
Plan.
Get menus ahead of time.
(22:41):
I often looked at the menu before we
decided to eat somewhere, making sure
there were at least a couple of options
that I felt comfortable and safe
going in, knowing that I was going
to have food that worked for me and that I
would enjoy.
So again, being congruent with this identity
that you're creating about what types of
(23:03):
foods will you eat, and, if
you are going to decide to eat some
things that aren't part of your normal
routine, when will you do that?
Will you start at the beginning of your trip
or will you postpone and
kind of contain it by having it just at
the end of your trip?
Where I see most of the people
(23:23):
who struggle when they come back from
vacations is when they go in with
the mindset of 'no holds
barred', like, "This is vacation, anything
goes. Whatever I want is fine."
They don't feel well much of the time, they
come home struggling, they come home and
don't fit in the clothes that they took on
the vacation, and they're up
(23:45):
10 pounds, they're up 5 kilograms.
So approach
it from this new skill
set that you're learning, this focusing
on time-restricted eating.
You might be someone who wants to
do some fasting while you're on vacation.
It's not the way I prefer to do
it, but I have experience with folks who
(24:05):
really actually continue to do their fasting
while on vacation.
But again, what foods we eat,
when will you eat, will you
have off-track foods for
you or processed foods or whatever you might
call them? And how will you navigate
that?
So there's so much to think
about with this, but one of the things
(24:26):
I encourage is try to simplify
it. Give yourself some parameters.
If, let's say, for example, alcohol
is a challenge for you related
to summer socializing.
Everywhere you go in the summer, everyone's
got lots of alcoholic beverages that
they're serving all day long.
Maybe while you're on vacation, you got
(24:48):
the alcohol plan where you have unlimited
access to alcohol.
How do you want to spend that time?
How do you want to spend your summer?
How do you want to spend your vacation?
Does alcohol work for you?
Does it kind of unravel
things for you, and then you snack more
and eat more problematic food?
Does it affect your sleep?
(25:10):
Does it affect how you feel in the morning?
Again, you are on vacation or,
you know, enjoying your summer social
events, do you want feel unwell?
So focusing on these things, I think,
is really a way to simplify it
rather than complicate it.
Sometimes people spend so much time trying
(25:32):
to kind of plan every
possible move that they're going to make
during the vacation, or during their
summer social events, that I
really just encourage you to keep working on
creating a strong identity, and
then applying that identity
throughout the summer, throughout your
vacations. And then throughout the year on
(25:53):
holidays and special events, same
thing.
You have an approach,
as far as frequency of eating and
what foods you eat, that, if
you're not fasting, you have a solid
plan about how you're going to be handling
the eating portion of your routine.
So I hope that this has been helpful to hear
(26:15):
my kind of walk through from
the beginning where summer
socializing and vacations,
holidays, gatherings, anything,
for me, was just further
justification to go all out
and eat the most problematic things in
large quantity, to the place
(26:35):
now where I could go to another country,
enjoy the food, feel
nourished and nurtured by the food
that I ate, enjoy it
and not feel like I was slowed down at
all. I wasn't bogged down with feeling
unwell, and I did not come home
unable to button my clothes or
(26:56):
gaining any weight.
I hope this has been helpful, and I will
be back to talk with you in another
episode soon.
Take good care, everyone.
Developing how I eat as
part of my identity means
that I eat during the summer the
same way I do during the winter, the spring,
or the fall.
Now, of course, there might be some food
options that are available in the summer
because-- you know, fresh vegetables
or different things, but how I
(00:20):
see myself as an eater,
what types of food I eat overall,
does not change throughout the year.
[music].
Welcome to another episode of
The Fasting Method podcast.
This is Coach Terri Lance and
(00:40):
I am coming to you today solo.
I wanted to do a little bit of
a kind of introduction
to a topic that we're going to be talking
about over the next month at
TFM. So if you are part
of the TFM Community or if you've
been thinking about joining the Community, I
just wanted to give you a little heads up
(01:02):
about our upcoming topic of
'Summer Socializing and Vacations'.
Now, some people might question, "Why would
this be important to me in this fasting
journey?" And yet it is
probably one of the most typically
asked questions.
"How should I navigate my vacation?"
(01:23):
"What do I do during the summer?" "How could
I possibly keep up with my
fasting schedule or eating appropriately
once it becomes summer?"
So we are already into summer at this
point, but we've got quite a bit of it yet
to go. And so we wanted to talk more about
this.
So I thought first I would start a little bit
and tell you how I used to
(01:45):
navigate summer and vacations.
Early in my adult life, I was
a middle school teacher.
So summer was freedom to me.
It meant no longer having to go to work every
day. Now, of course, at some point, I started
taking college classes to get my
master's degree and things, but summer really
(02:05):
just kind of spelled freedom
to me. I didn't have to get up early,
I didn't have to do lesson plans,
I didn't have to face a hundred
middle school students every day.
So it was really this
kind of exciting time, and,
unfortunately, where I was in my health
journey, it meant playtime
(02:27):
when it came to food.
It meant whatever I wanted to eat, whenever
I wanted to eat it, wherever
I would eat.
It was really just, again, like that
time that I kind of framed up as
freedom, freedom to get to just do
whatever I wanted and enjoy myself,
because the school year was really difficult
(02:48):
and I deserved this freedom.
And then vacations.
Much like summer, vacations,
to me, meant freedom, getting off
my normal routine, not having a schedule.
Now, folks, my eating routine
already was very problematic,
but vacations just seemed to kind of give
(03:09):
me that license to go
even more overboard - eat dessert
at every meal, eat dessert
for my meal, anything I
could think of to just really enjoy
the food of vacation.
It meant snacking all day.
It meant high-volume meals,
(03:29):
stuffing myself.
And again, it depended on where I was going,
whether I was going to the ocean
and eating a lot of big,
seafood type meals, or going somewhere
else for vacation and trips.
It always involved focusing on
food. Much of my focus and
the people around me, our focus was on
(03:51):
food.
And again, it was definitely not healthy
food choices that I was making.
So, I go through this transition of
my personal health journey.
I learn about nutrition that works for
me, I learn about
my type 2 diabetes and
my obesity, and
I learned to fast.
(04:12):
Now what do I do?
It's summertime and
I go on vacation.
So how do I approach these
things now?
Let's talk first about it
being summertime.
For me, summertime no longer
represents that same type of freedom it
did. First of all, I work a different type of
(04:34):
job where I work year round so I don't have
that same intensity during part
of the year and then that
'justified freedom' behavior during
the rest. So it's not
that that affects my summer choices, it
is the gatherings, the
cookouts, the going places
with people that revolves around food.
(04:56):
It's people being more likely to
invite everyone over for a big cookout
where everyone brings things.
And of course, half of the people bring
desserts, and the other half bring
things that I don't eat.
So summer socializing still
can be really challenging.
So what does it mean for me now?
(05:18):
I know I'm oversimplifying this,
but some of you have paid attention, you've
heard me say this before, but, for me,
developing how I eat as part
of my identity means that
I eat during the summer the same way
I do during the winter, the spring, or
the fall.
Now, of course, there might be some food
(05:40):
options that are available in the summer
because-- you know, fresh vegetables
or different things, but how I
see myself as an eater, what
types of food I eat overall, does
not change throughout the year.
The volume of what I eat doesn't
change now throughout the year.
Summer is not a time to justify
(06:02):
over consuming.
It's not a time to justify
extra desserts or extra
snacking.
It is just another season of the
year, but my identity is someone
who eats rather low carb,
mostly whole foods, and
(06:23):
focusing on time-restricted eating
or eating only meals.
So, in actuality, my summer
eating does not vary a lot from
how I do it the rest of the year.
It doesn't mean that it doesn't vary with the
other people in my life and the
opportunities, but, because it's
congruent now with my identity
(06:45):
to eat whole foods and
to eat low carb, that sticks.
When I go to a cookout, I make sure there are
going to be food options there that work for
the way I eat.
Fasting. I guess I didn't talk at all about
that yet.
For me, fasting happens any
time of the year.
I am not in a phase of my life where
(07:06):
I'm doing consistent rounds of
fasting. I might fast for a month
or two and then stop for a while,
and then pick it up again later.
It doesn't really have to do with the
season. So I might do a round
of six weeks of fasting in the
summer, or it might be in the fall,
or the winter. It really doesn't matter to
(07:27):
me. Some of that may
be affected by how many social
opportunities or vacations or things
am I going on, but fasting,
again, for me, is not different
in the winter than it is in the summer.
So I don't see these as two totally
different beasts to tackle, so
to speak.
(07:49):
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So I've talked some about how
I eat now in the summertime and
(08:53):
much of that involving around
social activities.
So I wanted to focus a little bit on
vacations.
And, for me, I know we all use these
terms differently, holidays versus vacations
and things, but when I think of the word
vacation, I think kind
of leaving home, having time off,
(09:13):
going somewhere, spending time with other
people.
So how do I navigate vacations
now in this phase of my life?
First, I'll talk about the fasting part.
Some of you might be surprised,
but I don't do
fasting while I'm on vacation.
(09:33):
I have a lot of other things that I'm
navigating. I'm navigating other people's
schedules, I'm navigating activities
that revolve around food,
and I'm navigating my own
stressors and things that go into vacation.
So I do not do fasts.
I don't do 24-hour fasts.
I don't do 42-hour fasts.
(09:55):
I don't that during my vacations.
What I do focus on is,
still, time-restricted eating.
So, for me, this summer
and my most recent vacation it was
two meals a day.
Actually, for the past couple of years,
much of my time has focused on three meals
a day, but, more recently,
(10:17):
I've adjusted that and I'm focusing on
eating twice a day again.
It's helping me manage my insulin levels
and helping me actually to feel
better. So I've moved back to two meals a
days.
So I recently went on vacation,
which meant I'm going to eat two times a
day. I did to a different country,
(10:38):
so there were a lot of different
opportunities as far as what foods were
available.
And you can imagine, almost anywhere
you go on vacation, there are
special foods specific
to that area.
My experience is often that
those special foods that really get
the focus from people are not
(11:00):
whole foods prepared in
healthy ways.
They're often highly processed foods,
they are often fried foods, and,
for many of us, they are
snack foods and sugary
desserts.
So being someone who eats rather
low carb, who does not eat sugar,
(11:22):
and who doesn't eat much processed
food, what was I to do
while going on vacation?
Fortunately, we went to
Barcelona where there was a lot of
fresh food.
Every restaurant (and we did eat
in restaurants for all of our meals)
had really good fresh food options.
(11:43):
And because tapas is
so popular there, I
could get specific things
that fit my dietary approach
while other people at the table were getting
other things that fit for them.
And, interestingly, we shared
a lot of those tapas dishes because,
(12:03):
again, they were whole food, protein
focused, not carbohydrate focused,
so they worked well for me.
They were fatty meats, so they worked
well for me.
What I did have to look at differently
than the other people that I was traveling
with is that, because
I don't eat desserts,
I don't eat sugar, I don't eat
(12:26):
those kind of processed foods,
everywhere we went, every
20 feet on every block,
there was a place selling
pastries all times of day.
People have it in the morning, people have
it with their lunch, people have them with
dinner, people have them late at night.
Pastries everywhere.
And, again, about every block, there was
(12:48):
a gelato store.
So that could have posed a challenge
for me if this were
a time in my life where I
hadn't created this identity as someone
who doesn't eat those things.
But because I've already created that
identity, it just didn't fit.
It's kind of like, for me, I don't go into
(13:09):
a cigar shop because I don't smoke
cigars.
Now, if I'm hanging out with someone who
smokes a cigar, I might sit outside with
them while they smoke a cigar, but I'm not
going to engage in that behavior just because
someone else is.
So that is how I looked at
the gelato, the pastries,
the desserts. They were very abundant
(13:30):
everywhere on this trip.
Now, some of us who are navigating
this journey and kind of sorting through
our identity around these things and
figuring out how we're going to navigate
meals that involve other people,
that involve special occasions with family
and friends or vacations,
(13:52):
sometimes we feel like we
don't really have many options, that everyone
else around us is engaging in these foods, so
we should join them.
Some of us express experiencing FOMO
(the fear of missing out) if we don't engage
in those same foods.
I can honestly tell you, I don't know what
gelato in Barcelona tastes like, and
(14:14):
I'm okay with that because, again,
my identity is that that no
longer fits for me.
Saying that doesn't mean I don't
want it, it doesn't mean I
don't think I would enjoy it.
I certainly would. [laughs] If we go back
to how I used to do vacations and
summer socializing, those kinds of
(14:35):
food would have been my focal point.
They would have been involved in every
opportunity of eating for me.
So, again, please don't hear that I just
have this special characteristic or
I just don't like these things.
That is not the case at all, but they
no longer fit my identity.
So when everyone else at the table orders
(14:56):
a dessert, or on our walk home
everyone stops to get gelato,
I'm okay.
Those things just no longer fit
for me.
Now, some of you may be at a point where
you've made some changes to how you
eat and you're not sure
how much you want to
allow any kind of variance while
(15:18):
on vacation or while at a
summer social event.
And so I always share with people,
I think it's, one, important to kind of stick
with your identity that you're developing.
If you are developing an identity of someone
who does not eat highly-processed foods,
and the options to have on that vacation
or at that summer social event is highly
(15:40):
processed foods, that just doesn't fit for
you. It's not congruent with your
identity that you're creating.
But if you're someone who says, "You know, I
just wanna eat those things less often.
I know that I can't engage them every day
or every week even, but
I want them on special occasions or I
want to enjoy them on vacation,"
(16:01):
far be it for me to interfere
with that. I'm not here to judge anyone.
I think it's important that you
figure out what the right balance
is for you.
For me, it would be very challenging
for me to go on that week's vacation,
eat those things and come home and stop
eating them.
(16:21):
So, for me, it's actually easier to say,
"They just don't work for me anymore.
That's not part of how I do food."
And so they just never happened while
I was there.
But you might decide that you're going to
enjoy some foods there that you don't eat
typically in your normal routine, but
you're going enjoy them while you're in that
summer socializing event or while you
(16:44):
are on vacation.
I do have a recommendation that I always make
to my clients and members in the Community.
And that is think about the
frequency and the timing
of when you're going to engage those items.
Now again, I'm using some history
for me to kind of create this
(17:04):
strategy, but I know myself
and how I felt about these foods.
And if I had arrived on
a Sunday and immediately
gone to get one of those highly
palatable desserts or
snack foods, something really
decadent, in my mind, I would
(17:24):
have started my vacation with it.
And that would have set the tone for me that
this is what it's about.
It would have set me off for this is
the reason I'm here, this is
what's fun about being here, this is what's
enjoyable about being here.
So what I encourage people to do is
kind of check themselves and see.
If that tends to be your approach,
(17:47):
might it be better for you to
postpone when you have those
items while on this vacation
or while socializing?
Might it be best for you to arrive on
Sunday and not have that special
item?
Let's say you're leaving on Saturday, not
have it until Thursday night and
(18:08):
Friday night, or maybe even just
Friday night. Maybe you can enjoy that
special thing that you've been kind of
dreaming about about that location.
And you can have it, enjoy it,
no guilt, no shame, and, the
next day, you get back on a plane and
you are on your way back into your own food
environment.
(18:28):
So kind of postponement
as a way to contain
the impact of that food rather than
starting it right away when you get there.
Because again, if I go back to my earlier
days, I would have started it on
Sunday. I would have then had it on
Monday. By Tuesday, I wouldn't have eaten it
(18:49):
at lunch. By Wednesday, I might have had
it for breakfast.
It would have just been an all-day affair
every day.
And many of us know what happens when
we approach our vacations like that.
We don't really feel all that well
while we're there.
For me, it probably meant a lot of
lethargy, low energy, which
(19:10):
then of course made me think I needed to eat
more of it to get more energy.
I can't even imagine what it was doing to my
gut health so I'm sure my
system wasn't functioning well, and, of
course, at the time, I was unaware but
the devastating effect that that was
having on my blood sugar levels and
my insulin.
That goes without saying.
(19:32):
But how did it maybe affect
how much I actually enjoyed
my time there?
I used to focus on, "When will I
get that food next?" "Where are we
going to eat?" "What can I eat?"
Again, eating an overabundance
of food so that I was so
full and uncomfortable when the meal was
(19:53):
over, I was then ready
to crash, go to sleep, and not
feel well. But that felt
to me at the time like just a normal way to
do this.
So now by using
my TRE, or
eating only meals, time-restricted
eating (so, for me, this time,
(20:13):
two meals a day, other times in my
life recently would have been three),
not snacking, not grazing,
and then focusing on really good,
nutrient-dense food in those
meals, not highly-processed things,
not things that caused large insulin
spikes or lots of inflammation for
(20:35):
me, and stopping at the
end of the meal.
Now, I am someone who does drink coffee.
I did enjoy a fair bit
of coffee in Barcelona.
So that to me was part
of my fun. I tried different coffee
shops, I tried different coffee drinks,
I had to learn new ways of ordering coffee
(20:55):
drinks. But once the meal
was over, I might sometimes have coffee
at the end of the meal, but then it was done.
There was not going to be a dessert or
a snack later for me.
And I tell you, I felt great
on the vacation.
My energy level was high.
I wasn't inflamed.
I wasn't having gut issues.
(21:17):
And so, in reality, not
giving myself those brief moments
of pleasure eating all of those
problematic foods for me, I actually
felt better while on the vacation.
And I felt congruent
with my value system.
So, all in all, what I'm really
encouraging is for you to
(21:39):
kind of approach your summer socializing
and vacation trips,
camping, expeditions, and
things, is be working on (wherever you
are in this journey) the
identity that you are creating or have
already created about the
healthy version of you and how you
eat.
(22:00):
Do you snack and graze or
do you do time-restricted eating?
Do you eat two meals or three
meals? Do you eat early?
Do you eat late?
What is the standard for you and how
will you navigate that with the other people
that you're spending this time with?
And then think about what
you eat.
(22:21):
Are you someone who focuses on a particular
approach? Do you tend to eat
paleo, or vegetarian, or
vegan, or
ketogenically, and how will you
navigate this during the summer social
event or on this vacation?
Plan.
Get menus ahead of time.
(22:41):
I often looked at the menu before we
decided to eat somewhere, making sure
there were at least a couple of options
that I felt comfortable and safe
going in, knowing that I was going
to have food that worked for me and that I
would enjoy.
So again, being congruent with this identity
that you're creating about what types of
(23:03):
foods will you eat, and, if
you are going to decide to eat some
things that aren't part of your normal
routine, when will you do that?
Will you start at the beginning of your trip
or will you postpone and
kind of contain it by having it just at
the end of your trip?
Where I see most of the people
(23:23):
who struggle when they come back from
vacations is when they go in with
the mindset of 'no holds
barred', like, "This is vacation, anything
goes. Whatever I want is fine."
They don't feel well much of the time, they
come home struggling, they come home and
don't fit in the clothes that they took on
the vacation, and they're up
(23:45):
10 pounds, they're up 5 kilograms.
So approach
it from this new skill
set that you're learning, this focusing
on time-restricted eating.
You might be someone who wants to
do some fasting while you're on vacation.
It's not the way I prefer to do
it, but I have experience with folks who
(24:05):
really actually continue to do their fasting
while on vacation.
But again, what foods we eat,
when will you eat, will you
have off-track foods for
you or processed foods or whatever you might
call them? And how will you navigate
that?
So there's so much to think
about with this, but one of the things
(24:26):
I encourage is try to simplify
it. Give yourself some parameters.
If, let's say, for example, alcohol
is a challenge for you related
to summer socializing.
Everywhere you go in the summer, everyone's
got lots of alcoholic beverages that
they're serving all day long.
Maybe while you're on vacation, you got
(24:48):
the alcohol plan where you have unlimited
access to alcohol.
How do you want to spend that time?
How do you want to spend your summer?
How do you want to spend your vacation?
Does alcohol work for you?
Does it kind of unravel
things for you, and then you snack more
and eat more problematic food?
Does it affect your sleep?
(25:10):
Does it affect how you feel in the morning?
Again, you are on vacation or,
you know, enjoying your summer social
events, do you want feel unwell?
So focusing on these things, I think,
is really a way to simplify it
rather than complicate it.
Sometimes people spend so much time trying
(25:32):
to kind of plan every
possible move that they're going to make
during the vacation, or during their
summer social events, that I
really just encourage you to keep working on
creating a strong identity, and
then applying that identity
throughout the summer, throughout your
vacations. And then throughout the year on
(25:53):
holidays and special events, same
thing.
You have an approach,
as far as frequency of eating and
what foods you eat, that, if
you're not fasting, you have a solid
plan about how you're going to be handling
the eating portion of your routine.
So I hope that this has been helpful to hear
(26:15):
my kind of walk through from
the beginning where summer
socializing and vacations,
holidays, gatherings, anything,
for me, was just further
justification to go all out
and eat the most problematic things in
large quantity, to the place
(26:35):
now where I could go to another country,
enjoy the food, feel
nourished and nurtured by the food
that I ate, enjoy it
and not feel like I was slowed down at
all. I wasn't bogged down with feeling
unwell, and I did not come home
unable to button my clothes or
(26:56):
gaining any weight.
I hope this has been helpful, and I will
be back to talk with you in another
episode soon.
Take good care, everyone.
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