If you've opened any of my last handful of emails you know I was just recently "On Holiday" in New Zealand. (That's what they say instead of "vacation" or "trip" # Cultured)
On this holiday I enjoyed many of the things I wanted to. Guilt Free- I'm mostly referring to food.
It will be a while since I'm in such an amazing location and I wasn't going to squander my experience by worrying about macros.
Some of the foods I enjoyed were...
- The greatest Focaccia in the world. I'm not a huge bread guy- But this bread... 🤯
- One of the best burgers I've ever had that was so decadent it made my face sweat. (Decadent is usually a term reserved for dessert but I have no other adjective to describe this burger!!)
- Pork belly that continually held a spot on my buffet plate every time I got more food.
Anyways!
(The food in New Zealand is good- But that's not what I'm trying to talk about)
My wife and I had an amazing time- But now we're back and I want to get back into the zone for my fitness and nutrition.
Before we left I was approaching the best shape of my life.
And today- I am so sore from my first workout back that I can barely walk.
So I'm not quite where I was and I wanted to chat about my "Post Holiday" plan to get back on track.
I realize being thrown off course for 2 and a half weeks isn't typical, but even without long bouts of travel- Life stuff comes up that can halt our momentum and it's good to have a plan to get the ball rolling again.
Fitness:
What we don't want to do for fitness is jump back into it like nothing has changed.
(Unless of course you want to feel like you hopped into the octagon to go 5 rounds with the heavy weight champ.)
It takes our bodies a few sessions to remember we workout regularly and if you try to jump straight back in- you will experience a soreness that will keep you out of the gym for another week.
We gotta ramp back into it.
I almost did this perfectly... but I accidentally performed one exercise in a way that hit my glutes and hamstrings too much and now they're totally smoked.
Here's what I meant to do...
- One exercise for quads and glutes / hamstrings.
- One pulling and one pressing exercise.
- One core exercise.
- One mobility exercise.
All of these are unilateral or alternating.
EX. Reverse lunges (one leg working at a time versus Squats)
Or 3 Point Row instead of a Seated Row
One of the reasons I did this was to loosen up some lingering stiffness from 30 hours of travel.
It also just makes it easier to hit muscles without needing a lot of weight.
Every muscle I didn't hit yesterday I will today.
And I will slowly ramp up over the next week- From past experience, it normally takes a full week of training to get back into it.
Nutrition:
This is the easier one! (At least for me)
The hardest part is restocking groceries lol.
But!
Once groceries are back to normal it's really easy to get back into a normal nutrition routine IF you have a routine in the first place.
I don't really need to think about what to change- I just need to remember what I did before.
However- I did receive a comment about my cheeks looking a bit more full. (Aka I gained weight)
And, even-though I don't need to go into a calorie deficit to get back to where I was- it will speed up the process.
So my plan is to simply have less oats and peanut butter in my oatmeal (which I have almost everyday)
This will get me about 700 fewer calories per week.
And that's about all I have to do!
In about 2 weeks I'll feel like I did before and in 3-4 weeks I'll look like I did before.
I wanted to share my post holiday recovery plan to show that it's easy to get back on track when you have a system in place before you fall off track.
It's easier to reboot a system than to rebuild a system.
I hope that make sense and I hope it helps!
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