How Not to Let Keto Ruin Your Holiday!

If you are on the keto diet(or any diet for that matter), you probably feel a lot of stress about going overseas. On one hand, you have strict rules on what to eat and what to avoid. On the other hand, the whole point of going on a holiday is to put everything aside and relax.

In fact, wherever I go to a new place even within Singapore, food is one of the things I constantly worry about! It is still manageable when I’m within Singapore because I mastered the keto-izing the staple food in Singapore. But other countries? That’s unchartered territories.

For one, I don’t know what kind of staple food they eat and it is a nightmare to research on keto-friendly alternatives on top of planning your travel itinerary.

Secondly, claiming to have experienced other countries culture without having to eat their own cuisine is like reading a book and claiming to be an expert in that subject.

The main problem is that I’ve been told that if I broke the keto diet and started eating carbs and sugar, my weight would bounce back to where I had started and maybe even gain a few more kilos on top of that.

Now at that point in time, I had lost about 15kg. I felt like a different person and I swore to never go back! At the same time, going to Nepal for soul searching is non-negotiable.

So I started doing small experiments to see if eating carbs actually caused weight gain. I started eating half a serving of potatoes every other day just to test it out.

And it became really stressful to stand on top of the BMI machine not knowing how much my weight would go up.

To my surprise, when the first result slip came, it was not as damaging as I thought it to be. Sure enough, my weight didn’t drop (which was expected). But… my weight didn’t exactly shot up either. It just fluctuates a little.

Breaking the diet once in a while would only cause your weight loss journey to stall for a little.

A MASSIVE REBOUND would only happen if you completely revert your weight back to how it was previously.

And with that, I went on to a 2 months trip to Nepal and subsequently India.

Now, this is where it gets really interesting.

After I landed in Nepal, there would time I was served with American continent breakfast which includes bread, hash browns, jam and orange juice (which is not at all keto nor healthy). Out of habit, I changed it to something else like scrambled eggs. In my head, these were universal things that I can eat even at my home country and I'm not craving for it.

Universal food like bread, jams, cereal, juice; they all taste the same everywhere and being in a hostel/hotel dining room doesn’t change anything. I would only reserve food that is unique and specific to that country and culture. That’s how I made smart food choices on vacation!

Whenever possible, I would still keep to a keto meal. But if there is an opportunity to taste local cuisine, I would go ahead with it.

And I carried that lesson as I travelled around Nepal and subsequently India. And I remember there was a time in India where I found a bathroom scale. This was a little over 1 month into the journey

This time I was a bit more certain but I wanted to see proof to assure myself. I found myself gaining about 1kg compared to when I first started the journey. Something that I was fairly confident to shake off when I’m back in Singapore.

And that was exactly what I did!

When I return, I took a week to shake off that 1kg gained over the trip and I continue my weight loss journey as if nothing happened. Maybe except happier!