There is something that always happens to me on vacation: I start eating and drinking as if summer would last three months, and a few days later my body starts to pay the price. Bloating, heavy digestion, irregular sleep, and that sense of being permanently tired.
And no, the solution isn’t to stop enjoying yourself.
You don’t have to be perfect to take care of your body; it’s enough to reclaim a few basic habits.
In fact, they’re so easy that you can incorporate them even when you’re away from home.
The first habit to do before you start eating
This is probably one of the easiest changes to adopt: start meals with vegetables.
A salad, raw vegetables, steamed or roasted ones can provide fiber and help slow the absorption of sugars from the meal. Additionally, fiber helps feed the beneficial bacteria in the gut microbiota.
The second tip may seem even simpler, but we tend to forget it: chew thoroughly.
Eat more slowly and properly break down the food to ease the digestive workload. It may seem like a small detail, but it can make a difference when that inevitable vacation meal arrives and ends up being far more abundant than planned.
And there’s another small gesture worth bringing back: add a source of quality fat, such as olive oil, nuts, rapeseed oil, or sesame.
The 15-minute walk worth doing after dinner
This is probably the habit that’s easiest to turn into a routine during holidays.
After eating, walk for about 15 minutes.
You don’t need to train or lace up any athletic shoes to exercise. A calm post-meal stroll, especially in the evening, can support digestion and help maintain a healthy glucose response after meals.
And if you also have a light, warm dinner, even better. A simple vegetable-based meal can be easier to digest before bed, especially after a hearty lunch.
If you’ve overdone it with eating, don’t do this the next day
Here is perhaps the tip I like best of all: don’t try to compensate.
If a dinner runs long, desserts appear, and you end up eating far more than usual, you don’t need to punish yourself the next day.
No skipping meals or trying to “burn off” what you’ve eaten.
Just return to normal. A lighter, plant-based meal, a mint, fennel, or rosemary infusion, and a gentle walk can be enough to restore your routine.
Because, after all, summer is also for enjoying. Looking after yourself shouldn’t mean turning vacations into another set of obligations. Five small habits, repeated with some consistency, can be far more helpful than trying to do everything perfectly.
