you don't need that post-vacation cleanse
Summer is HERE! And for many, that means travel. Almost every week right now, someone in my practice tells me they're headed to Europe this summer. Italy, Portugal, France, a few weeks bouncing between cities, the trip they've been saving up for and dreaming about. And almost every time, somewhere in that same conversation, a little worry shows up. "What happens to everything we've been working on?" "What do I do about food?" "Should I bring these 15 supplement bottles to avoid any backsliding?"
I completely understand the worry, and I want to take the pressure off. You do not need to white-knuckle your way through a trip you've been looking forward to for a year. You do not need to bring your whole medicine cabinet across the Atlantic. You absolutely do not need to come home feeling like you have to completely start over.
What can set someone back is usually not the trip itself. A few rich dinners, a later bedtime, a week off from the gym... none of that is the problem. The problem is thinking in “all-or-nothing” terms. "I'm out of my routine, so I’ll just deal with it when I get home." That single thought can do more damage than any croissants and gelato.
So let’s talk about a different way to travel. I’m not going to give you a rigid set of rules to follow, because that misses the entire point of a vacation. Instead, let's talk about some foundations that travel with you, keep you feeling like yourself, and let you slide right back into your life when you're home. No reset or cleanse required.
You can have the trip and the pasta and the late nights, and still feel good the whole way through your trip. In fact, I hope you can even feel better.
eat like you're on vacation, because you are
Let's start with food. Say you’re going to Italy. There is going to be pasta, bread, wine, gelato. And it’s going to be delicious. Here is my professional opinion: eat it. The cuisine is a huge part of why you went. Sitting down to a long, slow meal made by someone who has spent thirty years perfecting their craft nourishes you in a way that goes well beyond the nutritional. These meals are good for the soul, so enjoy them fully and savor every bite.
A few simple things help you feel your best:
Start with protein and vegetables: These tend to be the first things that go missing on the road, and they're exactly what keep your blood sugar and your appetite stable. Lead with them whenever they're in front of you.
Hydrate: Drink more water than you think you need, especially on travel days.
Eat mindfully: When you sit down to something special, be present with it. Eat slowly, chew thoroughly, notice the texture, the colors, the flavor. Take a moment of gratitude for the people who made it and for how delicious it is. The joy of the meal is the whole point, and you can't taste any of it when you're rushing.
Enjoy those indulgences! Pizza, croissants, ice cream, whatever you love. But save it for the things that are truly worth it. The handmade gnocchi in a tiny family-run trattoria? Absolutely That stale pastry at the hotel breakfast buffet because it's there? Probably skip it and save your room for the thing that's special.
get some light
Your body runs on an internal clock, a tiny cluster of cells in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It sets the rhythm for nearly everything: when you feel sleepy, when you feel alert, when your hormones rise and fall, even when you get hungry. Nearly every cell in your body carries its own tiny clock genes and that master clock in your brain is the conductor keeping them all in sync.
So how does this conductor know what time it is? Light. Specialized cells in your retina pick up light and send that information straight to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is why light is the single most powerful signal you have for setting your internal time. When you fly across six time zones, your whole system is still running on home time. This is why you feel wrecked at 3 pm but then wide awake at 2 am. The quickest way to drag that clock into the new time zone is to get your eyes on natural outdoor light as soon as you've landed. Step outside, take a walk, have your coffee on a bench in the sun instead of in your hotel room. I talk more about the importance of early morning light here:
The Shift Podcast - Let There Be (Morning) Light).
The flip side matters just as much. In the evening, ease off the bright screens and harsh light so your body can start producing melatonin on the local schedule. This one habit (bright light early and dim light late) will do more for your jet lag than any pill. When your internal clock lands in the right time zone, your sleep, your appetite, your energy, and your mood all follow it there.
just walk
This is the easiest foundation of the whole list, because the answer is mostly just one thing: walking.
For almost all of human history, we moved constantly and at a gentle, steady pace throughout the day. Hunter-gatherers weren't doing a scheduled 45-minute workout and then sitting still for the other fifteen hours. They were walking long distances, carrying things, squatting down, getting up, moving steadily from morning to night. That's the pattern our bodies were built for. The problem is that evolution is slow and modern life moved quite fast, so we've ended up with bodies designed for constant gentle movement living in a world of car → desk → couch.
This is where travel can really work in your favor. Most people end up moving far more on a walking-heavy vacation than they do in their normal life, without ever calling a single minute of it exercise. You're moving in exactly the steady, all-day way your body loves.
If you want a little something on top of that, throw in some bodyweight movements (planks, squats, lunges), or pack a couple of resistance bands. But, truly, don’t overthink this one. Walk as much as you can, take the stairs, and enjoy yourself.
it's okay to be a little bored
We are very good at relocating our busyness. New location, same overpacked schedule. We fly somewhere beautiful and then cram every day so full of sights and steps and reservations that we come home more depleted than when we left.
Be sure you prioritize rest. Real time off is so important. When you let your nervous system downshift, when you have a slow morning with nothing on the agenda, when you sit at a café or a park for two hours with no plan, your body moves into the parasympathetic state where recovery and repair happen. This is not being lazy! And it's certainly not wasted vacation time. This is how you can come back from your vacations feeling truly rejuvenated.
So as you plan, leave some open space. You don't have to earn the slow morning. Build in a day with nothing scheduled. Let yourself be a little bored. Enjoy some unstructured hours watching the light change, people watching, letting yourself get a little lost on a walk with no destination, or doing absolutely nothing and not reaching for your phone to distract you.
the post-vacation reset is a scam
You do not need a post-vacation cleanse (though the wellness world will certainly try to convince you otherwise!). You’ll never hear me recommend a juice fast to "undo" the trip, a detox tea to flush out the pasta, or a week of intense workouts to pay for the gelato.
I'm sure you've seen the marketing, and it all rests on the same toxic idea that you did something wrong and now you owe your body a punishment.
You don't need any of it! Your liver and kidneys are running a sophisticated detoxification system around the clock, no $40 tea required. The cleanse isn't undoing the damage of the trip, because there wasn't any damage done. A couple of weeks of more bread and later nights doesn't poison you.
What actually supports you back home is far less dramatic. You drink some water. You get your morning light. You cook a couple of meals with protein and vegetables. You take a walk. In other words, you do the same ordinary things you already do.
The people I watch who are truly thriving aren't the rigid ones. They're not the people who tracked every macro through France or did burpees in their hotel bathroom out of guilt. They’re the ones who can loosen up when it's time to loosen up, then slide back into their groove when they're home. You can do this, too!
Your health was never meant to be a fragile thing that shatters the moment you leave your kitchen, and it was never meant to be repaired with a cleanse when you get back. It's a steady, flexible, livable way of moving through the world, including the parts of the world you get to fly to.
So go enjoy yourself! Eat the gelato, get your morning sun, walk the streets and beaches, have a slow morning or two. You can say yes to all of it and still feel good in your body the entire way through.
And one more thing, because most of you reading this aren't getting on a transatlantic flight. You don't have to. Everything here works just as well for a long weekend at the coast, a road trip, a few days at a cabin, or a backpacking trip. The foundations are the same, no matter the time zone: move your body, get your morning light, eat real food, and make sure you rest.
And have some FUN, because you deserve it
