Does this sound familiar? You go on vacation and decide to eat whatever you want. When you get home, you find you've gained 10 pounds. How do you get back on track?

This happened to me recently, and it really does illustrate just how important a low carb diet is. I went to England for a week to research the Da Vinci Code locations. I did an extraordinary amount of walking. I walked all over London and then all over Paris, France. After that I did serious amounts of walking around Stonehenge, Scotland, and other locations as well.

Every day involved walking from sunrise to sunset. We were on the move and exploring the world constantly.

I thought that my high exercise level meant I could eat "native" while I was there. I ended up eating a ton of mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, mashed turnips, and other starchy foods. When in Scotland, I tried haggis.

When I got home, I had literally gained over ten pounds from that one week of eating high carb food. Think of what that style of intake does to people who eat that way constantly!

They key here is not to panic. You gained the weight quickly, you can therefore lose the weight again. It is all a matter of getting back to a healthy lifestyle. Note I am not saying to diet. I am saying that being healthy is about eating healthy - and that this is a long term choice you make.

Get back into the rhythm of healthy eating. It's likely that a portion of the weight you gained is because you weren't drinking water adequately, so your body started to "hoard" water as a response. Drink proper amounts of water to get your body to release the bloat. Take your vitamins twice a day, to help your body metabolize the fat it has. For a full list of advice, read through my 'recovery' article below!

By eating healthy foods, and settling back into my normal routine, my body contentedly thanked me. Within a week, I'd lost 5 pounds of that gain, simply by eating my "normal way". Soon thereafter, the ten pounds were gone and I was back to my pre-vacation weight.


Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books