What Your Fat Uncle Ate Over Summer Vacation

Hello, my name is Bob, and I’m a fat man. (Hi, Bob).

Well, my Disney vacation is over. It went pretty well. My wife and I had a great time. We spent some good quality time with the nieces and nephews, and my brother and sister in law were charming as always.

From an eating point of view, it was difficult.

It’s always tough for me to eat reasonably while traveling. Airport bustle and boredom starts me on the wrong foot, and I have to remind myself not to swallow my stress (or, more accurately, not to swallow airport food to deal with my stress). I’ve been to Disney World and similar places before, and I was worried. Usually, I gain fat on this kind of vacation. Going to Disney World in particular carries challenges. The hotel restaurants range from mediocre to very good (and even the mediocre places have a few things that will call to a fat uncle), and Epcot has its signature World Showcase restaurants (all of them appealing). Candy, snacks, sugar, salt, and fat are everywhere. Add in standard vacation and family issues, and top it off with pressure to have the Happiest Time on Earth.

It is possible to navigate through it, and come out the other side without that much of a fat gain. It isn't easy.

When I left for Disney, I'd just hit a personal goal in my fat loss. I weighed 250 pounds, down 45 pound over 9 months. I'd reached that goal through functional eating (asking myself why I was eating or drinking X, and what benefits X offered for its cost in calories), bridging (substituting better food choices for worse whenever possible, without falling into the trap of pointless deprivation or masochism), and daily exercise. After that much work, I did not want to slip up and regain the fat. I also didn’t want to be an annoying drag on my wife and family on our vacation, tormenting waiters with special requests and sucking down protein shakes while everyone else ate real food. I came up with a plan.

I wouldn’t eat like a rabid wolf, loose after hours, in a sausage factory.

It seemed like an ambitious plan, but I thought I could manage it.

OK, there was a little more to it than that. I planned to keep applying the same principles that had gotten me this far: Functional Eating, Bridging, and Daily Exercise. On a vacation and in restaurants, making better choices would work differently than it did when eating at home, but the basics would remain the same.

I believe in avoiding hunger when trying to lose fat. I need regular meals and snacks to avoid hunger; if I skip a meal, or go too long between meals without eating something, I make mistakes with food choices and portion control when I finally do get a chance to eat. I had to be sure to get breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

Hungry people make bad choices.

One function of the food I ate had to be satisfying hunger. For me, the best tools for that are fat, protein, and foods that carry a fair amount of volume for their calories (fruits, vegetables, soups). Another function: the food had to keep me from feeling deprived, as if everyone else had good tasting food while I ate cardboard. For me, that meant sweet foods (fruit) and well seasoned foods had to be in. Finally, and most importantly, my food choices had to carry plenty of nutrition for their costs in calories. I’m a strength athlete, and carry a fair percentage of my body weight as muscle; that requires protein to maintain (a bit less than one gram per pound of body weight according to the best studies I’ve seen), especially when trying to lose fat. I’m active, and under stress, which means that I have to think about anti-oxidants; phyto-nutrients; calcium, zinc, and other minerals. To fight inflammation, provide nutrient transport, support hormone formation and brain function, assist in hunger control, and assist in weight loss, I’d need essential fatty acids. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, and fish all had to be on the menu, the fresher the better.

Then Bridging came in; making the best choices available. I couldn’t let myself eat my old standard Disney diet of fatty foods, white bread, white rice, white potatoes and white sugar. Fried foods, white rice, fatty meats, pastries and desserts used to be my favorites, but they couldn’t perform the functions I needed from my foods. Luckily, Disney is much better at providing healthful food choices than it used to be, and (more importantly) the months of bridging I’ve done (slowly teaching myself to enjoy progressively more healthful foods) have left me better at making the right choices.

I’d have found a sentiment like that laughable a decade ago. Real Men (and Women) ate for pleasure, ate what they wanted, and ignored the pushy salad eaters. Even as I learned more about nutrition, and realized that the salad eaters had some valid points, I still couldn’t bring myself to give up my favorite foods. Bridging helped me; I didn’t give up my favorites, I expanded my list of favorites. One food choice at a time, I learned to enjoy the foods that my body needed. Some people seem to do well at sudden, radical changes in diet; more than 90% of them go back to eating the foods that made them fat, in the ways that made them fat. I didn’t want to continue being part of that crowd; the slow, steady changes that make up bridging have been, I hope, my way out of that trap.

The above was how I thought through my plan; it mostly worked. At Disney, I was able to enjoy breakfasts of fruit, low fat milk, eggs and vegetables. I didn’t miss the pastries, potatoes and salt-laden fatty meats that used to be the core of my resort breakfasts; or, more accurately, I didn’t miss them much. Snacks were more fruit or vegetables and (when I could get it) milk; the parks did a good job of providing those options. I stayed away from low-fat pretzels and such; they might have had fewer calories than some other snacks, but white flour in any form doesn’t carry the nutrition to justify its cost in calories. I did miss the sugary and salty snacks I used to eat, but again, not that much. When I’m not hungry, nostalgia alone really isn’t enough to make me eat. Lunches and dinners were mostly fish (which I actively enjoy) or grilled chicken accompanied by large salads. The salads had minimal or no dressing and none of the hidden junk calories that often go into restaurant salads (cheese, bacon, croutons, etc). More fruit followed, when possible, for desert. Nuts and seeds were a bit of a problem; they’re healthful, but their cost in calories is high, and even small bags tend to have 3-4 servings. For portion control reasons I mostly skipped them. No alcohol (not a problem for me), nothing with extra sugar when I could avoid it. Sushi was a planned indulgence; the white rice doesn’t have much real nutritional value, but that was a case when I chose taste value over bang-for-your-buck healthfulness. I also chose to eat two or three forkfuls of birthday cake; a gentleman doesn’t refuse the cake at his niece’s fifth birthday party.

I still made a few un-healthful choices. Two dinners at the Moroccan restaurant in Epcot, an afternoon tea where I ate cheeses and pate (high in saturated fat, but good), three pieces of chocolate, and one bite of pretzel.

It sounds more Spartan than it felt; through Bridging, even a natural fat man can learn to love fruits and vegetables. I made sure that I was never hungry, which helped.

Exercise was, again, tricky. At home, I walk between 12-15 miles per week, and I lift weights and do body weight exercises 4-5 days per week. At Disney, I walked about 3-4 miles per day, and lifted light weights and did body weight exercises twice.

What was the end result? The morning after my return from Disney World, before breakfast I weighed myself.

247 pounds.

At Disney World, I had managed, over the course of one week, to lose three pounds. I was never hungry. I never felt deprived. My fat loss stayed on track.

I am very, very happy about that.

So, that’s what I ate on my vacation. The core principles of the Fat Uncles’ Diet Plan worked.

Thanks for reading, and wish me luck, eh?

Go Back to Fat Uncles