Healthy eating while on holidays

You’ve heard the story a thousand times of people putting on weight & eating whatever they feel like over Christmas.

I’m all for a bit of indulgence when it is served. Literally. If you are a guest at Christmas & you are offered a pudding, it’s ok to say yes. Getting in the car especially to buy a box of chocolates or tub of ice-cream for yourself is not ok. 

For me, being at the 22 day mark of our holiday have decided it IS possible to not only eat healthily but also to get other people on board. We have been fortunate in that we have been staying with family in London & Edinburgh, rented a house in the Scottish Highlands & stayed with a friend in Dublin. This meant visits to the supermarkets – which happens to be one of my favourite things to do in a foreign country!

Our bodies thrive on food specific to the climate – to give you an extreme example, do you think Eskimos would thrive on a diet of mangoes & pineapple? For me this means big leafy, green salads complimented with lots of roast veg – sweet potato, parsnip, cauliflower, broccoli with sprinkles of roast nuts & seeds. It also reiterates to me that the import of tropical fruits is unnecessary on so many levels – our bodies don’t thrive on tropical fruits in winter weather of less than 5 degrees. The fruits are often picked very early, meaning they don’t ripen properly & are devoid of taste (coming from a spoilt Aussie used to locally sourced fruit & veg). For breakfast, we have been enjoying locally sourced eggs – a lot from my Aunt’s Hens, tomatoes, some wholemeal bread (I was 95% gluten-free for 5 months leading up to this holiday but found most of the gluten-free bread in Tesco was packed with sugar).

So get in charge of the shopping list & make some suggestions for meals.