We've all been there, you come home from summer vacation with a sunburn, great memories (some you may not remember), and an extra 5-7 pounds that have magically found its way to your midsection.

You enter panic mode because you just spent a month working your hiney off to be vacation-ready and somehow it has all been undone in a matter of days. You're scrambling, considering going on a juice cleanse or some sort of crash diet to get this weight off quickly.

Please don’t do that.

It’s going to be okay.

I love a good scale victory as much as the next person but I have to say, over the years, it’s become as important to me if not more when a client has an NSV that shows they are permanently healing their relationship with food and to their body image.

NSV = Non Scale Victory

The opportunity for a meaningful NSV is to have a little zig-zag here and there without it throwing you into a fear cyclone of shame and doubt. You look forward to drinking your green juice, moving your body, and cooking your meals. Being healthy is how you desire to live. It’s not a punishment, it’s a privilege, and you can’t wait to jump back in, knowing your physical body, and the scale will follow closely behind.

The reason why we freak out over those five-vacation-pounds is, on a deeper level, because we don't trust ourselves. We don't trust that at some point we will return to a place of intuitive eating - eating that is guided from our higher selves, a place of higher wisdom within us. Underneath this fear, we have a belief that we truly aren't worthy, strong, or determined enough to maintain that permanent weight loss. We are left to believe that dieting is the only way to get us there, to get us back to so-called "sanity."

Combine that with our culture's obsession with abs, thigh gaps, and the absence of cellulite, and you've got yourself a full-blown post-vacation meltdown! Welcome fucking home.

In the past you’d be scrambling right now, following the strictest set of rules so that you can get “back on track” to health and the perfect body.

Nope, you’re not doing it.

You know the pendulum only swings from one extreme to the other and then back the other way.

So, the eternal question: How do you rebound from vacation (or any off-the-rails eating)?

Here are my top 7 tips for getting back on track…

1. Drink lemon water first thing in the morning for at least a week when you get back, and drink more than half your body weight in water each day. Water will flush the bloat and the toxins causing it.
2. Start the day with an anti-inflammatory green smoothie (check out www.nutritionalwisdom.com for recipes or my Instagram highlights).
3. Shoot for 2-3 days of Intermittent Fasting. Don’t know how to do this or whether it’s right for you? Consider some 1:1 coaching! Get more info here.
4. Break a sweat for 30 minutes per day and get in the infrared sauna if you have access.
5. Incorporate foods that ease digestion and boost detoxification like parsley, cucumber, asparagus, and ginger. You know I love me some ginger water, learn how to make it on my Instagram highlights called “Liquid Elixirs”.
6. Take your probiotics
7. Prioritize sleep

And for your next vacation, do the work on the front end! Plan a week's worth of meals in advance, order groceries online on your way back home (overachievers, you can put it all in your cart when you make your weekly food plan before you leave and order them in one click on the way home), and stock the pantry and freezer with your essentials so when you return home after a long flight or car ride you have everything you need to pick up where you left off. Make this practice part of your “packing to-do list” so when you get home you can do laundry and breathe a sigh of relief as you take out that frozen soup or curry from the freezer.

As always, no matter how badly you’ve fallen off track, continue to put one foot in front of the other. Until we learn the deeper lessons of what this weight or health issue is here to teach us, it’s meant to stick around. Take some time to ask yourself what your behaviors are here to teach you?

Xo C