Being Healthy on Vacation

Sep 24, 2026

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Introduction
You may take a vacation, but your health never does. It's absolutely okay to relax, enjoy life, and try new and exciting foods. But it's also possible to enjoy yourself while still keeping some of your healthy habits intact. The goal is to make sure you're still working some exercise and healthy eating into your day.

A simple approach is to roughly follow the 90% rule. If you're eating well and exercising most of the time, you can leave some room for treats, restaurant meals, and an occasional day off. The 90% rule isn't meant to be a literal calculation. It's just a reminder that you don't need to be perfect all the time. Vacation doesn't have to be perfect to be healthy.
Table of Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. The Two Extremes
  3. Breakfast
  4. Lunch
  5. Dinner
  6. Other (Dessert, Drinks, etc.)
  7. Tallying it Up
  8. Exercise
  9. The Lesson
  10. Conclusion

The Two Extremes
The two extremes of someone on vacation are pretty easy to imagine. Person A is someone who eats and drinks everything. They "don't exercise on vacation", and eat indulgent food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus 1-3 desserts a day. They have a good time, sure, but they come back feeling sluggish and several pounds heavier.

On the other hand, person B panics as soon as a vacation is planned. They stress excessively about what they're going to eat and where they're going to work out. They're worried the whole time about what they're eating, and they have a hard time enjoying themselves. They may avoid the sluggishness and weight gain, but they've spent the entire vacation worrying about food and exercise.

Don't be person A. And don't be person B. Instead, be person C. The one who works out in the morning. The one who makes sure to get plenty of protein, vegetables, and fruit throughout the day. But the one who isn't afraid to eat a slice of cake.

So I just got back from a cruise, which inspired this blog post. There's tons of indulgent food available at all times, but also plenty of nutritious food options and a gym on standby.

I'm going to break down examples of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks/desserts for both maintaining your health goals and going completely balls-to-the-wall, "I don't care," standard vacationer. I'm also going to show you how to work in exercise.
Breakfast
The cruise has your Standard American Diet (appropriately abbreviated to SAD) options. Here are just some of your classic indulgent food breakfast options available on a cruise.


Yeah that's a ton of indulgent food. It's a lot of refined starch, added sugar, and calorie-dense foods, with plenty of added fats mixed in. What a great way to start out your day if you're looking to feel sluggish, overly full, or crash later. It's certainly not the breakfast I'd choose if I wanted to feel my best for the rest of the day.

Here's an example of what a pretty typical indulgent breakfast could look like:


In comparison, there are also plenty of nutritious options available to you on a cruise, at a hotel, or just while out on vacation:


Lots of indulgent food. And lots of nutritious food. Building a nutritious breakfast isn't too difficult. Here's an example breakfast for me this last week.


The cottage cheese is my main protein source, with the almonds and walnuts adding healthy fats. Sugar free syrup is optional, but adds a touch of sweetness.

The raw veggie salad adds much-needed fiber, as well as vitamins, minerals, and beneficial plant compounds. And the lox and egg on top provide additional protein.

Finally, the mixed fruit provides carbohydrates along with plenty of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

And that's just for the days I was on the boat. When I'm at an airport, an Airbnb, or while traveling elsewhere, my go-to breakfast is normally the following:


Before I go on a trip, I prepare multiple single-serving bags of my protein shake mix. This is my To Go Protein Shake, which is a mix of protein powder, milk powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and pure granulated monk fruit in a small airtight bag. I also added inulin for some fiber.

I'll just travel with a shaker bottle, dump in the bag of powder, and all I need to do is add water. It's cheap, simple, and a tasty way to get protein in on the go.

The other food I prep is nuts. I'll prepare multiple single-serving bags of nuts of 1 oz (28 g) each. This time it was pistachios. This provides my healthy fats.

The last 2 components are baby carrots for some vegetables and fiber, and an apple for some fruit and carbs.

Nutrient Indulgent Nutritious
(1)		 Nutritious
(2)
Calories 1061 679 543
Fat 42.5 g 35.2 g 14.8 g
Total Carbs 137.3 g 57.4 g 71.6 g
Fiber 5.2 g 11.6 g 19.9 g
Total Sugar 54.0 g 30.9 g 45.0 g
Protein 32.4 g 44.9 g 41.5 g

Lunch
Let's move onto lunch now. Here are some of your typical lunch options that are more indulgent:


The typical lunch I saw on the boat was a cheeseburger and fries. But that was closely joined by pizza and a bunch of other sides. Here's what I'll assume the standard lunch would be:


In comparison, let's take a look at some more nutritious ingredients and dishes you can enjoy for lunch. The salad bar will be your best friend:


I pretty much lived at the salad bar for lunch. Sometimes I would grab a grilled veggie dish from the other stations, or sample some other food. But I pretty much always built a big salad.


I'm making sure to get my vegetables in for fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals. Tuna adds protein. Blue cheese adds some fats. And the fruit supplies my carbs.

Nutrient Indulgent Nutritious
Calories 1605 588
Fat 73.3 g 28.7 g
Total Carbs 182.0 g 50.2 g
Fiber 9.6 g 13.7 g
Total Sugar 25.0 g 29.1 g
Protein 54.3 g 40.9 g

Dinner
Now onto dinner. A cruise for example would have a very similar dinner to lunch if you go to the buffet section. This includes a wide selection of fried foods, but also a fairly extensive salad bar.

But instead, I'll be considering the complementary dining hall for dinner, where you get a choice of an appetizer, entrée, and dessert, plus a slice of bread with butter.

Looking over the menu, here are a couple of your appetizer choices:


Next up is the entrée. Here are some possible selections:


Finally, there's dessert, which has a few different options:

  • Cheesecake
  • Crème brûlée
  • Dulce de leche cake
  • Fresh fruit
  • Lava cake with vanilla ice cream
  • Panna cotta
  • Pear almond cake
  • Tiramisu

Unlike breakfast and lunch, there are a lot of healthier dinner options here. You can still get fried food, you can still get a salad, and there are options in between.

For my standard American dinner option, I'll assume that they pick the following:


This seemed to be fairly standard. Eat your roll with some butter. Get a soup for an appetizer, and something fried for dinner. Finally, finish it with a classic dessert.

On the other hand, here's my healthier dinner selection option:


The appetizer salad came with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and feta. I opted for no dressing to avoid all the added sugar and fat, but instead added some plain balsamic vinegar onto it, along with salt and pepper.

The entrée was a salad with a similar base: lettuce, tomato, and onions. Where this differed is it had smoked salmon, farro, goat cheese, raspberries, grapes, and walnuts. Again, I went with no dressing, and instead added balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Finally, for dessert, I chose the fresh fruit. This was a plate of grapes, cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple, and watermelon.

I got my protein from the smoked salmon, fats from the goat cheese, feta, and walnuts, carbs from the fruit and farro, and fiber from the raw veggies in the salads.

Nutrient Indulgent Nutritious
Calories 1641 579
Fat 83.7 g 17.4 g
Total Carbs 151.1 g 79.6 g
Fiber 9.1 g 12.4 g
Total Sugar 66.7 g 41.5 g
Protein 74.7 g 32.4 g

Other (Desserts, Drinks, etc.)
Things tend to go haywire on a vacation. Going out to ice cream after lunch. Ordering a slice of cake at dinner.

And there's the alcohol. Alcohol is also calorie-dense at 7 calories per gram, and many alcoholic drinks contain substantial amounts of added sugar. If you drink, enjoy it, but remember that those calories can add up quickly.

Let's assume the following vacationer has these foods and drinks outside of their usual three meals:


If the calories weren't already off the charts with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then well they are now. I can't stress this enough, please enjoy yourself, but treat your body as well while you're treating yourself.

Now, onto the "healthier" vacationer. I'm putting "healthier" in quotes. Why's that? Do you remember the 90% rule? Eat healthy and exercise 90% of the time, so you have that 10% wiggle room to "enjoy life", relax, and treat yourself? Yeah... that's gonna come in handy right about now.

Again, I'll be assuming the cruise. As you can tell, I've been carefully building very nutritious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. And this is why, because here's my 10%.

Sampling different options is a great way to enjoy new or exciting flavors for foods you wouldn't necessarily want a full portion of because of one reason or another. Whether it's full of added sugar, has refined flour or white bread, is oily or greasy, or is just calorie dense, sampling is the way to go. This works especially well at buffets because you can have a taste of something interesting without turning every option into an entire meal, and without wasting any additional money or causing food waste.

If you thought my nutrition estimates were rough before, then they're about to get a whole lot rougher. I didn't eat outside of my 3 normal meals, though I did try some "junk food" at probably every meal. I'll attempt to sum that up here.

I may try a bite of a couple different entrees at the buffet line, such as BBQ pulled pork, mac and cheese, or an egg roll. I would also sample a couple of desserts. There were always 3-5 different cakes out, and I may take the tiniest piece of each one to try a single bite of all 5 cakes.

This will be impossible to properly estimate, but I'll just assume the following in the "other" category:


I figured the lasagna and bread overall cover all the sampled meals, and the cake covers the sampled dessert.

I also threw in an extra tablespoon each of sugar and oil as a conservative estimate for ingredients I may have missed in my terrible back-of-the-napkin calculation.

Nutrient Indulgent Nutritious
Calories 2144 1284
Fat 74.6 g 53.9 g
Total Carbs 293.7 g 177.1 g
Fiber 8.9 g 8.3 g
Total Sugar 162.9 g 100.8 g
Protein 20.7 g 30.3 g

Tallying it Up
So I outlined rough estimates for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for both a standard diner and health-conscious vacationer, as well as anything additional, such as snacks, desserts, and drinks. Let's add everything up now, shall we:

Nutrient Indulgent Nutritious
Calories 6417 3191
Fat 272.4 g 143.8 g
Total Carbs 760.4 g 360.9 g
Fiber 32.7 g 47.3 g
Total Sugar 305.3 g 193.9 g
Protein 181.4 g 147.4 g

According to my Garmin, I burned an average of 2,500 calories while I was on the trip. My average calorie consumption was about 3,200 calories a day, or a surplus of 700.

For just a couple of days, this can be totally fine, especially when combined with a consistent exercise routine before, during, and after the trip. That's the balance I'm looking for: enjoying your vacation without throwing yourself completely off the rails.

And then there's Person A. Oh boy. Not only did they eat loads more calories, sugar, and fat, but they probably also did a lot more lounging around. You can absolutely lounge around on a vacation, and you should, but I guarantee the average person isn't hitting the gym on their vacation.

For simplicity, let's assume the same 2,500 calories burned, even though someone following this hypothetical scenario may have been less active. For a hypothetical calorie intake of 6,400, that would be a surplus of an astounding 3,900 calories!
Exercise
There's a common misconception that "I don't need to exercise on vacation". I'm here to tell you that you don't have to stop exercising just because you're on vacation. You don't necessarily need to exercise more on vacation, but there's also no reason you have to stop exercising entirely.

On a vacation, you're not eating home cooked food. This generally means bigger portion sizes, especially with buffets, as well as more fried food and otherwise added oils, increased bread consumption, and added sugar on top of added sugar.

You're likely eating more food at once, more often, and worse quality food. Again, please enjoy your once in a while vacation, but while you may take time off work, your health does not take time off.

Rather than abandoning exercise entirely, try to keep some movement in your routine. A morning workout can be a great way to start the day such as cardio or weightlifting. Walking around and exploring your destination throughout the day can add plenty of activity without it feeling like exercise.

For me, this meant getting to the gym right when I roll out of bed, and hopping on the exercise bike for an hour before showering and going to breakfast.

I may also throw in a couple of sets of curls while I'm there, or get some quick stretching done. Perfect, it's not even 8 am, and I already got my main workout in.

We did a bunch of walking around the island, as well as some treadmill walking too. Especially with a cruise, you could be lying around by the pool or in your room for a while.

If I biked before breakfast, then I would squeeze in a 30 minute, 2 mile walk, after both lunch and dinner. Post-meal walks can help with digestion and blood sugar levels while adding some extra activity to your day.
The Lesson
The point I'm trying to stress is that you shouldn't let a vacation be the excuse you're looking for to fall off your health journey. The main issue isn't the 5 days you're away, it's what comes after that.

The vacation itself isn't going to make or break your health. Five days of different food and a different routine are not what determine your long-term health. The bigger concern is whether those five days turn into five weeks of abandoning the habits you had before the vacation.

If you haven't been to the gym in a week because you were on vacation, it can be harder to get back into your routine. You're also used to eating fried fatty foods for meals, and desserts every night.

For many people, starting nutritious habits is much harder than maintaining an established routine. Skipping once is an exception, but twice is the start of a new trend. Keeping up on your health journey at all times is the best way to ensure you don't fall off it.

When you get back, the gym is normal, since you've been going the whole time anyway. You don't have to will yourself back into working out, because you never stopped in the first place.

Likewise, get back and cook a healthy dinner, and snack on some fruit for dessert. You got the cake out of your system, but you're not overly craving it because you didn't eat it all day every day.
Conclusion
There you have it. You can have a vacation without going completely overboard on indulging, and you can also have a vacation without obsessively restricting yourself. The goal isn't to eat perfectly. It's to find a balance that lets you enjoy your vacation while still taking care of yourself.

My approach might not be your approach, and that's okay. Maybe you want to hit the gym every morning like I do. Maybe you'd rather go for a long walk and call it a day. Maybe you don't care about any of this and want to eat cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. More power to you.

The important thing is to make informed decisions. Enjoy the food. Try something new. Have the dessert. Get some exercise. Eat some vegetables. Walk around and explore. And when you get home, get back to your normal routine.

You don't have to choose between being healthy and enjoying your vacation. You can do both.
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