Holiday habits that support your hormones

Holiday season is here

Hello everyone,

I wanted to discuss holidays and achieving balance with our eating and movement whilst away from home. Many of you might be going off for your summer vacations, and having a plan in place will help you maintain the balance needed for our condition without feeling like you are missing out.

In this article, we discuss why holidays are challenging, and I offer you 13 little habits you can add to your holidays to maintain balance.

Why thinking about your holidays is important

Over the years, I have learnt that after my holidays, my periods start being irregular. Even to this day, with all of the knowledge, holidays are extremely challenging to keep in balance, and I had to practice over several years on how to achieve it. Some of you might wonder, why would you? It’s a holiday. Well, for those who have a more severe form of PCOS, a holiday where we overeat and don’t move means having a flare-up of symptoms: acne, hair, irregular periods, weight gain, etc.

Something to keep in mind is that you will feel the flare-ups 2-3 months after your holidays, especially when it comes to your period. The follicle that eventually ovulates begins its growth from a primordial state many months prior. The journey from primordial follicle to ovulation can take over 200 days—more than 6 months—and in some estimates, up to nearly a year. All throughout this time, the quality of your nutrition and hormones affects its development. If you go on holiday 3-4 times a year, even though you are being very balanced when you are home, it can still affect your reproductive health.

The science of why holidays are challenging

1. The habit loop is broken

Habits are behaviours that become automatic through repetition and are strongly influenced by environmental cues—specific objects, locations, or routines that prompt the habit without conscious thought. For example, you might go to the gym every day at 7 a.m. after you have your coffee. What happens when, on holiday, you wake up at 10 a.m.?

During the holidays, familiar cues like your 7 am gym habit after coffee may be absent or replaced, making it harder to stick to healthy routines. The disruption of these cues weakens the habit loop (cue → routine → reward), reducing the likelihood that you’ll automatically engage in your usual healthy behaviours.

2. The novelty seeking

The other reason is our brain’s love for anything new. When we encounter novelty, our brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, motivation, and reward. This dopamine surge makes us feel good and encourages us to seek out new experiences, ideas, or environments—a behaviour known as novelty-seeking. If you go on holiday for 5 days and stay in the same spot, do you remember the first 3 days of any holiday as the most exciting? This is your brain in action. This makes us want to try every new food in that culture. Rightly so, you didn’t just travel 2000km to order a salad.

3. Breaking loose from your “diet”

Lastly, there is also a frame of mind that I catch myself entering when I am on holiday of “let’s go all in”. If you have had cycles of dieting and you feel like in your day-to-day you are holding on to this ideal way of eating and being, which might not be second nature, when you are off on holiday, you might revert back to what feels more in line with your old habits. This is why holidays are the ultimate test for ingrained habits. Do you want to move and be active during your holiday? Do you want to have a balanced meal that makes you feel nourished? Can you stop after one biscuit? I am not saying this as a test where you fail if you don’t, but rather a reflection of where you might be on the behaviour change journey.

What does balance mean during a holiday?

We all know the 80/20 rule. I think this is a great rule to apply in your daily life. When on holidays, I think about it more like a 60/40 rule: try to make the right choices 60% of the time so you can enjoy your holiday.

Principles

Here are my top principles and strategies for how to keep balance during the holidays: