Should I Take a Break From Keto on Vacation?

During your vacation on keto, you probably accidentally broke your ketosis due to peer pressure.

Gaining weight on the holidays is a big problem for a lot of people.

Maybe your family pressured you to eat carbs whenever you ate out, or maybe your relatives made you a dessert that was too good to pass up.

If this sounds familiar, don’t worry because I’ve been in the same situation many times before.

In this article I’ll discuss if you should take a break from keto on your vacation or not.

How Does Keto Work?

Keto can help you to lose weight because whenever you get rid of carbs, your body goes into a state of ketosis. Whenever you’re in a state of ketosis, your body can use its own fat for fuel. This is the main reason you lose weight on keto.

To reach ketosis, you should aim for around under 50 grams of net carbs per day.

To simplify things, just don’t eat any high carb foods like bread or muffins.

Even though ketosis is great, the biggest benefit of keto for weight loss is that you eliminate high carb foods.

Whenever you eliminate high carb foods, like waffles, ice cream, cake, etc, you are much less likely to binge eat.

Non-stimulating, healthy foods like broccoli, have never ever been binge eaten before.

Just by eliminating carbs from the food you eat, you automatically binge less because the foods you eat give you less urges.

How Long Does It Take to Get Back Into Ketosis After Eating Carbs?

After eating carbs on keto, on average it takes around 2–4 days to reach ketosis again. It takes a couple days for your body to burn through the carbs you ate, but if you eat under 50 grams of carbs per day and wait a couple of days, your body would start burning its own fat for energy again.

If you are a bigger person, or if you work out more often, then you’ll burn through the carbs left in your system much faster.

This would mean that you could reach ketosis in around 1–2 days.

But, if you are a smaller person, or if you don’t work out as often, then it would take around 3–4 days to get in ketosis.

This is because your body would need more time to use the carbs left in its system and get back to using fats for energy.

How to Get Into Ketosis Faster After a Vacation?

If you want to get back into ketosis after eating carbs on vacation, you just need to eat under 50 grams of net carbs per day. To get into ketosis even faster, you should add fasting and exercising on top of keto.

Fasting

Fasting, either with intermittent fasting or prolonged fasting, is a great way to get ketosis faster because it burns a lot of calories, and it also lowers your insulin.

This basically makes fasting the best and quickest way to get a head-start on ketosis since it helps you to burn through the old carbs in your system super quickly.

Exercise

Working out is another great way to get ket ketosis faster. This is because exercising burns calories, so you’ll burn the old carbs left in your system & get back into ketosis faster.

For the best results, you should combine exercising with fasting to get into ketosis & lose weight as fast as possible.

Can You Lose Weight If You Eat Carbs Often?

It is possible to lose weight on keto if you had cheat days, but since it would slow your weight loss down by a lot, you should try to avoid cheat days at all costs. Your body needs time to get back into ketosis after eating carbs, so if you constantly eat carbs with weekly or bi-weekly cheat days, you’d stop losing weight.

After eating carbs, your body takes time to fully use all of the carbs in its system before it can reach ketosis again.

This makes it really hard to lose weight if you have cheat days constantly.

Instead, focus on eating strict keto and having as little cheat meals as possible.

But, if you are on vacation and decide on eating carbs, always limit the types and amounts of carbs you eat.

For example, instead of eating a lot of sugary foods, instead focus on limiting unhealthy carbs when possible & try to eat carbs only when necessary.

As long as you don’t snack a lot & eat healthily most of the time, you likely won’t gain weight whilst you’re on vacation, even if you’re eating carbs.

Cheat Days on Other Diets vs. Keto

With other diets, if you have a cheat day, the biggest problem is that you go over your calories. However, with keto, not only do you go over your calories for the day, but you also get kicked out of ketosis for multiple days after a cheat day.

That’s why it is much better to eat healthy and not have any cheat meals or binges on keto whenever possible.

Breaking Bad Habits

Another huge goal of keto is to break your bad habits of unhealthy eating.

Keto isn’t just about losing weight, it’s also about building the healthy habit of restraining from addicting & unhealthy foods.

Should I Take a Break From Keto on Vacation?

If you don’t mind not losing weight during your vacation as long as you can eat carbs, then it’s okay if you take a break from keto. You likely won’t gain any weight back if you still eat healthily. If you do decide to eat carbs on vacation, make sure to come back to keto after your break.

You could also practice intermittent fasting during your vacation if you want to continue to lose weight.

As long as you skip breakfast or dinner, you’ll probably keep losing weight even without keto on your vacation.

What Is The Fastest Way to Get Into Ketosis?

The fastest way to reach ketosis is by doing prolonged dry fasting and exercising. If you don’t eat and if you also exercise at the same time, you burn through the old carbs left in your system really quickly. If you exercise and fast on the same day, you could probably reach ketosis in around a day.

Most people normally do wet fasts, but let me tell you why dry fasting is much better for most people.

Dry Fasting

Dry fasting is a type of prolonged fasting when you don’t eat or drink water for multiple days. Dry fasting has been shown to be 2x more effective than wet fasting, helping you lose around a pound of fat a day. This makes prolonged dry fasting amazing for weight loss.

With dry fasting, your body can combine the hydrogen in your fat with the oxygen in the air to create H²O.

This is the same reason camels have humps in their back; it’s so they can make their own metabolic water and keep surviving even when there’s no water available.

If you wanted get back into ketosis & lose weight ASAP, you should do a prolonged dry fast combined with exercise.

How Often Should You Take a Break From Keto?

You should only take a break from keto if you’ve all the weight you wanted to lose. This is because if you take breaks on keto, your body is going to go in and out of ketosis. This means that you’ll stop losing weight. 

However, if you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose on keto, you don’t need to be as strict. If you’re at a healthy weight, you could take a break from keto on vacation if you wanted to without gaining too much weight.

Should You Have Cheat Days on Keto?

No, you shouldn’t have cheat days on keto if you want to lose weight. This is because for most of the week, your body would only then be adjusting back to using fats for fuel. Instead, focus on eating strict keto until you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose.

Should You Quit Keto After Eating Carbs?

No, you shouldn’t quit keto if ate some carbs. It would only take you a couple days to get back into ketosis, so as long as you keep eating low carb, you’ll start losing weight again. Even if you take a break from keto, on vacation for example, as long as you come back to eating low-carb, you’ll continue to lose weight.

Who Should Take Breaks on Keto?

If you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose on keto, you should consider taking a break from keto with long-term carb cycling. With long-term carb cycling you can eat carbs freely for two months of the year, and then for the rest of the year you eat keto. 

This not only helps with dietary freedom, but it also makes your body more adjusted to both food types.

This basically makes your body a hybrid vehicle––able to use both carbs & fats for fuel.

How to Carb Cycle Correctly

To carb cycle correctly, you should eat carbs for two months a year, and eat low-carb for the rest of the year. This will give your body enough time to adjust to using both carbs and fat 100%. Not only would this be a helpful mental break from keto, this would also help your body to be more balanced overall.

Long-Term Carb Cycling Is Better Than Short-Term Carb Cycling

Long-term carb cycling is better than short-term carb cycling because with long-term carb cycling, your body can adjust to using carbs fully. But with short-term carb cycling, you’d go in & out of ketosis too often. This means that you would stop losing weight.

If you did short-term carb cycling and ate carbs, you’d also become tired. This is because it takes around six weeks for your mitochondria to go through their lifecycle. 

So, instead focus on doing long-term carb cycling instead of short-term carb cycling so you can fully get the benefits of carb cycling.

It would take around six weeks of carb cycling to get the full benefits of carb cycling. 

If you quit before six weeks, you wouldn’t see the benefits of carb cycling 100%.

Benefits of Carb Cycling

The biggest benefits of carb cycling are that you have more dietary freedom, and your body becomes adjusted to using both fuel sources. 

This means that your body basically turns into a hybrid car. It can use either fats or carbs as energy.

Most people, including me, put their two month carb cycle near their biggest vacation. 

This means that you don’t have to worry about over eating carbs when you’re on vacation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want to lose weight, you shouldn’t eat carbs during your vacation. But, you probably won’t gain weight if you eat carbs during your vacation either.

Here’s my article where I go more in depth on how to carb cycle properly so you can enjoy your vacation better.