I was doing so well, I have lost seventeen pounds in eighteen weeks on Alli.  My husband and I are doing Alli together and he's lost nearly thirty pounds.  We both exercise and are eating heart healthy, low fat foods.  In eighteen weeks I felt like this lifestyle change was just that, not a diet but a true lifestyle change.  Then I went to Hawaii for ten days to celebrate my big 40 with my girlfriends.  I went off Alli as we were doing a lot of hiking and I didn't want to take any chances of having treatment affects if I ate something that had hidden fat in it.  In restaurants you can sometimes order thinking it is low fat and they dose it with something that doesn't settle right with Alli.  Anyway, I managed to exercise every day and eat okay the first half of the trip but the second half I fell off the wagon.  The trip home from Hawaii to Massachusetts, left me exhausted and instead of getting back on track I laid around yesterday (first full day back) and ate most of the day.  I weighed in and have put back on only one and a half pound and want to go full swing back into my program today, however I am distraught how easy it was to fall back into bad eating habits without Alli there to threaten me with bad effects.  How long will it take before I don't fall off track?  I just wonder if this is going to be a life long struggle?  I have twenty more pounds to go which at the rate I loose weight is at least another twenty weeks if I'm truly disciplined.  I don't want to gain it back.  My husband stayed on track here at the house while I was gone and worries he won't do as well on travel.  Any suggestions on how to better eat on the road long term?  How to truly make these life changes stick after Alli?  Has anyone else gone off for a couple weeks then went back on?  If so, was it easy to get back on track?

 Any and all advise or personal experiences are appreciated.  Good luck to everyone!!!

Aloha!

Hi Arpy70,

To update you and hopefully make you feel better about your upcoming vacation, I wanted you to know that I took off that 1 1/2 pound plus another half pound this week.  I think all the changes to sleep / diet /jet lag /time change, etc. kind of throw the body into shock a bit.  I will say that going back into a regular exercise program was hard the first few days and now I'm right back where I was.  My husband and I are also going to incorporate some hiking and biking on the weekends.  I enjoyed that on vacation and want to continue here at home.  So the change in exercise from typical gym routines to hiking was a good thing.  The changes in diet were also a wonderful surprise.  I welcomed back our healthy way of eating with a sigh of relief.  Like yourself the cravings for the bad stuff aren't like they were so getting back into good habits was even easier than when we started our Alli plan. Everything has turned out great.  I hope you are able to enjoy your vacation with the mind set of "it is vacation" so being a little bad like the 80/20 advise I had gotten is more than okay and won't throw you off completely.  Also incorporate things you like to do like hiking or swimming and you will come back home feeling refreshed and I promise getting back on track will be easier than you think.  Good Luck and have a wonderful time, try not to worry like I did and don't be too hard on yourself, after all... it is vacation!!!!