Getting Back on Track After Summer? Read This First

Why Getting Back on Track After Summer Might Be Keeping You Stuck

As a Registered Nutritionist, I often work with women who feel caught in a cycle of trying to be “on track”, falling “off track” and then starting all over again. The good news is that there is another way to approach food, health and wellbeing. 

As summer rolls around, I start hearing the same conversations in clinic again and again, particularly around holidays, weekends away and social occasions during the summer months. 

“I’ll get back on track when I get home.” 

“I’ve completely fallen off track.” 

“I need to be really careful now.” 

“I’ve eaten too much on holiday.” 

“I’ll start again on Monday.” 

For many women, summer is supposed to be a time of relaxation, connection and making memories, but instead, it can become a season of guilt. 

The BBQ that should have been enjoyable is overshadowed by thoughts about what you’ve eaten. 

The family holiday comes with worries about weight gain. 

The ice cream on the beach is accompanied by a silent promise to be stricter next week. 

The meal out with friends is followed by thoughts about how you’ll compensate tomorrow. 

And often, what should be joyful experiences become tangled up with anxiety about food, weight and body image. 

If that sounds familiar, I want to offer a different perspective. 

Perhaps the problem isn’t that you’ve gone off track. 

Perhaps the idea that you need to keep getting back on track is what’s keeping you stuck. 

The goal isn’t to get back on track. 
The goal is to build a way of eating that doesn’t require constant restarting. 

What Does “Getting Back on Track” Actually Mean?

Many of the women I work with initially tell me they want to get back on track. But when we explore what that actually means, it often turns out they’re looking for reassurance that their weight hasn’t changed or a sense of control around food again. 

This is a question I often ask clients. 

What is this track? 

And who decided what it looks like? 

When we explore it more deeply, “being on track” often means: 

• Eating according to certain rules 
• Feeling in control around food 
• Being more restrictive 
• Weight not increasing  

And “being off track” often means: 

• Eating more spontaneously 
• Going on holiday 
• Enjoying social occasions 
• Eating foods that don’t usually feature in your routine 
• Having less structure 
• Feeling worried your weight may have changed 

Notice how quickly the conversation shifts away from health.

If we’re honest, for many women the fear isn’t really about health. It’s about what eating differently might mean for their weight. 

It’s about feeling out of control. 

It’s about anxiety that body shape or size might change. 

It’s about how they think they will feel about themselves if that happens. 

And that matters because the solution to a health concern is often very different from the solution to a body image concern. 

If the real fear is weight gain, then becoming stricter with food might temporarily reduce anxiety, but it rarely addresses the underlying issue. In fact, many women tell me that the more they try to control food, the more food ends up occupying their thoughts.  

The Cost of Living Like This

One of the saddest things I hear from clients is that they didn’t fully enjoy the holiday because they were worrying about food and their body. 

Sometimes the strongest memory isn’t the beach, the sunshine or the laughter. 

It’s feeling uncomfortable in a swimming costume. 

It’s worrying about what other people might think. 

It’s analysing what you’ve eaten. 

It’s planning how you’ll make up for it when you get home. 

Or it’s feeling guilty for enjoying foods that are meant to be part of the experience. 

Food and body worries become so loud that they drown out the very moments people were looking forward to. 

I’ve worked with women who avoided swimming with their children because they didn’t feel comfortable being seen in a swimsuit. 

Others describe spending so much of a holiday worrying about food, weight or their appearance that those worries become the strongest memory of the experience. 

And when we look back on life, that’s rarely what we want. 

Most of us want to remember: 

• The laughter 
• The people 
• The conversations 
• The experiences 
• The connection 

Not whether we perfectly followed a set of food rules. 

The Problem with Conditional Enjoyment

Many of us have a hidden belief that sounds something like this: 

“I’ll enjoy myself when I’ve lost weight.” 

“I’ll wear the shorts when I feel more confident.” 

“I’ll get in the photos when I look better.” 

“I’ll go swimming when I feel more comfortable.” 

“I’ll stop thinking about my body when it changes.” 

The problem is that life keeps happening in the meantime. 

How many summers have been spent waiting for the future version of yourself to start living? 

The version of yourself that feels confident enough, comfortable enough and finally able to start living fully. 

Meanwhile, this summer passes by too. 

This is not about saying your body image concerns aren’t real. 

They are. 

It’s not about pretending body confidence is easy. 

It isn’t. 

It’s about noticing how much life can get put on hold when enjoyment becomes conditional upon changing your appearance. 

It’s Not About Forcing Yourself to Love Your Body 

At this point, it’s important to say that I am not suggesting this is easy.  In clinic, I often work with women who have spent decades believing their worth is closely tied to their appearance. These beliefs rarely disappear overnight, which is why this work requires compassion and patience. 

If you’ve spent years worrying about your weight, avoiding certain clothes, feeling uncomfortable in photographs, or believing that your appearance determines your worth, these thoughts don’t disappear because someone tells you to be more confident. 

This isn’t about forcing yourself to love every part of your body. 

And it isn’t about pretending body image doesn’t affect you. 

For many women, these beliefs have been shaped over years, sometimes decades. 

They may have been influenced by comments from family members, experiences at school, messages from society, social media, or repeated attempts to change their body. 

Of course that has an impact. 

Of course, wearing the swimsuit feels difficult. 

Of course, enjoying the holiday wholeheartedly can feel challenging when part of your mind is focused on how you look. 

The answer isn’t to criticise yourself for feeling that way. 

It’s to become curious about where these beliefs came from and whether they’re still serving you. 

Over time, the goal is not necessarily body love. 

The goal is often something much more achievable and freeing. 

Body respect. 

The ability to recognise that your body deserves care even on days you don’t particularly like how it looks. 

The ability to separate your value as a person from your weight, shape or appearance. 

The ability to participate in the things that matter to you, even when confidence doesn’t feel perfect. 

Because life doesn’t need to wait until you feel completely comfortable in your body. 

And that kind of shift is often deeper work than people realise. 

It’s rarely achieved through another set of food rules. 

It’s usually built through support, reflection, self-compassion and learning a different way of relating to yourself. 

Research and clinical experience consistently show that being harsh towards ourselves is rarely an effective route to lasting change. Self-compassion isn’t about letting yourself off the hook. It’s about responding to difficulties in a way that helps you move forward rather than keeping you stuck in shame. 

The Problem With “Starting Again”

This pattern is often linked to what we call all-or-nothing thinking. If eating in a particular way is seen as success, then any deviation can feel like failure. Unfortunately, this mindset tends to keep people trapped in cycles of guilt and restarting rather than helping them build consistency. 

The “I’ll start again Monday” mindset can feel productive. 

But underneath it is often a different message. 

“I need to regain control.” 

“I need to undo what happened.” 

“I’ve gone too far.” 

“I need to make up for it.” 

“I can’t be trusted around food.” 

When we keep responding to normal life experiences this way, we end up trapped in a cycle: 

Restriction -Life happens-Holiday, BBQ, meal out or celebration- Guilt -Compensation -Restriction- 

And the cycle starts again. 

Every time we try to compensate, we’re teaching ourselves that the experience was a problem. 

A holiday becomes something to recover from. 

An ice cream becomes something to make up for. 

A family BBQ becomes something that needs correcting. 

And that keeps us stuck. 

Balance and Compensation Are Not The Same Thing

Inside Nourish & Flourish last month, we were talking about balance. 

Not the version of balance that often gets talked about online. 

Real balance. 

Because many women think they’re aiming for balance when they’re actually compensating.  One of the biggest shifts I see in clients is when they stop trying to compensate for food and start learning how to support themselves more consistently and flexibly. 

What Balance Actually Looks Like

Balance sounds like: 

• Sometimes cooking from scratch 
• Sometimes using convenience foods when life is busy 
• Sometimes eating at home 
• Sometimes enjoying a meal out 
• Sometimes having a structured routine
• Sometimes adapting when life changes 

What Compensation Looks Like

Compensation sounds like: 

• “I need to make up for that.” 

• “I’ll skip a meal tomorrow.” 

• “I’ll be extra careful next week.” 

• “I’ve got to get back on track.” 

One is flexible. 

The other is driven by fear. 

One supports a peaceful relationship with food. 

The other keeps you stuck in cycles of guilt and control. 

True balance makes room for both nourishment and enjoyment. 

It recognises that food is about more than nutrients. 

Food can also be: 

• Pleasure 
• Celebration
• Culture
• Comfort
• Connection
• Tradition

And all of those things can coexist alongside health. 

Health Doesn’t Disappear After One Week

When people feel pressure to get back on track, there is often a sense of urgency. 

As though something terrible has happened that needs fixing immediately.  But health doesn’t work like that.  A week away doesn’t create your health, and it doesn’t destroy it either.  Your health is shaped by the overall patterns that develop across months and years. 

The occasional holiday. 

The BBQ. 

The ice cream. 

The family gathering. 

The meal out. 

These things are part of a normal life. 

When we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, they become much less significant than we often imagine. 

Why Flexibility Supports Health Better Than Control 

One of the biggest misconceptions I see is the belief that becoming more rigid will help someone become more consistent. 

In reality, the opposite is often true. 

Rigid plans work until real life gets in the way. 

Flexible approaches bend without breaking. 

The people who develop sustainable habits are not usually the people who never have difficult weeks. 

They’re the people who learn how to adapt when they do. 

They recognise that changes in routine are part of life. 

They know how to support themselves without resorting to punishment. 

They understand that consistency doesn’t mean doing the same thing every day. 

That’s behaviour change in action. 

Sustainable behaviour change isn’t built on perfect weeks. It’s built on learning how to adapt when life inevitably changes. The skills that matter most are often flexibility, problem solving and self-support rather than strict adherence to rules. 

A Different Question To Ask

After a holiday or a period of being out of routine, most people ask: 

“How do I get back on track?” 

“What should I cut out?” 

“How do I make up for this?” 

Instead, I wonder if a more helpful question might be: 

“What would support me right now?” 

Notice how different that feels. 

Perhaps support looks like: 

• Planning a food shop 

• Re-establishing regular meals 

• Getting back into your usual sleep routine 

• Preparing some meals for the week ahead 

• Drinking more water 

• Moving your body because it feels good 

Not because you’ve done something wrong. 

Not because you need to compensate. 

But because these things genuinely help you feel your best. 

The behaviours might look similar from the outside. 

But the mindset underneath them is completely different. 

Why diets and food rules can harm your relationship with food 

Many of the women I work with have spent years dieting. 

They’ve tried slimming clubs, calorie counting, cutting out carbohydrates, “being good” during the week and starting again every Monday. 

Over time, these external rules can disconnect us from our own hunger, fullness and satisfaction cues. 

Food can start to feel stressful rather than enjoyable. We may find ourselves constantly thinking about what we should or shouldn’t eat, feeling guilty after eating certain foods or believing we’ve “failed” when we eat something that wasn’t part of the plan. 

For some people, this can develop into patterns of emotional eating, binge eating or cycles of restriction followed by overeating. 

Whilst tracking and calorie counting may be appropriate in certain circumstances; they are not harmless tools for everyone. In people with a history of dieting, disordered eating or a difficult relationship with food, they can sometimes reinforce anxiety around eating and make it harder to trust ourselves. 

This is one of the reasons I often use a plate-planning approach with clients. It provides enough structure to support health and nutrition, whilst allowing flexibility, variety and enjoyment. There is no need to weigh foods, count calories or strive for perfection. 

The Real Goal

What if the goal wasn’t getting back on track? 

What if the goal was creating a way of eating and living that doesn’t require you to keep leaving and returning to a track in the first place? 

A way of eating that includes: 

• Holidays 
• BBQs
• Ice creams
• Meals out
• Family celebrations
• Weekday meals
• Ordinary routines

All as part of the same picture. 

Not as opposing forces. 

Not as foods or experiences that need compensating for. 

Just life. 

Because health and food freedom are not opposites. 

They can coexist. 

And when they do, food and body worries often start to take up less space. 

Leaving more room for what was important all along. 

The people. 

The experiences. 

The memories. 

The life you’re living. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I Need to Get Back On Track After A Holiday? 

Holidays are part of normal life, not something that needs correcting. Rather than trying to compensate for what you ate, it can be more helpful to focus on re-establishing routines that support your wellbeing. 

Why Do I Feel Guilty After Eating More on Holiday? 

Many people have learned to view certain foods or eating patterns as being “off track”. This can create guilt when routines change. Often the guilt comes from what the food is believed to mean about health, weight or self-control rather than the food itself.   

What Is All-Or-Nothing Eating? 

All-or-nothing eating is a pattern where food choices are viewed as either a success or a failure. This often leads to cycles of restriction, guilt and restarting after eating differently than planned.  

Can Health and Food Freedom Coexist? 

Yes. Health is influenced by long-term patterns rather than individual meals or weekends. It is possible to care about your health while also enjoying food for pleasure, culture, connection and celebration. 

What Is a Balanced Relationship With Food? 

A balanced relationship with food allows room for both nourishment and enjoyment. It includes flexibility, trust and the ability to eat differently on different days without feeling guilty or needing to compensate.   

Final Thoughts

If you find yourself promising to “start again on Monday” or “get back on track after summer”, I want to gently encourage you to pause and ask yourself what you’re really hoping that track will give you. 

Is it health? 

Or is it certainty, control, safety and reassurance about your weight? 

Understanding the answer can be incredibly powerful. 

Because the goal isn’t to learn how to get back on track faster. 

The goal is to stop viewing normal life experiences as being off track in the first place. 

If this resonates with you, and you’d like support moving away from food guilt, all-or-nothing thinking and constantly starting over, my 1:1 coaching and Nourish & Flourish community are designed to help you build a more balanced, flexible and peaceful relationship with food. 

A relationship where health matters, enjoyment matters, and life doesn’t need to be put on hold whilst you’re waiting to feel different about your body. 

If you’re ready to move away from food guilt, all-or-nothing thinking and restarting every Monday, there are two ways I can support you: 

• Join Nourish & Flourish for monthly education, tools and community support- this month is all about ‘Summer Simplicity’ and how to keep a healthy balance with your relationship with food. 
• Work with me 1:1 for personalised coaching and deeper behaviour change work 

  

Disclaimer

The information in this blog is for general guidance only and not a substitute for personalised medical advice. Always discuss health concerns with your GP or qualified professional. If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please seek specialist support.