“150-200 calories every 3 hours”

That would be an extra 450 kcals over nine hours. Which is quite a lot when you think about it.

The whole ski holiday thing is a very unique situation. Most people are more active during that week than they are at any other time of the year.

You sleep less on ski holidays in my experience. You are up at 8am for breakfast and often don’t got to bed until after 11pm/12am.

You have lug odd shaped equipment about with you. Taking a pee in mountain restaurant is like an assult course as you often have to navigate mutliple stairs.

I also wonder what are the energy levels spent on just keeping your body temperature regulated.

I don’t know many people who eat Pizza on a ski holiday (maybe in Italy you would but in France and Austria you will pretty much be fed on meat and cheese. Great for feeding the muscles but my point being is most will be eating less processed foods on these hols than they would at home. So what may look like a large amount may actually be less Kcals because they are eating whole foods.

Also the notion that 150-200kcals is a small amount. That could easily be enough kcal intake difference for someone looking to lose 1lb a week or gain 1lb a week (if building muscle).

P.S Lucy how can you be ‘fat’ at 173cms and 65kgs?

Apart from skiing itself I would say the gym is the only way to get ski-fit for your holidays.

Every year when I hit the slopes I see these people huffing and puffing and complaining of sore muscles at the end of the day.

If they just went down the gym for two months prior and do proper resistance training you could not imagine the difference it would make.

Even one squat session a week progressing every week until your hols would make such a difference.

And as for the comment “Then you see people tucking in to a huge pizza or huge bowl of white pasta for lunch and you know they are likely to go home heavier than they arrived”.

These “people” are usually just replicating what they do at home. Just like the do on a summer holiday…they over eat because they can and because they have this “oh Im on holiday attitude”. A disfunctional relationship with food if you like.

If you are exercising regularly then taking a BCAA supplement before and during your workout helps, see advice from charles poliquin or john berardi for more info. But it works for me and i train at least 4 times per week, so i dont think that exercise induces carb bcravings if you prepare.

Great website by the way, another good resource to direct some of my clients to.

Anyway I will continue this on the forum.