Trying Not to Lose Gains on Vacation

Nutrition
1

When I started lifting 6 months ago, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing.

Despite poor nutrition and bad programs, I lost at least 20 pounds of fat in about 4 months (started out around 180, no idea what my %bf was), and got down to 159@10% bf at my lowest around the new year (I’m 5’10").

Fortunately for me, I found T-Nation. I fixed my diet, and am now eating clean, following John Berardi’s Massive Eating program, eating around 4000kcal/day. I drink a recovery shake before and after my workouts… in short, I’m trying my best to do everything right, and have been gaining about a pound a week (and a lot more on my lifts) for the last three weeks while staying at about 10%bf, which I’m very happy with.

The only problem is, I’m going to a music festival over spring break with some non-lifting friends, and will be on the road and/or camping at the festival and at the beach for about a week.

My question is, what can I do to keep my hard-fought gains? I would like to minimize fat gain, since I seem to make strength and mass gains pretty well at this bodyfat level, but I would like to avoid having to regain much weight.

I will probably order a bottle of BCAA and take a dose as regularly as possible every 3 hours during the course of the week, and hauling along a jug of protein powder, some peanut butter, and a shaker bottle is easy enough for a few shakes, but I’m not sure how I should eat. Can I safely cut my calories back and rely on the BCAA’s to prevent loss of muscle tissue?

We’re taking a grill and will have access to a supermarket at least some of the time (I know, I know, that’s really roughing it), so it shouldn’t be too hard to get some quality protein, but I will probably be constrained to a 3 meal a day schedule (plus a bedtime shake).

I’ve also read that when you lose muscle mass, it’s very easy to gain it back immediately afterwards because the muscle sheath ‘remembers’ how big it was for a while afterwards. If this is true, I would be a lot less worried about losing a bit of muscle, I just don’t want to spend another month regaining lost muscle…

2

If you eat right you shouldn’t have to worry. In my experience, you won’t lose your muscle in one week. I can take a week off after a good stretch of constant working out and be just fine. In fact, it’s good for the body to take some time off, it needs the rest.

Also, who’s saying you can’t do squats, pushups, etc?

3

A week? Are you kidding me?

I went backpacking for 3 months and I still didn’t worry about this shit. A week!

I have absolutely no studies to cite but I’m pretty sure the human body is capable of retaining it’s composition for a week even if you aren’t drinking protein shakes every 3 hours.

what would history be like if all our great adventurers were thinking about BCAA’s and lean muscle mass instead of life and it’s experiences?

4

Thanks for the replies, that makes me feel a lot better… I don’t know why I thought all my muscle would evaporate so quickly, I just didn’t want to have to spend time regaining any of it… I have a lot of trouble forcing myself to eat as much as I need to :).