My old training partner was like that. First, understand that the shitty look you have when you get back is in large part water retention. The sun and alcohol dehydrate you, you stay like that for the whole trip… you will be flat as hell at the end. The body tries to fight that by increasing the hormones responsible for water retention (vasopressin, aldosterone), so when you get back home those water retention hormone are crazy high for a few days… in fact, flying also increase these hormones (I can gain up to 10lbs of water when I do a long trip). And the constant skin aggressive by the sun, also increases subcutaneous water retention.
It is not unusual to look like you gained 10-15lbs of fat in that situation. I takes a bout 1 weeks to come back to normal.
As far as actual fat is concerned, you can gain some, of course. But likely not as much as you think. Even strictly from a thermodynamics perspective it would be hard for your to gain 1lbs of fat per day. 1 lbs of fat is 3600 calories. So you need to consume AT LEAST 3600 calories OVER MAINTENANCE to add 1lb of fat. Maybe even more because some of those calories will be from carbs being stored in the muscles.
Let’s say that your maintenance level is 2500 cals. You would need to ingest 6000 calories to maybe have a shot at adding a pound of fat in one day.
I will say that alcohol slows down fat mobilization. But you still need to eat/drink a huge surplus to get a lot of fat in a week.
You might gain something like 5lbs of fat if you go crazy. But most of the weight gained will be water.
It still look like shit, but it should come back to normal in a short time.
What can you do to minimize the damage?
*Keep training. When I went to an all-inclusive result I would get a short workout in the morning.
*Walk a lot during the day. I personally lose weight when I go on a resort because I walk all day. Buy a podometer and shoot for at least 10 000 steps/day, ideally 15 000+
*Drink a lot of water. The more water you drink, the less dehydrate you become, the less aldosterone/vasopressin increase you will get.
*Bring an electrolyte formula… the biggest issue is not the dehydration, it’s the loss of electrolytes. Iy make your muscles look smaller and flatter… which makes you look like you lost muscle and gained fat. A pro bodybuilder I used to train use to go to mexico every year for a week and he literally looked like he lost 10lbs of muscle when he came back… and he was not a drinker, and he kept training hard. It was from the electrolyte imbalance.
