I just got back from a cottage weekend with friends. Bathing suits all day, no workout routine, eating completely differently, staying up late, zero control over any of it. And I had the most magical time.

Which sounds obvious. Except the last time I was at a cottage was over 10 years ago, when my eating disorder was at its worst. And that trip? I was so in my head about food and my body that I couldn’t feel any of it.

The gap between those two experiences is what this episode is about.

What It Actually Looks Like When Travel Triggers You

You knowwww the version of travel I’m talking about. And it doesn’t even have to be a big trip. It can be a long weekend, a family reunion, a work conference, anything that disrupts the routine you’ve been using to feel safe.

In the days leading up to it, the anxiety starts building. Maybe you eat less beforehand to compensate for what you know is coming. Maybe you pack a very specific bag of snacks so you’re never in an unpredictable eating situation. Maybe you’ve already planned how you’ll “get back on track” the second you get home, before the trip has even started.

While you’re there, it might look like the constant background math running in your head. Doing calculations, figuring out the damage, negotiating with yourself. Avoiding photos, or deleting them immediately after. Wearing a coverup in the water because you’d rather be hot than visible. Choosing a seat or an angle or an outfit based on what hides you the most. Sucking in reflexively every time a camera appears.

And then this specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being at a beautiful place, surrounded by people you love, and feeling like you’re watching it all from behind glass instead of actually being in it.

I was in Italy in 2018, standing at a viewpoint looking out at these mountains and this sunset, the trip I had literally dreamed of my whole life. And I felt nothing. No awe. No tingling. No presence. Just blank. And I thought: what is wrong with me?

Nothing was wrong with me. My nervous system had no capacity to let down its guard long enough to feel it.

Why Travelling Makes This SO Much Harder

Here’s the thing that most people don’t account for: travel is genuinely stressful on your nervous system even when you’re excited about it. Before we layer any food and body stuff on top.

Your whole routine gets disrupted. Sleep, meals, movement, the familiar cues that help your nervous system feel settled. All gone. So your body immediately goes a little more on high alert. That’s not a personal failing. That’s just what disrupted routine does.

Then there’s the pressure to enjoy every moment. Which sounds so innocent. But when you’re already anxious, adding “and you’re supposed to be RELAXED right now” is its own kind of torture. You start monitoring yourself. Am I having enough fun? Am I present? Am I ruining this? Which makes you more dysregulated, which makes the food and body anxiety louder, which makes you want to double down on all the protective mechanisms you’d normally use to manage this… except on vacation you can’t. The outlet isn’t there. And the agitation has nowhere to go.

More stimulation on top of all of that. More people, more noise, more schedule changes, more uncertainty. For a nervous system that was already a little activated, it’s a lot.

And then the control piece. Unfamiliar food situations. Plans that change last minute. Not knowing what will be available. For someone who relies on predictability and control as a nervous system strategy, this is the thing that really tips it over.

Why Travel Doesn’t Create the Problem. It Reveals It.

This is the part I really want you to sit with.

The anxiety you feel on vacation isn’t caused by the vacation. Travel just removes the tools you’ve been using to manage something that was always underneath.

At home, you have your routine. Your exercise, your food structure, your control over what goes in and when. And those things keep you functional. They keep the lid on. They help your nervous system feel like it can manage. But what they’re actually doing is masking something deeper: an unhealed belief about your body, your worth, your safety.

Maybe it was a caregiver who, even with totally good intentions, sent you to a program at 8 years old that told you there was something wrong with your body. An 8-year-old doesn’t have the capacity to reason through what that means. She just makes meaning: I’m too much. My body needs fixing. I am more lovable in a smaller body.

Maybe it was watching your mom obsess over her body and quietly absorbing the belief that that’s just what women do. That managing your body is the price of being acceptable.

Maybe it was something else entirely. Bullying. A relationship. A season of life where your body felt like the only thing you could control when everything else was chaos.

Whatever it was, those beliefs got stored in your nervous system. Frozen in the past. And your protection mechanisms, including the food stuff, were built to make sure you never had to feel that original pain again.

Travel strips those mechanisms away. So of course it feels like panic. You’re not just anxious about the food. You’re exposed.

The “And Then What?” Exercise

When the anxiety starts building before or during a trip, instead of running from it, try running the tape on it.

Ask yourself: what am I actually afraid is going to happen?

And then keep going. And then what? And then what?

Because what starts as “I’m nervous about eating differently this weekend” usually ends up somewhere much older and much deeper. I gave an example in the episode of how quickly it can snowball from a weekend away all the way back to a painful memory from 20 years ago, a time you were criticized or judged or made to feel like too much.

When your reaction to a present situation feels way bigger than the situation itself, that’s the signal. You’re not reacting to the cottage weekend. You’re reacting to something from the past that this cottage weekend is touching.

That is SO important information. Not something to be ashamed of. Something to get curious about.

What to Actually Do With It

Most people, when the anxiety shows up, do one of two things. They push it down and try to power through. Or they double down on the protection mechanisms, more restriction, more control, more scrolling, more anything that helps them leave their body for a little while.

What actually helps is the opposite: turning toward it. Slowly. With curiosity.

This is not about processing your entire childhood at a cottage weekend. It’s about not running so fast in the other direction. It’s about sitting with the discomfort for a minute, asking what it’s trying to tell you, and starting to build the evidence that you can actually be with it without everything falling apart.

That capacity, the ability to feel difficult things without needing to immediately escape them, is exactly what gets built through nervous system work. And when that capacity grows? Travel changes. Not because the trip is different. Because you are.

That cottage weekend I just had? I was in a bathing suit the whole time. I ate freely. I barely moved. And I was completelyyyyy there. Every moment. The water, the conversations, the sunsets. I felt all of it.

That’s what’s possible. I genuinely believe it for you.

In This Episode

→ My cottage weekend ten years apart: what was different and why it matters

→ The specific ways travel anxiety around food and body shows up (including the ones nobody talks about out loud)

→ Why being on vacation is supposed to be relaxing and somehow makes the anxiety worse

→ The four reasons travel is genuinely hard on your nervous system before you even add food and body stuff

→ Why travel doesn’t create the problem — it just removes the tools you’ve been using to manage it

→ How childhood beliefs about your body get stored in your nervous system and get triggered by losing control

→ The “and then what?” exercise for running the tape on your fear all the way to its actual root

→ Why your reaction to travel anxiety is probably much bigger than the situation in front of you (and what that means)

→ What to do instead of pushing the anxiety down or doubling down on protection mechanisms

Ready to Heal This at the Root?

If this episode named something you’ve been living with for a long time, Food Freedom Academy is where we do the foundational work that actually changes it. Not managing the anxiety on vacation better. Healing the thing underneath it so it stops running the show.

www.sabrinamagnan.com/ffa