Fit Trippin': 10 Ways to Stay Fit While Traveling
When you travel, do you leave your healthy habits at home? On business
trips, it's easy to overdo it with carb-fest lunches and expense account
dinners, sedentary meetings, and late nights at the hotel bar. (It's
networking, right?) And pleasure trips are all about cutting loose,
living it up. But do you really want to return home feeling worse than
when you left?
A far more satisfying way to travel is to stay active, and fuel your
body and mind with all the things that keep it running at its best. Try
just a few changes in your travel habits and you'll be sharper and more
effective on business trips, and more alert, comfortable, and energetic
on vacation.
- Bring fitness DVDs for your laptop. If you're on the road for
business, then you're probably carrying your laptop. Throw a fitness DVD
or two into the computer bag, and pop one in first thing each morning.
Do a quick workout early, and notice how much easier it is to resist the
temptations of the breakfast buffet.
However, if you're on vacation, skip the computer. Aren't you trying to
get away from it all? Leave the laptop and all that seated screen time
back at home. Your eyes, back, and wrists need a holiday too.
- Explore the local area on foot. If you really want to get a
feel for an area, the best way to see it is by walking. (Unless you're
in Los Angeles. Nobody walks in L.A.) If you're on a business trip, try
to schedule it so that you can walk to at least some of your meetings.
Skip the cab unless you're late, it's raining like crazy, or your
destination is more than a mile or two away. And steer clear of tour
buses, unless there is really no other way to visit a particular sight.
Also, avoid the hotel dining room in the morning. Instead, walk to a
nearby breakfast place. You'll probably get a more satisfying meal at
half the cost. You'll also see some street life on the way—businesses
opening their doors, sidewalks getting swept, locals waiting for the
bus or hurrying to work.
Use the hotel gym. Some
people thrive on routine. If you have a regular gym schedule that's
working for you, then continue it while you’re away. Keep your healthy
habit going, and it won't be a struggle to get back to it when you
return home. Most hotels have some sort of gym or exercise facility.
Even if it's just a basement room with a couple of stationery bikes—use
it!
At the other extreme, you may find that your hotel has a big, glamorous
gym with machines you've never used before. It's like being a kid at a
new playground! Schedule a session with a personal trainer to learn
how to use the stuff, and experience your workout as a novelty, a
pleasure. The hotel might also have a great sauna or steam room, and
maybe they offer spa services that are new to you. Bodywork is
definitely a part of keeping fit and healthy. Schedule a Thai massage,
or some other kind of therapy that sounds interesting.
Travel is about experiencing the new and the novel. Apply this attitude
to your exercise routine as well, and you'll find that even your same
old workout in a new setting can be a treat.- Take the stairs. This one's easy. Never, ever take the
elevator, unless you're schlepping luggage. No excuses. It doesn't
matter how many flights up your room is. In fact, book a high floor.
Better views from the room, and more calories burned to get there!
- Discover local fitness activities. Whatever your destination,
there's probably some kind of sport or physical activity that's popular
in the area. Go skiing, hiking, bouldering, or climbing if you're in the
mountains. At the beach, take a surfing lesson, or boogie-board, or at
least get off your beach blanket and actually swim in the ocean. Those
are the obvious ones, but think of others. Near a river or lake? Spend
an afternoon canoeing, sailing, or rafting.
In urban parks, there are inevitably pickup games of soccer, ultimate
frisbee, and basketball. Big cities are also rife with climbing gyms,
martial arts dojos, a million yoga emporiums, and even dance studios.
Think how much more fun your museum day would be if you capped it off
with a salsa lesson!
Rent a bike. Most
major European cities—and an increasing number of American ones—have
"smart bike" arrangements, with checkout stations all over town that
allow users to pick up a bicycle in one location and drop it off in
another. These are great for urban commuters, but are also ideal for
tourists, since the services tend to be located in the busiest core of
cities. Get around town on a bike and you're sure to see more of it.
Beaches and other tourist destinations almost always have rental
services that allow you to take out a bike by the hour or by the day.
Have you been curious to try a recumbent bicycle, or a bicycle built
for two? Rent one! Take it for a spin up and down the boardwalk and see
what you think.
If you're travelling by car, load up the bike rack and vow to leave the
car parked once you arrive. In crowded resort towns, you'll be pleased
as punch as you pedal past cranky tourists stuck in high season
traffic.- Keep one habit, no matter what. Vacations are notorious for
undoing months of virtuous diet and exercise. This may have a little
something to do with a steady holiday diet of fried appetizer platters
and Piña Coladas. However, what really derails a healthy fitness routine
is an interruption to it.
But it's a vacation! It’s time for a break! True enough, but consider
keeping just one healthy habit while you're away, to keep your momentum
going. For example, go to bed at your normal time (if you're happy
with that habit), or wake up at your normal time. If you have a yoga or
meditation practice, continue doing even a very abbreviated version of
it. Say, one Sun Salute without fail when you first get out of bed. Or,
if you're used to a specific, healthy breakfast, keep eating it every
day. Make a promise to keep one good thing going, and then follow
through on that commitment. This will create a powerful sense of
control and continuity that will make it easier to get back on the
health and fitness wagon when you return home.
- Have a day of gluttony. Early in your trip, pick one day to
totally overindulge. Eat like a starving hound. Drink like a lush. Stay
up too late. Make an ass of yourself. Seriously. You have been dreaming
about this holiday for months. You are livin' la vida loca!
When you wake up the next morning, notice how you feel. Don't gulp down
your usual hangover remedies, whatever they may be, and don't have a
big guilt trip. Simply notice what is going on with your body. Let
yourself feel it. Your head is pounding, right? Your stomach feels
sour. You have no energy. Everything feels awful. You want to go back to
bed. Ask yourself, do I want to feel like this every morning of my
vacation? Do I really have that kind of time to spare?
Later in the day when you're thinking of having a fourth Mai Tai or a
second dessert, bring your mind back to what it was like when you woke
up. No judgment, no worries. Just remember how you physically felt.
Then make a conscious decision about whether or not you want to feel
that way again tomorrow morning. If you do this on day one or two,
maybe the lesson will sink in.
Slow down and enjoy. The
American lifestyle is so fast-paced, frenetic, and stressful that it
can be hard to downshift into vacation mode. That go-go-go attitude can
cause you to miss what's right in front of you.
Are you back for a third helping at the all-you-can-eat buffet on the
pool deck, and you can't specifically recall what was on your first or
second plate? Relax. There's more than enough food for everyone, and no
rush for you to finish eating. Remember, you're on vacation. Slow down
and enjoy whatever you're eating, whether it's "healthy" or not.
Relish it. If you focus on and savor your food, you won't eat as much.
That's not the reason to slow down, though. Go slow so that you can
truly enjoy every single, delicious bite. - Make your vacation an adventure. Do you really just want to
sit on the beach for a week and drink? (Wait. Don't answer that.) The
best way to stay fit when you're on vacation is to get out and do stuff.
Tips number one through nine will help you shoehorn a little bit of
wellness into any business or pleasure trip. But this last tip is the
biggie, and doing this one means you won't need to bother with the
others.
If you have been taking been taking good care of yourself—working out,
eating right, getting enough sleep—then you have been in training for
real-life adventures. Give yourself a huge reward yourself on your next
holiday. Pick a fun, physically active adventure, and build a trip
around it.
Cycle from Saigon to Angkor Wat, or through New England. Dive or
snorkel in the blue waters of the Caribbean, or the Pacific, or the
Indian Ocean. Refine your yoga practice at an ashram in India, or Costa
Rica, or upstate New York. Go climbing in the Swiss Alps, or Utah, or
Kentucky. Take a rafting trip down the Colorado River—or through the
French countryside, where you'll float past vineyards and villages.
Are these just pipe dreams that are too expensive or complicated to be
considered? Think again. If you can afford a family vacation to Disney®
World, or a Caribbean cruise, or a high season week at any seaside
resort, then you can afford something better. You can do something much
more memorable, interesting, and active. Before you go on auto-pilot
and book the usual beach holiday, think for a minute.
What's your dream? Do you want to charter a sailboat in the
Mediterranean, or on the Chesapeake Bay? Have you always talked about
wanting to cross-country ski in Vermont? Then do it. Go! Why else have
you been clocking all those hours in the gym? You have the strength and
the energy—and if you don't, you know how to train for it.
Do some internet research, and book a trip that excites you and makes
you a little nervous. These are the eyes wide open, active experiences
that you will remember for the rest of your life. As an added bonus (not
that you need one), you'll return from an adventure vacation looking
and feeling exhilarated, re-charged, inspired, and even more fit and
fabulous than when you left home.
Can six days of all-you-can-eat seafood buffets and beach lounging do all that? Hardly.
