When you go on vacation, you’re looking for a change of pace. You’re looking to get away from your usual day to day life whether that is through an adventure like taking on a new city, or hanging out at the lake or beach. The one area you probably don’t want to completely forget is your health. When you do that, you end up leaving your vacation with lots of regret and guilt – not what you want to come back home with. These healthy vacation tips are here to help you have your best vacation yet, and t0 come home feeling better than when you left.
The two areas these healthy vacation tips cover are nutrition and exercise. There are many more aspects to your overall health than just these two, but we’ll keep this post to nutrition and working up a sweat.
Healthy Vacation Tips | Nutrition
One of the most fun aspects of vacation is the local food you get to enjoy. Trust us, we love the restaurants around our home town, but getting out to new places is just exciting. The flip side of this is the temptation to make every meal a celebration. This leaves you feeling bloated, lethargic, and frustrated when you go to get on the beach and suddenly the 12 weeks of hard work you’ve put in are nowhere to be found when you look in the mirror.
We’re guessing you want to avoid this situation.
Really, this goes back to treating your vacation in the same way you treat your life. You aren’t exercising consistently if you haven’t found a method you enjoy. You haven’t had body composition improvements if you eat in a manner you completely hate, because this leads to a binge-purge cycle. So why would we go away from the things that make us happy, just because we’re on vacation?
These healthy vacation tips for nutrition are simple to implement:
- If you have a kitchen or at least a fridge where you’re staying, go to the grocery store and get a few of your favorite items.
- Choose an amount of treats you’re going to allow yourself before your vacation starts.
Hit up the local the grocery store
Not only will shopping at the grocery store save you a bunch of money, it will also allow you to control at least a few of your meals. If you have a full kitchen, grab a dozen eggs, pre-chopped vegetables, and boom you have a healthy omelet each morning for breakfast. If you have no kitchen but a full fridge, grab some Greek yogurt and berries to have a protein-packed start to each day.
Give yourself a treat allowance
Having a set goal when you go into your vacation is a nice way to ensure you travel home full of happy memories, rather than full of regret. If you’ve been to this spot before, and you know you absolutely LOVE the local ice cream shop and are going to end your evening with that each day, be realistic and have that fit into your daily diet.
This may mean you skip the fries at lunch – let’s be honest you can get fries anywhere. Maybe you’re sticking to healthy protein and fat sources at breakfast, and enjoying a slice of cake from a local diner at dinner. Just make these decisions ahead of time so you aren’t confronting a host of decisions every single day. Your will power can only get you so far.
All in all, your nutrition on vacation should simply focus on YOUR unique goals. If you’ve been living healthy and loving it, don’t change up drastically now. Set the goal ahead of your trip, and know that sticking to it – regardless of social pressure – is going to help you feel your best when you come home.
Healthy Vacation Tips | Exercise
There is a lot of conversation around exercise being a way of life. If this is really the case, you’re going to have the urge to continue working out while on the road. This is a good thing! Your body was made to move, plus it releases lots of endorphins which improve your mood and make the rest of your day that much better.
One of the biggest challenges to exercise while traveling is equipment. Some people may say they can’t workout because they don’t have access to any of the equipment they use at CrossFit or OrangeTheory. Equipment is never a barrier to exercise. There are three ways to approach exercise on vacation.
- Drop into a local gym
- Bring a couple small pieces of equipment with you
- Use all bodyweight exercises
The other option is, of course, to just not move all week. But you don’t really want that, do you?
Workout with the locals
If you do either CrossFit or OrangeTheory, you can find a local gym where you can hop in for a class just like you’re at home. For OrangeTheory, it will be an almost identical class because that gym is a franchise. For CrossFit, however, each gym you go to will be very different from the last. It will have its own look and feel, and potentially different programming from your box at home. Neither of these options is better or worse, just different! Do what you love to do.
bring small equipment with you
If you’d like to break from your usual routine, or you simply cannot get to a gym in your area, bring the following things in your bag: a jump rope and a couple resistance bands. If you have them, Olympic rings are another great addition.
Using just these instruments you can craft a workout which will get your heart rate elevated and your muscles pumping. Try doing interval work mixing up jumping rope with banded air squats and bicep curls.
Bodyweight only options
We published a bodyweight cardio workout a few blogs ago, so we’ll link that here for you to use an example of a workout you can do with almost no space, and just your bodyweight.
Other options would be exploring the local scene by going for a run, hoping into a beach volleyball game, or doing a variety of push up, squat, pull up, and burpee combinations. Remember, you don’t need to make it complicated. Breathe heavy and move until your muscles are feeling it. That’s your guide.
Healthy Vacation Tips | It is about YOU
Just like everyone’s career goals, family goals, financial goals, and fitness goals are different, so are your goals for vacation. It may sound weird to go into vacation with a goal for how you want the vacation to go, but if we do this with every other aspect of our lives, why not this very happy point as well?
Take some time to understand what you really want out of this vacation, and then structure your nutrition and exercise to support that. Don’t allow the social pressure of what everyone else is doing make you follow suit. You’re just as free to skip the fourth piece of cake on vacation as you are when you’re at home. Use these healthy vacation tips to make your decision, plan for it, and to have the most holistic vacation yet.
