It’s summer, everyone’s favorite time to vacation.
The summer is when I most frequently talk with clients about how to keep their weight loss and fitness gains while traveling. No matter what my clients’ situations, they are all concerned about these two factors. And there are several points that work really well for everyone.
It’s important to keep up your exercise and eat healthy while on vacation. Believe it or not, it’s much easier to do this on vacation than any other time since you have more time for yourself.
Not to mention exercising and eating healthy is the ultimate gift to yourself. Clients who follow my tips come back and tell me that their vacation was more satisfying and rejuvenating than ever.
If you follow these tips you may even make gains
in fitness and you can even lose weight on vacation. Generally it’s not intentional, but it’s happened to both me and my clients when following these rules of thumb.
Taking time to exercise can be an enjoyable and refreshing part of a trip – a true getaway.
Here are my 3 top tips on how to do it:
1. Stay at a hotel with a gym
especially if you’re going to be at a location longer than couple of days. It’s not difficult especially if you are looking at hotels online. If the hotel has a nice gym, they’ll boast about it in pictures on their website and on hotel booking sites. A gym makes it so much easier to get exercise if it’s raining or if you need to a get quick, 30-minute workout.
2. Check out the online maps
to make sure there’s a place around the hotel where you can easily run or walk. If you’re staying in the middle of a city, try to get a place near a park, a body of water, or even a residential area with trees.
Upon arrival, I like to run around the city I’ll be touring. (I call this my reconnaissance run.) I pre-plan the run beforehand using a map app like Mapmyrun, so I know where I’m going. While I run, I make note of the places I want to come back and visit. Often I’ll see a restaurant I want to try, or a deli where I can get food (more about food in part II).
If you want to experiment with a couple different map apps, Zoey at TheBabbleOut did a nice review.
3. The best time to exercise while on vacation
is in the morning before you start your tours and outings. This way, you have the whole day to do what you want to do. You also might include movement in your vacation experiences with others – like traveling the city on foot, hiking, canoeing, boating or paddleboarding.
The second best time is after the major outings of the day and before dinner. You can shower after exercise and be refreshed and ready for your evening. It’s a great feeling! (Don’t worry about skipping happy hour, you’ll have much more energy for the evening if you do, and you’ll save upwards of 500 calories to boot.)
Click Here for my Top 5 Tips for Eating Healthy While on Vacation
Do you have any tried and tested ways
you make your vacation healthy? Let me know in the comments below.
By the way, if you’re looking to
create balanced habits around nutrition and exercise you may be interested in my online group course MindBodyBlast. I also offer coaching training through individual appointments. Or, you can simply subscribe to this blog for free, weekly tips on how to be healthy in a balanced way.