5 Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Since Jeff and I left Dubai to travel, we found that it is actually easier to stay healthy traveling rather than being at one place with a desk job. Even if we managed to keep a healthy routine at home, traveling around the world means countless opportunities to be active and healthy without even noticing it.
Staying active while traveling has many advantages: feeling better helps you enjoy the trip more, it can be cheaper to travel healthy (more on that later) and we find that being healthy and feeling good overall helps tremendously being productive while traveling long term.
Here are our 5 healthy travel tips to stay fit while traveling.
Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Stay in Airbnbs and use the kitchen
The first healthy travel tip to stay fit while traveling is cook your own meals! We always try to favor Airbnbs over hotels whenever we can while traveling around the world, especially while staying in an expensive place.
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Most Airbnbs come with a kitchen and this allows us to go groceries shopping and cook at home.
Even if you end up just cooking breakfast, this can save you so much money and helps you control what you’re eating at least once a day. It’s just too easy to splurge on food when you arrive in a new place. Not that this isn’t a good thing, but sometimes it’s good to actually be in control of cooking some meals.
Staples like eggs, meat and vegetables go a long way, and you can find them in every corner of the globe!
If you road trip during your travels, make sure to get a cooler to keep some snacks and easy to snack on foods. This will avoid having to eat gas station food or fast food, especially in the USA!
Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Take advantage of the place you’re in to try new workouts
When traveling to a new place, try and adopt the local sport or fitness trend! Jeff and I decided to embrace yoga while staying in Ubud, Bali, for super cheap and ended up doing a full 1.5 hour every day of the week at the Yoga Barn. Not only that helped us stay active every day but we felt so amazing throughout the week.
During our USA Road Trip, we hiked or ran almost every day in the USA National Parks. While not necessarily huge workouts, this made us active on a regular basis while seeing amazing sceneries - not exactly the same as running on the treadmill!
Take advantage of the places you’re going to adopt new fitness habits. It’s easy to let go of routine and find yourself having been inactive for days, only to not feel too great and not enjoy your trip as you should. For us, this involves being active at least 30 minutes every days, whether it is just a brisk walk, a run, or a yoga session.
Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Be mindful of drinking
Traveling for a short holiday and traveling long term are very different in that regard: if you can enjoy a few drinks frequently on a short holiday, continuing on that rhythm while traveling long term can be damaging to your health. We have found ourselves reducing our drinking intake a lot going from living in Dubai to being on the road.
First, we enjoyed every day traveling instead of waiting patiently for the weekend, and then we just found ourselves limited in what we could do if we drank too often and/or too much. Empty calories and bad headaches are just not worth it when you have a world to conquer!
We now enjoy the occasional drink with friends, but rarely when it’s just us two - we keep these times to be active, explore and we genuinely don’t miss it at all!
Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Explore on foot
While it is tempting to explore a new place from a motorbike, taxi or car, we always try to be on foot as much as possible. You get such a better feeling of a neighborhood, and see so much more when you’re mobile. It also allows you to get lost in streets you might have never found otherwise.
Jeff and I planned an early morning run in Belgrade, and it was the best way to discover the city before the hoards of tourists, and start the day on a healthy note.
We also walked and hiked in the UAE, Petra or Paris, sometimes up to 20km in a day without even noticing - so worth it!
Plus, the freedom of being on foot in a new, unknown place, is exciting: this is how you meet people and discover exciting new places along the way you could never reach with a car.
Healthy Travel Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Workout early
One thing that we have found, is that if we don’t plan an early work out, it usually doesn’t happen. We get caught up in the day, and make plans that don’t allow much time to work out during the afternoon, and then we’re too tired or unmotivated.
The best way to guarantee a work out is to do it first thing in the morning! In many places, it’s also the best time because of the weather, getting way too hot past breakfast time to really enjoy an outdoor workout.
A sunrise hike in the USA National Parks is so worth it, for the incredible views AND lack of tourists!
We’ve also ran regular 5 and 10K on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon rim, in the Redwood National Park, in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Cuenca and more - all amazing memories of seeing one place while being active in the cold, crisp morning. Especially after a summer in Dubai, we couldn’t love it more!
These are some of our healthy tips to stay fit while traveling, from our experience of being on the road for the past few months - if you have any other, feel free to share them in the comments!
