When thinking of a vacation, it’s easy to imagine endless days of lounging in a beach chair, drink in hand with another on the way, and eating an excess of both tantalizing meals and decadent deserts. But while vacations can (and should!) involve days of relaxation and indulgence, you don’t always have to sacrifice your progress in the gym to go on one. Here are 6 great ways to enjoy a balanced vacation.
1. Explore!
The first thing on this list is the most intuitive and is something that you should be doing anyway. That’s to get outside somewhere new and start moving! If you’re on a backpacking trip, lugging that thing around everywhere will be a little workout in and of itself, especially if you find yourself sprinting after a few trains. However, you can always be mindful to explore in additional ways that will help to stave off any “vacation weight.”
Opt to walk places around the cities you’re visiting, as opposed to taking a car or the metro. Not only will walking burn more calories, you’ll become more familiarized and immersed in the place that you’re visiting. As you walk be mindful of what’s happening around you, pay attention to the people and what their day to day activities look like, admire the architecture of your temporary home, and enjoy the weather (even if it’s raining you’ll miss it when you get home, I promise). Unless you absolutely have to be somewhere at a given time or your destination is just downright too far, walking is a great way to explore a new city.
Rent a bike to explore a new city more efficiently. You’ll get similar exercise benefits to walking but increase the range of your exploration. Additionally, many cities, especially in Europe, are very well designed for bike traffic, so getting around on one should be a breeze. If you get lost while wondering a city, don’t worry, it’s all part of the experience! You can always take a cab or train back to some central, familiar location if you really need to.
Plan a day of active detours. Can you see the Alps from your hostel window? Go hike them! Are you a brief walk from an Andaman grotto, or a short train ride from some interesting coves of the Mediterranean? Spend the afternoon swimming or cliff diving. Take advantage of the unique ways you can stay active outside in the places you visit. Activities like these don’t even feel like exercise, because they’re fun, but the benefits are all the same.
2. Partake in Local Sports and Activities.
What better way to immerse yourself in a new culture and stay active than to become acquainted with the ways in which the locals stay healthy through sport, dance, and general lifestyle practices. Take Muay Thai classes in Thailand or practice Taekwondo in South Korea. Learn to Tango in Argentina and step dance in Ireland. Play beach volleyball in Brazil or a pickup game of rugby in Australia. Practice yoga in India and sharpen your meditation skills in China. Not only are these things good for your body, mind, and soul, but becoming closer with the local way of life and interacting with those around you will only enrich your experience of a foreign land.
3. Shop for Groceries at the Local Market.
Wherever you are in the world, the odds of there being a local food market nearby are pretty great. Take a break from eating out and see what you can find at these markets. Not only will the products be fresher, they will certainly be much cheaper. If you don’t have access to a kitchen where you’re staying, stick to foods that won’t perish too quickly (or eat them promptly) and that don’t need to be cooked. Fresh fruits and vegetables are best but don’t be afraid to try something new and exotic. As always, the more immersed you are in your experiences abroad, the more rewarding your travels will become. If you’re staying somewhere that has a working kitchen, such as an Airbnb or some hostels and hotels, then your options for meal preparation increase vastly. Not only can putting together your own meal from local ingredients be cheaper and healthier than eating out, it can be fun; and the act of bartering through a local market in a foreign country could make an interesting story in itself.
4. Exercise On Your Own.
Now obviously if you’re staying in a hotel with an fitness room or living and working somewhere long enough to afford a gym membership, then looking for a consistent work out routine while abroad may not be a concern of yours. However, I’m talking to all the shoestring travelers like myself, who won’t have access to these luxuries while traveling on a budget, especially on long term trips. Moving around all the time just doesn’t allow for conventional fitness routines such as treadmills and weight rooms, but you still can get a traditional workout while traveling.
– Staying Lean –
Staying lean and keeping off excess body fat generally isn’t too difficult while traveling on a budget. You might not have the money to overeat and traveling the world forces you to spend a lot of time walking (see number 1). You can use time spent exploring during the day as an excuse to skip a meal and keep your calories down. Additionally, to stimulate your cardiovascular system you can pretty much run anywhere. It’s a great idea to travel in comfortable footwear anyway, so you can kill two birds with one stone by traveling in running shoes or cross trainers, that way whenever you feel the need to bust out some cardio you can take off. Imagine trail running the Ural Mountains early in the morning to catch a breathtaking sunrise or taking a fulfilling jog along a placid beach in Costa Rica. Exploratory runs can keep you in shape while still enjoying the beauty of your current destination.
– Maintaining/Building Muscle-
Building a muscular physique sounds difficult, if not downright impossible, while on the road. After all, didn’t I just say this article is for travelers without access to a weight room? You can’t actually get jacked by doing a bunch of push ups in your hostel dorm room, can you?
The most important thing for building muscle is to provide an increasing resistance against your body. The thing is, your body can’t tell whether this resistance is coming from a barbell, a dumbbell, a machine, or itself; if it has to consistently fight against increasing resistance, it will grow to accommodate this stress. Hypertrophy (muscle growth) is generally achieved by performing exercises within mid-level rep ranges, roughly 8-12 reps per set. So what about our dorm room push up example? Can sets of 12 push ups actually stimulate muscle growth? Well, if 12 is the maximum number of push ups one can perform, then yes, this individual would see gains in strength and size by giving their all out effort within the mid-rep range. However, the maximum number of push ups this person can achieve would quickly grow to 15, 20, 25, and onward, all well outside the ideal rep-range for muscle growth. If you are able to do 25 push ups and you limit yourself to 12, you aren’t going to see results, even though you’re in the proper rep-range. Performing 12 push ups for someone who can do 25 is too easy; it’s all about intensity.
So the person who can do 25 push ups needs to make push ups more difficult in order to remain within the 8-12 rep range with high intensity. This can be achieved by modifying the movement, either by increasing the angle of the push up or by adding weight, in order to increase the difficulty of the exercise.
This principle can be applied to every movement you do. If we use pull ups as an example, instead of doing 15 pull ups as quickly as possible, make the movement more difficult; do 8 very slowly and focus on keeping the muscles involved under tension for as long as possible, particularly on the eccentric (“un-flexing”) portion of the exercise. High intensity and lots of time under tension are the name of the game when trying to stimulate muscle growth.
So where can you workout without a gym? Many body weight movements such as push ups, squats, lunges, and burpees can be executed without any external equipment. Find a nice open area and get to work! The increasing popularity of calisthenics means that the number of public parks designed for body weight workouts is increasing, but a simple park with a playground will also do; things like monkey bars can be used for pull ups, tricep dips, and hanging leg lifts for your abs. Once you’ve gotten used to the art of using slow controlled movements to enhance your body weight workouts, try them with your heavy backpack on for an extra challenge! Also, some equipment such as gymnastics rings or TRX bands are light and travel friendly. Then you just need to find a pull up bar or tree branch to hang from and you’re good to go!
5. Know Moderation.
If you fret about your fitness 24/7 then what’s the point of being on vacation? You absolutely can and should treat yourself and enjoy what your temporary home has to offer. Allow yourself to try new, sometimes greasy foods, order desert, and go see what the local nightlife has to offer! Just know that if you stay out until 4am every night and constantly eat food with sub-par nutritional benefits, then after a while you’ll probably start to look the part. On top of that, if you are always indulging, the things you indulge on will most likely lose their significance. Becoming close with moderation will keep your waistline down and your guilty pleasures… well, pleasurable!
One of the most exciting aspects of travel is the break from our regular routines that it offers. Unfortunately, this also presents a challenge to living a balanced lifestyle. I’ve found the best way to strike a healthy balance on the road is to be mindful. Eat because you’re hungry, not because you can. Hit the bars to enjoy the company of friends or to make new ones, not just to get drunk and go home. If you had gelato for lunch, seek a salad for dinner. If you spent all weekend partying it up, spend the next few days rewarding your body with the nutrients and rest it needs. Practicing this principle will not only aid in leading a more healthy lifestyle on the road and at home, but will also add more significance to the things you do, making them more enjoyable and more memorable.
6. Know Your Body and Some Basic Nutrition.
The bottom line is that it’s a lot easier to be healthy when you know what healthy is. Educating yourself about basic nutrition and the effect that food has on your body makes keeping yourself in shape that much easier. You don’t need a degree in nutritional science to understand what your body needs, just knowing a few simple things such as what macro nutrients are (protein, carbohydrate, fat), what they do for your body, and what foods contain them can go a long way. Additionally, being aware of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) will help tremendously. This is the number of calories you burn in a day and there are tons of sites that can calculate it. Eat more calories than this number and you will gain weight – fewer calories and you will lose weight. Being aware of this figure will make the process of being health conscious a bit clearer.
Above all make sure not adopt obsessive or over reactive behaviors when trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle both on the road and at home. Your body generally likes to stay the way it is and favors homeostasis (a stable condition); so if you ate an excess of 500 calories today you shouldn’t deprive yourself 500 tomorrow, it will be okay. The best thing to do is to treat each day as a new one and try to be as consistently healthy as possible in your habits. Above all, have fun! Embarking on an adventure toward good health can be enjoyable and I promise that the right choices, when made on a consistent basis, will lead to results that will make you both feel and look great.
Wander&Wonder 