Keep up or at least strive to stick to at least a fraction of your healthy routine even while traveling to faraway exotic destinations. Not only you stay active throughout the whole trip, your travel experience improves tenfold.
10 Tips on how to Keep up Healthy Routine while Traveling
Travel is good for the soul, daily routine is necessary for the healthy body. This saying is so simple and profound. Yet it’s so underrated at the same time. Why should I keep up my daily routine while traveling? Doesn’t it contradict the purpose of travel: to get away from work, daily tasks, and household chores?
All of these are certainly some of the greatest benefits of travel. To escape the everyday life just to come back refreshed and full of energy a few days or weeks later. While no one can deny the importance of leaving your worries, including work, behind, keeping up a simple routine for yourself, for your body while traveling is still important. In fact, it’s necessary.
Bloating, mood swings, unhealthy cravings that leave you lethargic… You certainly don’t need any of these while exploring a new continent or culture. What’s worse, feeling lost, unmotivated, and even trapped once you get back to your daily life after the trip…
This should not be the case. Bringing a few of your daily rituals with your on vacation helps avoid and even eliminate most of these unhealthy “byproducts” of travel. With that said, here are 10 simple tips on how you can keep up your healthy routine while traveling and at home, after that trip.
10 TIPS ON HOW TO KEEP UP YOUR HEALTHY ROUTINE WHILE TRAVELING AND AFTERN A TRIP
1. Keep up Your Morning Routine while Traveling
You might be on vacation, but don’t waste time and energy by staying in bed until noon. If it’s part of your daily routine at home… ok, keep it up. Most people, however, are up at 6-7 a.m. to get ready to work.
But there is no work to rush to while traveling. Yet sunrise that changes its colors every morning, a chance to share a cup of tea or coffee with locals before they are off to their offices and other places of work… And even exploring ample alleys not yet filled with tourists… All of these should inspire you to get up early or simply stick to your pre-travel, regular sleeping hours.
While even not an early riser may find these troubles worth all the new experiences, the hard-working body can’t stop thanking you. Your internal clock has to keep up its daily routine whether you’re traveling or not. Adjusting to any significant, even temporarily changes can be hard on it.
Although your devoted slave aka your body tries to keep up with everything you put it through, there are time when it rebels. That’s when you get bloated, suffer severe headaches, and feel blue.
The simplest solution here is to help your body. So get up and go to bed at the same time or as closely as possible to the sleeping routine you follow at home before traveling.
Read more: 5 Tips for Making Yoga a Daily Habit that Will Stick
2. Keep up Your Dietary Routine
By all means, explore new cuisines and try something new every day. Yet remember that a routine, that boring and sometimes annoying ally of yours, is good for your body.
Keeping up your eating routine while traveling can be hard sometimes. For many, it may even defy the purpose of exploring. These people are right to some extent. Yet you want to have enough energy to enjoy your trip. Sadly, food, that thing that nourishes us, can also make us feel weak.
So make a plan how to stick to your healthy routine before a trip. The easiest way is to keep the same meal hours and skip excessive snacking in between. Next, follow at least some sort of routine in at least one of your meals, especially when you’re traveling to the faraway countries.
3. Eat Your Veggies
This brings us to our next tip on how to keep up your healthy routine while traveling. Vegetables, particularly green leafy plants, are full of fiber that helps digestion. Make it a routine to eat a large salad before indulging in local delicacies. In the worse case scenario, load up on veggies as a side dish.
If you’re accustomed to starting your day with green smoothie or juice, don’t let this habit slip away when you travel. Combine the healthy routine with the pleasure of discovery and set off on a new adventure. Try to find the best juice bars or stands in your new home away from home.
4. Book a Room with Kitchenette to Help You Stick to Your Healthy Routine while Traveling
Cooking for yourself not only is one of your reliable allies when it comes to keeping up your healthy routine while traveling, but also saves money. A small kitchenette usually has all the essentials to make that delicious soup (given you do your grocery shopping beforehand) after an eventful day. If you’re a morning person, rise half an hour earlier and make your own breakfast.
We almost always book a room with a kitchenette when traveling to a national park. Sometimes as tiny as a box (it certainly felt like it in Estes Park on the outskirts of Rocky Mountain National Park), the availability of a stove and some utensils greatly enhances any nature-infused trips.
Furthermore, with not many restaurants in the immediate surroundings, you save yourself the hustle and rely on the healthiest food possible. Even if an eatery is just around the corner, its prices and choices are often far from what you would consider to keep up your healthy routine. So have mercy on your stomach and stick to your cooking plan and habits while traveling, especially when venturing into the woods.
5. Get to Know Your New Neighborhood
On your first day in a new city or town, trouble yourself to walk outside and explore your neighborhood. Check out what supermarkets, stores, restaurants, and cafes reside within a few-minute walk from where your stay. Then step inside and see how you can use their products and services to keep up your healthy routine while traveling.
6. Build a New Habit to Temporarily Supplement Your Old Routine while Traveling
Often you may need to build a temporary habit that if not replaces then at least aims at keeping you on track while traveling.
Right before a pandemic started, I had spent a few days in Amsterdam. From the very first day, I tried to see the city from a local perspective. Tourist attractions and restaurant hopping were present in abundance, though. And yet I enjoyed the latter without jeopardizing my eating routine. Consequences of the opposite could be severe.
A green-smoothie-in-the-morning girl, I couldn’t possibly have shortage of these healthy drinks in vegan-friendly Amsterdam. On the other hand, 10 Euros per a smoothie seemed unreasonable. So I ended up creating a new healthy travel routine to keep up my main routine. I gave up on the morning smoothie, but incorporated a fresh-squeezed orange juice as part of my relaxing evening routine at the hotel.
The juice that costed less than 2 Euros didn’t come from a specialized juice bar. I made it myself at a local supermarket, Albert Heijn, that had a juice making machine for customers to use when they needed a bottle of freshly pressed orange juice.
7. Bring along Supplements or Snacks
Vitamins, digestive enzyme supplements, protein bars… Pack anything you use on a daily basis and can’t give up even while traveling.
Some people insist that the digestive supplements help you stay grounded, well, and energized while exploring new cuisines. I personally never keep so much trust in the pills and hardly ever use them at home.
So consequently, they are not part of my daily routine and I certainly don’t use them to “keep up” my healthy routine to further help my digestive system while traveling. I rely on many tips discussed here to enjoy my trip without feeling sluggish.
8. Keep up Exercise Routine while Traveling
This is one of the those tips that you can be flexible with. If a 15-minute yoga helps you start your day on a strong note, just do it. Go to a gym available at your hotel for a quick morning workout. Or run on a beach nearby.
Yet don’t chastise yourself if none of these works. You’ll walk a lot anyway while exploring a new destination. So one way or another, exercise doesn’t escape your daily healthy routine while traveling. In many cases, traveling does the opposite. It incorporates some workout into a normally sedentary lifestyle.
9. Keep up Your Healthy Travel Routine at Home
Surprisingly, some travel routines are not to be gotten rid of, but adopted when you get back home. Start with a simple walk you got used to on your latest trip. Don’t just clean your walking shoes and put them in a box until your next adventure. Instead, start putting them on every day and re-exploring your own neighborhood in your own city.
Sticking to this travel routine while at home can be hard at first. Old habits die hard, after all. But persevering in this direction will make a significant change in your overall well-being in a short time.
10. Keep up Your Work Routine while Traveling
Some routines, however, are meant to be changed when traveling. Keeping up with your projects, tasks, due dates should not be your concern at this time. Leave the work at our office and give a break to your mind. Let it wonder at new things and people you’re about to encounter. And don’t feel guilty of not being productive while on vacation.
The things look different if you’re on a business trip. Yet a new, healthier routine should be started here as well. Instead of delving into a new project right after the business hours, finish your work as quickly as possible (no procrastinating, no wasting time here) and enjoy a leisurely afternoon or evening walk in a new place.
