Easy Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling
Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure, it’s tough to maintain your fitness routine when you’re away from home. But a week at the beach doesn’t have to ruin your physique. Keep reading for a few tips and tricks to stay on track even if you’re off the beaten path.
Accountability
When you travel, you should at least pay attention to the amount of time you spend moving versus the time you sit in business meetings or lounging on the beach. If you don’t already wear a fitness tracker, install a pedometer app on your phone and strive for 10,000 steps every day.
Slow down at dinnertime
Rushing through your meals isn’t going to do your body any favors. Not only do you have to digest larger bits of food, but eating too fast can trick your brain into thinking you’re still hungry when your body has really had enough. It can be difficult when you’re in a hurry, especially when you’re stuck in the food court at the airport, but be conscientious of the time it takes you to eat. As you chew, count to 10 in your head before you swallow.
Keep the water flowing
Drink plenty of water. That’s not exactly new advice, but it is a simple health practice most people tend to toss aside when traveling. Keeping yourself hydrated can help you feel full, but not getting enough H2O can actually make your vacation less enjoyable or wreck your important business meeting. When the body doesn’t have enough water, it tries to compensate by rerouting it for your vital organs from everywhere else. This can result in headaches, constipation and mental murkiness. While you’re eating out, order water with your meal and drink it before you move on to tea, coffee or cocktails. Fill your beach cooler with waters and eat more fruits and vegetables, which also contain water.
Take advantage of the amenities
Most business class and better hotels have at least a small fitness center and swimming pool. Some hotels and cruise ships have full gyms complete with cardio equipment, climbing walls and lap pools. When booking your stay, scroll through the website and look at the amenities.
If the hotel doesn’t list a 24-hour fitness center, look elsewhere. You can also look for a hotel located close to the park or, at the very least, on a long stretch of sidewalk so you can get in a morning run before starting your day. If you’re staying at a multi-level hotel, take the stairs instead of the elevator for extra movement, or try incorporating them into your workout. Or bring your portable streaming device to stream your favorite workout from anywhere. Remember, the easier it is to access physical activity, the more likely you are to do it.
Stick with local fare
Half the fun of travel is sampling the tastes of the town. Unfortunately, the vast majority of tourist destinations are overcrowded with chain restaurants. Make a list of truly local diners and stick with these places when you eat out. If you are renting a condo or apartment, visit a nearby farmers market instead of the grocery store while stocking up. One of the biggest benefits of eating locally grown foods is that they are higher in nutrients than those that have traveled over land and sea to reach your table.
While it’s certainly okay to indulge, the little luxuries you enjoy while traveling shouldn’t reset your health and wellness goals. Keep yourself accountable and limit your intake of alcohol and unhealthy food you can have at home. It may sound impossible, but your excursions don’t have to put an end to your everyday health habits.
Practicing Self-Care: The Importance of Creating Balance with Your Fitness Routine
Not everyone can say that they are following a fitness routine. It isn’t easy to keep a stringent workout regimen and stay faithful to a healthy diet. However, if you’ve found the secret formula, then you are well on your way to achieving your fitness goals.
While you should be proud of your achievements, you should also be wary of pushing yourself too hard, too fast. You’d be surprised how often burnout occurs, and for most people, the reason for their sudden drop in motivation was due to a failure of keeping balance with other wellness-boosting activities.
Self-care is a word you hear a lot these days as more and more people realize the value of tending to their physical, mental, and emotional needs. To be fair, keeping up with your physical fitness is an act of self-care, but unless you’re able to diversify the ways in which you tend to your various needs, you can lose the motivation to keep making progress. In an effort to keep your fitness moving forward, here are other activities that can balance your overall self-care.
Find a Hobby
Exercise is great because it can provide a sense of fulfillment to your life, but exercise isn’t the only self-care activity that can give you a feeling of pride and accomplishment. Everyone has their own unique interests. Some of us love to play an instrument, knit, fill out a coloring book, or spend a day out on the trail. No matter where your interests lie, you have a chance to diversify how you care for yourself.
The best kinds of hobbies are the ones that transport you away from the rest of the world. They should be like pressing a pause button on your life, allowing you to escape into an activity you love doing — at least for a little while. Your hobby should be challenging but not frustrating or unenjoyable, as that’s when it becomes a chore. Your hobby should be something that relaxes you and helps you forget about everything else going on in your life. Practicing a hobby will certainly keep you from burning out of your fitness routine.
Improve Your Quality of Sleep
A lot of times, you can burn out from being physically active by simply feeling too tired to keep the effort up. If you’re not getting enough quality rest each night, you could on your way to burning out and giving up. If you’ve noticed that you are waking up feeling groggy and tired, then there are a few things you can do to improve the quality of your sleep.
Better sleep starts with the bedroom, and creating the right environment to promote a quick and seamless slumber. You should keep your room dark, clean, and cool. You should make sure your pillow matches your sleeping position, and you might even try out a noise machine to help send your mind to sleep. Sleep is a fundamental form of self-care that helps us mentally process the day while resetting our body and mind for the days ahead.
Exercise Your Mind
You’re focused on getting your body in shape, but what about your mind? There are several ways you can work out your mind, including reading, puzzles, and meditation. Meditation is especially useful for helping you achieve a higher level of relaxation, which can combat stress that can hinder your progress towards self-care. Try to find an area in your home that you can transform into a meditation space, which will help encourage you to practice on a daily basis.
Meditation, relaxation, diet, and exercise are all ways to practice self-care. Once you realize there’s more than one way to achieve self-care, it makes the challenge of bettering yourself a little less difficult. No longer do you have to worry about pushing yourself too hard in a single area. Instead, you can now broaden your horizons and achieve true balance.
Photo Credit: Pixabay.com
Cauliflower Mash
Ingredients:
1 head cauliflower 1/8 cup skim milk 2 cloves garlic Pepper to taste Sprinkle of parm cheese
Directions:
Steam cauliflower until tender. Place cauliflower, skim milk, garlic, and pepper into a blender. Blend until smooth. Place mixture into small baking dish and sprinkle Parm cheese and paprika on top. Makes 3 servings.
Physical Fitness During Recovery: How To Heal
Physical fitness can be a huge help when you are going through addiction recovery, not only because it allows you to focus on making your body healthy, but because it can help boost your self-esteem, confidence, and mental health. Getting active and practicing mindfulness can help you relax, learn how to focus on the present to reduce anxiety, and find comfort after a long battle with addiction.
“Research clearly shows that exercise helps your body, whether you’re in recovery or not. Improved long-term fitness helps with cardiovascular health and diabetes, lowers the risk of some types of cancers, stimulates the immune system, and can even help alleviate depression symptoms. Further research shows that exercise can increase the amount of new nerve connections in the brain, which will help your brain heal from the harm your drug of choice has been causing. As the body and mind continue to return to a more normal state, many people in recovery find exercise also helps restore a normal sleep schedule,” reads a blog post by SMART Recovery.
Keep reading for more on how physical fitness can help you during addiction recovery.
Sleep better
Many individuals who have battled substance abuse have trouble sleeping. Daily exercise can help you get better sleep, which can in turn reduce stress and help you feel better during the day. It will also help boost your productivity and can even help with physical issues, such as inflammation brought on by arthritis. Working out daily can help you prepare for better rest so you’ll be ready for anything that comes your way.
Boost your mental health
Taking care of your mental health is essential when you’re in recovery, since many individuals face depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders that can be debilitating. Exercise can have many benefits for your mental health, including boosting neural growth and healthy brain cells.
“Exercise is a powerful depression fighter for several reasons. Most importantly, it promotes all kinds of changes in the brain, including neural growth, reduced inflammation, and new activity patterns that promote feelings of calm and well-being. It also releases endorphins, powerful chemicals in your brain that energize your spirits and make you feel good. Finally, exercise can also serve as a distraction, allowing you to find some quiet time to break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that feed depression,” reads Helpguide.org.
Stay motivated
Exercising every day and starting a new routine that makes you feel good will keep you motivated to stay healthy and stick with it. Try to work out at the same time every day and incorporate activities that are fun so you’ll be more apt to keep up with it, such as going for a swim, dancing, or playing a sport.
Get fit
Substance abuse can take a huge toll on your body, so one of the best ways to heal is to get fit and focus on your health. Talk to your doctor about finding the right workout (or workouts) for your needs and fitness goals, whether it’s walking, weight training, cardio, or a combination of them.
Learning how physical fitness can benefit your needs is essential when you’re going through recovery, because it will help you focus on achieving a healthy body, mind, and spirit. Talk to your doctor and keep communication open about your needs so you’ll have support no matter what happens, and do the same with your friends and family. Consider finding a support group so you’ll have people to talk to who know what you’ve been through.
Healthy Facts
It’s time to take a look at some healthy facts that you might not already know. If you’re living a sedentary lifestyle or eating unhealthy foods, these may be facts that will save your life. If you’re already on the road to fitness, you’ll probably find some of these interesting or inspiring and help you stay firmly on the path to good health.
Did you know that for every minute you participate in moderate exercise, you gain seven minutes of life. Your life is not just longer, it’s healthier too.
That fact came from a study called,”Leisure Time Physical Activity of Moderate to Vigorous Intensity and Mortality: A Large Pooled Cohort Analysis,” published November 6, 2012. People who participated in brisk walking gained 1.8 years, while those who had more than the recommended 150 minutes of activity gained a healthy 3.4 to 4.5 years. Those who were active and of normal weight gained 7.1 years.
According to the CDC, regular exercise is one of the most important things you can do for your health.
Not only does exercising help reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and even osteoporosis, it can help control those conditions if you already have them. It helps lower blood pressure, makes your muscles more sensitive to insulin so you absorb more glucose from the blood and strengthens the heart muscle so it pumps more efficiently. Because your heart pumps more efficiently, all cells in your body reap benefits from the oxygen laden blood that flows to them. It also boosts your immune system, which can help fight both serious and minor diseases.
Obesity has now taken over as the primary cause of preventable deaths.
While smoking will still shorten your life, there’s another, more serious condition that will cause illness and death, obesity. More than one third of our nation is classified as obese and the additional medical cost of that obesity in 2008 was $147 billion dollars in the US. Even without obesity, diet and lack of exercise alone accounted for 18 percent of preventable deaths, a number that was up from 14 percent 20 years previously. The good news is that you’re never too old to start making lifestyle changes by adding regular exercise and a healthier diet.
Several studies show that weight bearing exercises and strength training can be more effective to build bone density and slow bone loss than most medications.
Exercise is a stress buster. It burns off the hormones created by stress that can play havoc with our bodies. Since these hormones prepare the body for flight or fight, a good workout makes sense to eliminate them.
Regular exercise can improve how well you think. It not only helps you sleep better and clears away the cobwebs caused by stress, it also helps build new brain cells and connections.
Exercise and a healthy diet can slow aging and even improve your sex life!
As you become fitter, you’ll also start to see your self-confidence rise. You’ll have plenty of confidence to break down other barriers and never feel stuck again.
Does Workout Gear Matter?
Workout gear is important, but doesn’t necessarily have to be fashionable or stylish. When you workout, you need clothing that allows you to move comfortably, but also provides support where you need support. It should be layered, so as you warm up and start to sweat, you can remove a layer to remain your most comfortable. Spending an exorbitant amount of money on most of the clothing is unnecessary, except for one item. You should have good shoes that provide support and be made for more than looks. They should be made for action.
Layering allows you to keep your muscles warm until you get warm.
In the chillier months, coming to the gym in shorts isn’t always a good decision. That’s where layering helps. You can wear a short sleeve or sleeveless top under a lightweight hoodie or jacket that will keep you warm until your arrival and warm-up ends. Sweat pants over shorts is also a good idea at that time. As you warm up and the sweat starts to roll, take your clothing down to the shorts and top. Make sure both have fabric next to your skin that draws the sweat away from your body, so you don’t feel cold and clammy afterward or hot and sweaty in the summer.
Match your workout gear to your workout.
In most cases, you’ll be working in the gym, where shorts, sports bra and t-shirt or singlet for women works well and shorts and t-shirt is appropriate for men. If you decide to take your workout outside, you need to dress for the weather. Anyone that runs knows sometimes Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate, so having emergency rain gear you can carry in your pocket may be a lifesaver and keep you warmer during a winter, spring or fall shower. Of course, again the right type of shoes are important.
Make sure you get quality shoes.
Your feet often take a real pounding during a workout, so having the best possible footwear can be important. In fact, it is far more important than having high fashion workout clothing. There are so many types of shoes from which to choose, unless you have oodles of money and buy them all, you’ll probably have to choose one or two pairs that fit your needs best. Cross training shoes or a comfortable running shoe works in most cases. The heavier you are, the more you’ll appreciate plenty of cushioning.
Since workout clothing is acceptable wear many places outside of a gym. Focus your attention to comfortable clothing inside the gym and save those dazzling outfits for another place to show off your new gorgeous body.
Sweat bands and wrist bands can be as important as other workout gear. You’ll appreciate the head sweat band, especially when you have a tough workout that makes the sweat pour out of you.
If you need a boost of confidence, by all means, get new workout gear. Sometimes, that little boost can make a difference, even if it’s not a necessity.
You’ll see people dressed in all types of workout gear at a gym and not worrying about what others think of their attire. That’s because the reason to go to the gym is for the workout and focusing all their attention to it is what they do while they’re there. Most people seldom notice what others wear as long as it’s not too outrageous.
Time For Transformation
Life is short. In fact, it’s too short to waste time feeling sorry for yourself or complaining about your body or energy level. Use that time for transformation, instead. In fact, you can make substantial headway by just being aware of what you want to achieve. If you want to become slimmer, toner or have more energy, you need to make some lifestyle changes. Rather than continuously focusing on what you’re not, start focusing on what you have and what you are. You’ll find some great attributes when you do.
Create a plan of action.
Getting fit may not be the answer to all your problems, but it can help you feel more confident and in control, while also helping you to look your best and be your healthiest. Start by changing your lifestyle. If you smoke, quit. That’s easier said than done, unfortunately. The same is true about drinking alcoholic beverages frequently. The best place to start the transformation is securing the services of a professional or several professionals. Get a physical and talk to your doctor about starting an exercise program. You’ll benefit from using the services of a personal trainer to help map out your transformation into steps you can accomplish.
Stay on track.
Once you have a plan in action, the rest is simple. Follow that plan. If you’re working with a personal trainer, he or she will help you at every step, including creating the plan of action. Make sticking to your plan and exercising on a regular basis top priority. You’ll start to notice many changes after a few weeks. You’ll feel fantastic, develop more energy and notice you look better too.
Learn healthier eating habits and practice them.
Not only will eating healthier boost your immune system and help prevent serious illness, it also makes you feel fantastic and helps you lose weight. Losing weight, if you’re overweight, can be one of the best things you can do for yourself. Obesity is now the leading cause of preventable deaths, even passing smoking. You’ll start feeling better about yourself and have more energy in the process.
As soon as you start a fitness program, you’ll start to feel better about yourself. Studies show that just starting a program for fitness gives a boost to your self-image.
If you’re quitting habits such as smoking, working out is a great way to avoid weight gain. Not only does it help handle the stress of quitting, it gives you a dose of hormones that make you feel more relaxed and happy.
Eating healthier isn’t dieting. It’s making better choices when it comes to food, such as eating whole rice instead of white rice.
You’ll walk more confidently and feel good about yourself after you’ve practiced these lifestyle changes for a while.
Feel Amazing
If you want to feel amazing, start working out and eating healthier. After the first session, you’ll be tired, but you’ll also feel more relaxed and at ease. That’s because the exercise burned off the hormones created by stress that cause bodily changes for the fight or flight response. Left unchecked, they can cause damage to your body. As you exercise, it triggers the brain to create hormones that help prevent pain, but they also do something else, they make you feel at ease, happier and at peace. There are several types of hormones, with dopamine and endorphin as two of them.
Get your blood circulating.
There’s some long term “feel good” benefits from exercise too. You’ll build energy and put some bounce in your step. That extra energy is just one of the benefits you’ll enjoy. You’ll also feel stronger and ready to take on the world, or at least the house and yard work. Regular exercise sends oxygen and nutrient rich blood to all the cells of your body, making them healthier. It gives you a glow and a more youthful looking appearance.
Eating healthier gives you energy and helps you feel fantastic.
If you don’t provide the right type of fuel for a vehicle, that vehicle won’t run. Just imagine putting sugar in the tank. You could say good-bye forever to that car or truck. The same is true for your body. It needs the proper fuel, with nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. You’ll get all those from a diet that contains plenty of fruits and vegetables. What you don’t need are the preservatives and other additives often found in processed foods. They’re like sugar in your gas tank. In fact, sugar and white flour should also be avoided. You also don’t need extra calories that can add pounds.
Lose weight with regular exercise and a healthy diet.
A healthy diet isn’t dieting. It’s making smarter food choices that improve your nutrition and lower calorie intake. Exercise burns calories. It also builds muscle tissue and muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue does, so it raises your metabolism. Today obesity is the leading cause of preventable deaths, surpassing even smoking. As you workout and eat healthy, you’ll notice you’ll also lose excess pounds. It’s like lifting a weight off your shoulders. In fact, it’s actually no longer carrying weight you’ve carried for a long time. You’ll feel amazing.
Getting plenty of sleep at night not only improves your health, it makes you feel good. Regular exercise helps you sleep better at night.
Practice random acts of kindness, get involved in worthy causes or do something for others. No matter what you do for someone else, you’ll get more out of it. If you love animals, create a bird or squirrel feeder, volunteer at a shelter or become an animal foster parent. Do something for others every day no matter how small it is.
Schedule your workout. If you have a block of time scheduled on your calendar, you’re more likely to keep that appointment. It keeps you on the straight and narrow.
Spend some time outdoors each day. You need to get vitamin D and the best way is from the sun. If you’re fair skinned or haven’t been out in the sun for a time, use skin block to prevent sunburn.
Improve The Quality Of Your Life
Rather than just lengthening your life, you should find a way to lengthen and improve the quality of your life. Making lifestyle changes can help you do both, while also creating a purpose and meaning that will make the world a better place to live. It’s not the quantity of life that counts, but the quality. Lifestyle changes, such as an exercise program, healthier eating habits and a purpose to life can make all the difference. Humans were meant to eat real foods, remain active and remain useful their entire life. You won’t wear out your body by exercising, but it can rust away from lack of use.
You are what you eat.
While you’ll never turn into a bag of Doritos or a fresh tomato, you will have more of life’s energy from eating a fresh tomato. Our lifestyle has become a pattern of eating fast foods, over processed foods and “pretend foods” made of non-edible ingredients that are poisoning our bodies or robbing it of vital nutrients. You can change all that and add years to your life by changing your eating habits. Salt is NOT the only spice or herb you’re allowed to eat, nor is it the most beneficial. Turmeric, rosemary, oregano, chili peppers and cinnamon, just to name a few not only flavor foods, but add valuable nutrients. Healthy fats, such as flax seed oil, coconut oil or olive oil, can help you live healthier, but hydrogenated trans fat doesn’t. Eating whole foods, foods with minimal processing adds nutrients without adding calories. Learning to eat healthier can help you lose weight and regain your youthful vigor.
Regular exercise can clear the plaque from your arteries and give you a more youthful body.
Regular exercise can do so much for your body from making it stronger, adding endurance, creating more flexibility and helping to lose weight to aiding in preventing serious conditions. In fact, some studies show it might even help unblock arteries and does lower blood pressure. Adding a regular program of exercise to your schedule can keep you younger looking, more energetic and healthier.
Cut out stress and mellow out.
Sometimes exercise is enough to burn off the hormones created by stress, but if you are constantly stressing out over everything, it’s time to change your mind. You can learn to lower your stress levels by changing the way you think about things. If someone snaps at you for no apparent reason, you have several options, you can snap back at them, get angry and fret over it or just assume they’re having a horrible day and forget it. If it was caused by something you did, you can apologize and move on with your life. That can help lower stress levels and make you a happier person.
Learn to laugh again. Laughter is the best medicine in many cases. It fills your lungs with oxygen and helps you burn off the hormones created by stress, replacing them with ones that make you feel good.
Do random acts of kindness or take up a worthy cause. Many people don’t have a passion in life or don’t feel fulfilled because they have no purpose. Find a worthy purpose and work toward making it happen.
Stop smoking and/or excess alcohol intake. Both will shorten your life and your enjoyment of life.
Socialize more and meet new friends. People with an active social life often life longer and richer lives.
Firm And Flatten
Whether you want to firm and flatten your stomach, build or tone your muscles, lose weight or just feel healthier, if you follow a program designed specifically with your fitness level, goals and special needs in mind you’ll see results in as little as two weeks. While these results may not be what you eventually hope to achieve, they’re encouraging enough to keep you on the right track and motivated. A program created specifically for your needs gets faster results than any generic workout.
Losing weight may be necessary to flatten your tummy and that means eating healthier.
You’ll notice this says eating healthier, not dieting. Dieting is restrictive and a diet always ends, sometimes when you lose weight and sometimes abruptly. Then you go back to old eating habits and put the weight back on that you lost. Instead of dieting, learning how to eat healthier is a far better solution. A personal trainer can help you learn to make better food choices. It may mean making substitutions, such as eating vegetable spaghetti instead of pasta or cooking food differently, fried vs steamed, broiled or baked. When you learn how to eat healthier, you’ll never be hungry and find you end up loving the new types of foods your eat. It’s not all rice cakes and celery, but delicious savory foods.
All types of exercises are important.
While some exercises burn more calories than others do, you need all types of exercises for a healthier body that looks fantastic. Flexibility training not only works your muscles, it improves your range of motion to help prevent injury that can set any fitness program back for weeks or months. Strength training burns calories and builds muscles and endurance training builds your cardiovascular system and gets oxygen rich blood pumping to all areas of your body. You need all these types of exercise to have a well rounded program that will not only flatten your stomach it will burn calories to melt the fat that hides your firm flat tummy.
Drink plenty of fluid to help flush out toxins.
It might sound simplistic but drinking plenty of water can help you on your goal of a fatter stomach and also improve your overall health. Water not only flushes out toxins when you sweat, it keeps everything working in your digestive and elimination system. That reduces the bloat that may slow your progress toward a flat stomach.
Working out burns off the hormones created by stress. One of these hormones, cortisol, is linked to the development of abdominal fat.
Exercise helps improve your posture. Good posture can help keep your stomach flatter and firmer.
A program of regular exercise makes you feel fantastic. You’ll start looking forward to working out and that positive outlook will make you want to work even harder.
You’ll sleep better at night when you workout regularly and eat healthier. A good night’s sleep helps you from grabbing sugary snacks for energy that can cause you to gain weight or inhibit weight loss.