Taking a vacation is great for your body and your soul. It is a time to connect with family and friends, to change up your routine and hopefully to escape from the chores and responsibilities that await you at home.
Vacations can come in a variety of shapes and sizes: a quick camping trip that is easy on the budget and forces you to uplug from the wired world and plug into nature and family, a trip to a resort that takes care of all of your needs and has entertainment and luxury all within reach, a trip to a favorite beach or mountain to enjoy a different vista and revisit familiar restaurants and fun activities, a busy sight-seeing trip, taking in cities and famed sites, and enriching youself through culture and art.
Wherever you vacation, you do not need to take a vacation from healthy behaviors, especially if your healthy habits also contribute to experiencing less pain.
One of the easiest healthy habits to continue on vacation is movement and exercise. If your vacation gives you a bit more time, than you can utilize the time to pamper yourself with enjoyable fitness activities. Here are some ideas as to how to stay fit on vacation:
- Bring walking/exercise shoes, even if you have to take something else out of the luggage and leave it at home. Even if you don’t plan on exercising every day, not having the right shoes will surely eliminate even the possibility of exercise.
- Sign up for walking tours. The possibilities are endless. There are dozens of walking tours in New York, Chicago, and cities everywhere as well as regularly scheduled easy to difficult guided hikes in national and state parks. Cruise ships often have city walks and rainforest/nature walks as one of their many offerings.
- Swim every day! Access to a pool, beach or lake allows easy opportunities for relaxing movement that can also burn calories. Even floating is better than watching TV, but try to amp it up and at least tread water or better yet, swim more vigorously.
- Check out the exercise room, but exercise caution. The state of cleanliness and repair can vary tremendously in workout rooms in hotels, cruise ships and resorts. Cruise ship exercise rooms are our favorites. They tend to be immaculate, and they often have machines looking out over the water. Hotel exercise rooms sometimes are just “meh”. If the equipment looks even the slightest bit dirty or worn out, take a hike and exercise outside.
- Stretch out or do a little movement in your room. If you have access to Wifi, you have the ability to look at thousands of videos on Youtube on a phone or tablet. Fitness Blender has hundreds of free videos that range in length and intensity, so you can just stretch after a long drive or flight, or even carve out time for a 1000-calorie epic exercise session.
Vacations can give you the time to rejuvenate. Fitting in fitness ultimately will result in a more energizing vacation.
