The Foolproof Guide to Staying in Shape While Traveling

Travel for most of us and me especially is about trying new things. Especially food. So staying in shape while traveling is not that easy and I decided to call in reinforcements to get some easy to follow fitness tips for on the road: This guest post is written by Frank Lee, he works at Rebates Zone, you can follow him @franklee84. 

The Foolproof Guide to Staying in Shape While Traveling

When we go out on a trip to a foreign land, one of our major activity is trying the local cuisines without caring about it nutrition content and effect on our health. The truth of the matter is that often the most delicious things are dripping in fat and resisting such temptations can be an extremely difficult thing. It doesn’t take much for anyone to get out of shape when traveling especially if we’re not careful about the kind of food we’re allowing in our bodies.

Traveling shouldn’t get us out of shape, in fact, it should do exactly the opposite. It is certainly possible to enjoy your adventures in a foreign land and stay fit at the same time. In fact, this is what is required of the trip that it remains fun and you don’t get to miss out on the local cuisine and the parties while ensuring that you remain healthy at the same time. There are many ways of achieving the goal of health and happiness in your life; we’ve collected some of the most effective tips to stay fit while traveling long term.

Workout without a Gym

When most people think of exercise, an image of someone torturing himself in the gym with the weights or aimlessly running on the treadmill is what usually conjures up but this is very far from the reality. Staying healthy isn’t just limited to playing with these toys, in fact, going to the gym is the last thing on a person’s mind when he’s traveling to a foreign land in search of an adventure. The good thing is that your body itself is enough of a machine that it doesn’t need other instruments to just stay fit. You can find a lot of exercises on the internet which don’t require anything from you apart from a few certain repeated movements.

Back to the Basics

When we’re traveling we often use trams, buses, and taxis to cover distances which are although quick ways of moving from one point to another but they don’t serve much value in fact they’re detrimental to our health if we’re always taking the taxi and consuming all the local food we can. Few of the most simple and effective ways of building a healthy body on a trip are renting a bicycle to move from one place to another and go for hiking and walking trips. Not only are these healthier ways of traveling but they also allow you to see the place you’re visiting more thoroughly.

Exercise Regimen

Most places we visit have beautiful views but even the flatlands have parks and forests so you should be able to find enough space on the ground to do some squats and push-ups. Most parks have things to hang from your pull-ups. It isn’t difficult to pull-up on tree branches or overhangs at bus stops if you have the desire. These are simple things you can easily do with your body.

Everything Counts

It is not like as if you must do all your daily exercise at once in fact you can break the exercise in small chunks such as doing squats for five minutes at one time and do a couple of push-ups at a later part of the day. All of this adds up and makes your body stronger at the end of the day.

Diet Matters

No matter how much we all want to undermine the importance of having a good diet, the fact of the matter remains that it is absolutely essential and our diet greatly affects the way we look and feel and theirs is no real way of out-running a bad diet either. The important thing to remember while you’re traveling is to remain consistent in your diet, alternating between eating too much and then going for crash dieting is never a healthy idea.

When you’re taking your meals, you should ensure that you’re eating real food instead of consuming large amounts of liquid calories. Even though some of these things will be hard to follow, the goal is to give your best shot and let things take care of themselves instead of fretting over the little things. Eating vegetables and fruits along with nuts are always a good combination. A good strategy to follow in the matters of food is to eat healthy for 80 percent of the time and eat whatever you want for the remaining 20 percent. If you think that healthy food is expensive then you should use these discounts from Groupon to save money.

Cheers, Mate!

Drinking is a big component of all parties and our trips abroad are just an extension of parties themselves where we go for fun and drinking is a big part of the process. When you’re abroad, you should remember that wine and liquor, without anything mixed, are usually the healthiest of all the other alternatives but the important thing to keep in mind here is ‘comparative.’ After this, you can have a few light beers but those too need to be moderated.

The worst thing to drink is the combination of drinks filled with sugars or a recent mixture of energy drinks with alcohol. Sugar is your worst enemy and the more you can avoid it, the better it is going to be for you in the long run. The counter some of the harmful effects of all that you’re going to be consuming on your trip, you should drink a glass of water between your drinks. Sometimes, a single glass of water can do wonders. One way of making the drinking healthy for you is to promise yourself to do a certain number of push-ups or squats for every drink you take in the evening.

Have Fun

One of the most important things to do on a trip is to have some real fun which includes indulging in sports and activities which keep you on the move and push you to your limits. If you’ve never tried Bungee jumping before then now is as good a time as any to take the plunge. Say yes to hikes and make exercise a part of your personality. Most of all, have fun!

And if these tips aren’t enough, I’m Voyager has even more ways to stay fit and healthy while on the road on his travel blog. Go check it out!

What are your tips for staying in shape while traveling?

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