Audio: Staying Healthy While You Travel

Looking to ensure you can survive and thrive during travel? I offer a few tips for maintaining a healthy lifestyle while on the road, whether for business or pleasure.

Transcript

Hi everybody, Meredith here, with Whole Life Health.

And lately on the blog, we've been talking about travel, and how travel relates to our healthy lifestyle, and how we can maintain a healthy lifestyle while we travel. So I wanted to share some thoughts that go a little bit beyond some of the articles that I've shared around this topic. I've done quite a bit of traveling throughout my life. I've done traveling by myself, traveling with friends, traveling for business, and traveling with family. So each of those different types of travel certainly has its own challenges and rewards and excitement.

So I find that traveling can be a real mixed bag. It's great. A lot of the times it's stressful. A lot of times it can be all these things at once. So, if you're looking for ways to make sure that you can enjoy yourself to the fullest, without getting sick, or feeling really drained when your travel is over, I put together a few tips in several different areas.

One of the areas that I cover with my ideas is eating. That's a big one. So no matter where you are, or who you are, you're going to need to eat while you're traveling. And being away from our comfortable surroundings, our homes with our comfortable ingredients, the things that we're familiar with all of our cooking implements or even just start local. Restaurants and places that we know and we're comfortable with can definitely be a challenge. It's also really exciting and it's a great opportunity to try new things that we wouldn't get to try because we're somewhere different. I always advise folks to just try to be a little bit more flexible than usual. And just be prepared. That's a big one is to try to go into these situations with limited expectations, because there are no guarantees when you're somewhere else. And being prepared for that, as much as possible, can help alleviate a little bit of stress. So one of the tips that I talked about is having some food with you that you can eat. So, obviously, this is a little bit easier to do in some situations than others. And if you're going to be gone for a really long time, you probably don't want to pack an entire bag full of just food. So for shorter trips, it's pretty easy. If you're driving, it's easier versus flying because if you have your own vehicle, you could stuff a cooler in it and your Vitamix, and whatever else you're used to, it can be a little easier to travel with some of the things that are yours. Overall, though, I think it's just really helpful to be prepared.

The other way I feel like people can be prepared is just to do a little bit of an advance research. So one of the experiences that I've had, when I was traveling in Southeast Asia was that I did probably just a little bit of surface research. And that's a huge area. So I didn't really spend the time to dig in deeply to all the different cities and countries where we would be. So in some areas, I was a little surprised by what was available or not available. And I remember being in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and there were only really a couple of kinds of food and the most readily available and least expensive, was usually something fried and made of flour so that gets old really quickly, especially if that's not what you're used to. And we traveled through a couple of cities in Malaysia, briefly through Thailand, and then three different cities within Vietnam. And I remember, I think we had just gotten to Saigon, in Vietnam, and I said, I just want some vegetables. I just want, I don't really care what it is, I just need some vegetables. My system is so tired of fried dough balls. So that was one experience that I had. And you know, that was a situation where maybe it wouldn't have been able to have been helped. I have a feeling though, if I'd done a little bit of digging, I might have noticed that other people travel bloggers, food magazines, that report on foods from different places in the world, might have mentioned that or tipped me off.

So other than food, what else do we talk about when we're looking at travel and maintaining a healthy lifestyle? Well, another topic that I discuss is mindset or attitude. There’s a lot on the road that can throw us for a loop. Travel plans that change, or a conference we are attending for work, that's just so incredibly draining, meetings that we have to attend, or we're with family and one of our kids get sick, totally changing maybe what we had thought we were going to be spending our time doing when we're traveling. So one tip that I like to share for mindset is to try to find some time to get out alone, doing something that may be just nothing, or at least something that you enjoy doing, because it's really easy to get overwhelmed. Whether we're on work travel, whether we are with family, a lot of times, we're really trying to do more than we would if we were just in our regular scheduled lives. So when we have traveled in the past, I like to find good meditation spots. And you know, depending on the climate, these may be outside, they might be inside, just finding places that are kind of tucked away, so that I know that I have at least some opportunity to sneak off and just take some breaths, be by myself, you know, maybe enjoy the surroundings on my own so that I can take a break from whatever it is that I might be doing. So that's a big tip that I have for folks.

The other thing I would say about mindset and self care and that kind of thing is just taking extended time. If you are in a really intensive situation. So one example that I have is that I was in rural rural Oregon for supporting a camp. And it was a beautiful setting. So it really had never occurred to me that I would want or need to take a break from that area. It was gorgeous, lots of green, nature and all of that. What I was doing there though, that was pretty intense, and I was there for two and a half weeks. So thankfully, the way that the staff was set up was that all of the folks that were in my role had a day and a half within that timeframe that we were allowed to have days off one whole day and a half day. So I was pretty excited. I had not gone there with a vehicle so I was able to borrow a car, check out the map of surrounding areas, since we were not necessarily next to any cities. I found the closest one, decided to explore that area. My half day, I ended up going with a new friend, I'd met somebody else on staff. And I noticed that most of the other staff members did not take the time. And they said, Oh, it's fine, I don't need it. I'll just not report for my regular duties. But I'm going to stay here, you know, within the camp. I really found that I needed that day and a half, as much as I was enjoying the experiences that I was having, just being in a different setting, and seeing other scenery, seeing other people, that kind of thing. So that's just another experience I've had that I feel could be helpful to share. If you find yourself in a similar situation, don't be afraid to take that time away from what you're doing, because sometimes that's very necessary.

So I also talk about movement because depending on the kind of travel we're doing, We might be engaged in a lot of movement, if that's the kind of thing that we're doing. However, we might be a lot more sedentary than we're used to in our regular lives, particularly for doing things like meetings, or conferences, or for driving if we're doing a big road trip. So my family and I, most recently took a road trip throughout the southwest United States. And it was pretty rough, we're not used to being in a car. We were really excited to see all these places and we forgot through our excitement that we would have to actually get there first. Several hours to each place was pretty draining. And, you know, we would find ways to try to get in as much movement as possible. So if we can stop at rest stops, you know, make stops as often as possible just to get out and get some fresh air, on especially long days if we can, find a place, let's say if we have a hotel, and we can find a pool. Or if we are staying at a house and there's a nearby park, that's great. Now there was one city in Arizona in particular, where we got out of the car at the place where we were staying and we saw some stairs. And they led to a big, open public park area. So my daughter and I got out of the car and just ran up and down the stairs, over and over again, until we got tired. So you know, even when you feel like it might be an effort to figure out a way to get movement, your body really needs that and it will thank you for it later.

And then the last thing that I wanted to address as it relates to travel is trying to keep some of the toxins out of your environment. And this can be things you might think about readily such as air pollution. Are you staying in a city, are there lots of cars? Or are you out in the country, maybe it's much more easy to breathe. It can also be the products that you're using or that you have access to. So maybe you're thinking you didn't need to pack toiletries, because the hotel would have them or you're staying with family and you can use theirs. And then you discover that there's something in their environment that's bothering you. Maybe it's their soap. Maybe they use those air fresheners that kind of take over and sometimes people have a hard time breathing with those. It can also, though, be your surroundings in terms of the people or the attitudes, the culture, maybe, maybe you end up somewhere that turns out to not be all that friendly. So you're asking for directions or you're asking for tips from local people and it doesn't feel like you're being received very well. Or you are staying with family, and as we all know, sometimes that can be challenging. Because we have different dynamics with different family members. So maybe you decide that it's better to stay in a different place than your family. You can still visit but then you can leave and go somewhere else and sort of recover. Or maybe the place where everyone's staying for your work conference is super overwhelming. Maybe there's a nightclub underneath it at night, you're not going to get any sleep. That's where everyone's staying, but you decide, you know, I'm going to get a house, a rental somewhere, away from it all. Maybe you'll have to walk a little farther, you know, travel a little farther every day to the meetings. And at the same time, it might be worth it because that just feels like a better environment for you. So that's the other tip that I have is searching for ways to just feel like you can really keep your environment clean, whatever that means to you. Keep it feeling good. Because all of these things will contribute to how well you feel the whole time, how much sleep you're getting, how well you're breathing, what you're eating.

If you're able to get out and move your body, or get around and move your body, and your overall outlook and attitude about things, those will all contribute to to how you feel and make sure that you can return home and get back to your team and feel like you don't need to recover from a vacation which is something that I hear people say a lot.

So I hope that there's something in these tips that will help you and as always, please feel free to reach out to me through my website at mforhealth.com. And let me know if you have questions or if I can help you with anything.

Thank you so much and have safe and happy travels.