Healthy Travel Tips
As a healthcare practitioner, my job is to prescribe health to my patients and a significant component of that prescription is to enjoy life.
A lot of people think that life needs to be taken seriously. I do not disagree that life can have moments where one may need to be serious, but in the words of Alan Watts:
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
And travel is made for fun.
Way too many people lose the ability to have fun when they travel because they are ridden with health conditions, limited mobility of the body or mental and emotional dysregulation. In order for one to truly enjoy life, one must have the function to be able to do the things one desires to do. This may be sightseeing, hiking, surfing, kayaking, or having wild and passionate sex with a beautiful person you rendezvous with at a coffee shop.
Whatever the desire may be, you want to feel strong, vitalized and embodied in your travel experience. However, this requires being mentally and physically prepared well before you depart onto your destination.
I’ve seen it way too often where collegiate athletes in their 50’s tell me of their days of mobility and strength. Sometimes I can not understand how a person with so much athleticism can turn into someone morbidly obese, diabetic and in too much pain to move.
For many people it is because they think they can continue eating the way they did in their 20’s without making adequate changes towards health. They stop training and become complacent in their lives. They often think their best days are behind them.
In order to have fun throughout your life, it requires taking into account the longevity of your life experience and to value what the body needs in your daily routines so you can enjoy your life when you are traveling.
Here are my TOP THREE professional recommendations for living a fun life of continued health, strength, and vitality!
IDENTITY AS AN ATHLETE
Take a few minutes here to think about what fun looks like to the healthiest version of yourself. This is the tricky part, because doing lines of cocaine at 3am in a tequila bar in Mexico with a group of study abroad students may sound fun, but is definitely not aligned to the healthiest version of yourself. For you rascals out there, you may need to think about the larger picture here.
Think about what your life will look like 10 or 30 years from now. The nature of humans to be short-sighted prevents us from making the right choices which may benefit our future realities. Understanding that every choice we make creates a neural connection within our bodies and our minds that is either taking us towards a robust future or towards disease and challenge.
I have worked enough with an older human population to see the difference between humans that eat poorly, drink too much and do not exercise versus those that have an identity of health.
Identifying yourself as a healthy human reinforces the choices you make in every scenario.
This technique is so much easier than doing what you think you “should” do. A healthy individual does not think they should eat a salad, they simply eat a salad. The difference is in the way we identify.
We live in a world where people can choose their gender identity and if it’s that easy, I say why not identify as an athlete and start to walk like, talk like, and act like an athlete.
After several months of going to the gym, going to bed and waking up early, eating the right foods, you start to become that person. This can work for anyone, regardless of age or if you actually were an athlete. At some point, people see you in your Lululemon gear, hear about your latest activity or watch you down another green shake and the next thing you know, you are now the person in the room that loves movement and exercise.
STOP SITTING & DEVELOP A MOVEMENT MINDSET
The greatest sin of mobility is not moving. The place where we become most habituated to not move is at work and at home. We become hyper-focused on getting our jobs done and consequently ignore the subtle cues from the body which are suggesting our need for mobility.
Over time not moving becomes our default state. The sedentary state, the stress state, the pain state tend to become chronic and inadvertently become our emotional and physical homes.
We essentially program our cells and nervous systems into these states of being, primarily due to our unawareness of what we are doing. Once we awaken to these dysfunctional patterns, it is usually a day late and a dollar short. By this time we have established neural connections, habit loops and neurochemical feedback messengers that direct the instructions to our brains, “sit down, i’m tired, or we are in pain.” These messengers become affirmations and ultimately the beliefs we follow.
I come bearing good news! It is never too late to transform.
My belief is that life is inherently transformation. It is not designed to be still. It is designed to flow and shift and adapt. Regardless of any previous habits, we must transform our patterns if we desire to survive and certainly if we desire to thrive.
Become a person that moves, stands, holds themselves upright, walks, twists and does not sit so much. An object in motion, stays in motion, said someone really famous a long time ago. This wisdom is valuable to understand biomechanics. Muscles atrophy over time, meaning if you do not use it, you lose it. Therefore, invest in standing desks at work, treadmills in hot climates, a Peloton, gym membership, yoga classes, salsa classes, bouldering, pickle ball or anything that get you off the couch. Your future spinal health depends on it.
LIFT WEIGHTS. GET STRONG.
There really ought not be a good reason why you are not resistance training. This includes resistance bands, calisthenics, cross fit, olympic strength training, and pilates to name just a few. Everywhere from bone health, joint function and pain reduction, strength training is pivotal for optimal health. The body is all about supply and demand.
The more you demand the body’s needs for load, the more readily the body will provide the tissue needed to supply your demand.
More load-bearing exercises will demand the body to lay down more calcium in the bone. The tension necessary to increase resistance allows the muscle to tear and repair stronger than before. This allows the load to increase and the muscle to grow. With added resistance the spine stabilizes and reduces compensation patterns in the peripheral extremities.
There is nothing more frustrating to me than to see a human that lacks muscle tone due to inactivity. Aesthetics aside, function is the priority. Do the bare minimum to function! That means the bare minimum of what your capacity and ability is in this moment. I do not think a person needs to look like John Cena.
However, I do believe we ought to be able to carry our own weight, literally!
Simply start the process with walking upright, shoulders back, rib cage down, and head over neck. Then start to brace the core while breathing into the belly, walk up hills, do more rows or pull-downs, and when you are ready, introduce deadlifts and squats to your routine.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Recognize that this is who you are. You are a mover, an athlete, a strongman/woman, and an optimal human. And this goes with you when you travel. The greatest challenge is to start to develop habits only to lose them on a 2-week vacation where you thought you could “take it easy.” Although vacations are designed for rest, it does not apply to being sedentary. Part of your health is to move, be active and alive.
Remember that health is exciting and feeling good in the body is a blessing. We want to feel good in the body and we want to move until we are 6 feet under. Most places you travel will have access to a gym or a workout facility. I recommend taking resistance bands with you when you travel and developing a movement routine that requires cardio and body weights. And no matter where you go, you will always have the mindset and capacity to move!
