We’ve all been there. Even us die hard exercisers who make sure we get a workout out in at least 5 days a week, or we start to feel as if something is amiss from our lives, or our stress levels immediately go out of control. We travel and take a week’s vacation, maybe longer, maybe shorter, and we completely stop working out.

Now this is fine if we’re being active and hiking through the jungle or climbing steep mountains, or maybe jet skiing or doing some other sort of rigorous, fun outdoorsy sport that definitely counts as exercise, but what about if you’re just chilling out, enjoying the beach and piling in the sugary margaritas or other naughty alcoholic drinks, and also eating fattening, naughty foods?

Well, it’s really important to continue working out in some fashion when we travel. This is especially true because not working out, combined with the other things we tend to do that are bad for us while on vacation, will inevitably result in us feeling cranky and tired and thus not enjoying our vacation as much as we should.

Not only that, but a lot of people report that when they go on vacation they tend to get “irregular”, meaning that they get constipated, and this often is from the fact that you are not moving around enough to loosen everything up enough, and thus everything is not moving right along as it normally does, and you’ve also most likely changed your eating habits temporarily, as most of us tend to do while we’re on vacation. And usually for the worse.

We have a routine that we are in when we are at home. Maybe we make sure we have fresh fruits and veggies around while we’re at home, but this tends to be out of our control when on vacation, and we are faced with choices that stop us up and are not lending themselves to high energy, or a good mood to boot.

Working out, maybe takign a workout DVD or some small exercise equipment you can use in your hotel room, will help energize you for the day to come and help you enjoy your vacation to the fullest. You are also less likely to get sick, get headaches and all the other fun things that come with not working out sometimes. The only time I can honestly say that I exercised like I should have and also ate healthy foods somewhat was when I took a vacation to Costa Rica with my sister.

Because the best food there is beans and rice, we ate that heavily and did not eat a whole lot of meat. If we ate protein, it was fish, which is a lean, energizing protein. We also ate a lot of fresh fruits, which helped energize us for out physically strenuous activities. Heck, strenuous sometimes there meant just walking a mile because the heat and humidity was so intense it was like walking in a sauna. I think it’s the only vacation where I actually lost a few pounds instead of gaining.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Fitness Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.