Traveling presents many unique challenges, and staying fit and healthy while visiting other cities is one of the primary issues for business travel. A good fitness habit (or any habit) relies heavily on routine, and being in different places and spaces is a natural disruption of our routines!
So, how can we optimize our travel routine to stay fit and healthy? Let’s look at seven ways we can create a specific cue, routine, and reward while traveling. Creating this “sub-habit” will allow us to feel more at ease, energetic, and engaged with those around us, especially during the meetings and pitches you’ve traveled for to begin with! Let’s get started.
1. Plan ahead
If you have a choice of where you will be staying, pick a hotel that has a gym on-site, or offers passes to a gym nearby. Help yourself out by making the opportunity to exercise easy, and then work hard once you’re in the gym! But don’t stack the deck against yourself by picking a hotel that doesn’t offer the ability to exercise.
If you’re traveling as part of a group, ask for a copy of the itinerary so you can plan the best times to exercise around the group’s schedule. In fact, take the initiative and find out if anyone would like to exercise with you! Holding each other accountable will help each of you stay more committed to the workout than if you were exercising alone.
2. Help yourself with cues
We’ve all heard the advice to put your workout clothes out at night, so they’re easy to see and access in the morning. But it’s true, because our minds will try anything to do the least amount of work in the morning, especially if it’s early! So go ahead and put out your clothes, shoes neatly underneath, and order a wake up call from the front desk. Having cues will help you transition to the next stage, the routine of exercise.
3. Two outta three ain’t bad
Eating good, healthy food is just as important to your body’s well-being as exercise, but it’s often overlooked during travel. The trouble with our eating habits (like fitness) is that it’s hard to make the big changes we think are necessary for us. If you’re stuck in a rut of unhealthy eating, at home or while traveling, make the first change relatively small. It could be having a smoothie for a meal, or the chicken salad instead of a greasy hamburger.
Questionable southern grammar aside, the advice of “two outta three ain’t bad” refers to the practice of eating at least two healthy meals per day, and then leaving the third open to indulgence. If you know your schedule and can choose which meals you’ll have control over and those where the menu is decided, proactively choose to eat healthy for the meals you can, then eat what you want for the third. Knowing you have a “cheat meal” coming will help you make the sacrifice for the other two.
4. Use your surroundings
Even if you find yourself in a hotel without a gym, you can still get a good workout just by staying in your room! My friends over at The Simple Gym have put together over a hundred workouts you can do with little to no weight equipment, including this specific workout for hotel rooms! They have a great quote on using what’s around you to be fit and healthy, no matter where you are:
The idea is that you define your workout environment. Beyond even using your own strength for pushups, squats, and all the other movements we’ve done, continue to look for fun ways to create fitness in the world around you. Opportunities abound!
5. Pack your snacks
We all get hungry in between meals, and that’s ok! The key is to realize hunger will strike, and plan accordingly. Pack your snacks with you to knock out the hunger without bombing your system with fatty, sugary snacks that are usually the quickest to buy. Fruits, nuts, granola bars, even with some chocolate mixed in, are great options for getting you from meal to meal in a healthy way.
6. Sightseeing workouts
Whenever I’m traveling, I try to incorporate my workouts in to some type of sightseeing! Whether a run, walk, hike, or bike ride, combining exercise with a tour of the city is a great way to make your workout fresh and interesting. You can look online for attractions, historical buildings, and much more! One thing I always look for is to see if there’s a college campus nearby, since they’re normally great places to run. Another place to look for is some type of natural space, like a city park, river, lake, or greenway that’s easy to access.
7. Treat yourself!
Finally, your healthy eating and exercise will be much easier if you know a reward is waiting for you on the other end. This type of dangling carrot seems outdated, but it’s true! In Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, he identifies the three stages of a powerful habit, which are: Cue, Routine, Reward.
As you can see now, this is the framework covered in all the other steps, and wraps up with a reward. Whether an indulgent snack, fun purchase, or fun event, the reward is an essential part of the process, and makes the previous stages happen. So don’t feel guilty for a little reward, in fact it’s helping you achieve your goals!
