Fitness•Mental Health•Travel•Travel Tips
Health on The [Road] September 20, 2019
If you’re sick or low on energy, making it to that important business meeting 10 hours away or exploring the local culture can make things all the more difficult and less enjoyable. Being ill or depleted can make an productive meeting or day into a draining one, and that’s not what life is about! When it comes to travel, I make my health a top priority above anything else. Some things that I’ll do in order to prepare for a trip is the following:
- Slowly scheduling my clock for the same time zone where I’ll be traveling; that might mean going to bed a little later or waking up earlier, but I’ve found that if I’m able to shift my sleeping cycles with the time zones, I am much more adjusted.
- Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! In the week leading up to a trip, I increased my water intake. Personally, I feel that I have more energy when I’m well hydrated. Seeing as flying for especially longer distances can dehydrate us, it’s important to prepare oneself with upping the water intake in the week before. I drink a gallon of water a day with a half of a teaspoon of Pink Himalayan Sea Salt (I’m on Keto and it helps me better retain water), and in weeks prior, I’ll add an extra glass or two. It helps! Bring an empty water bottle with you, preferably a liter, so that when you’re on the plane you can fill it up. The flight attendants can’t get mad at you for needing to hydrate. I’ve never had too many problems with that.
- Move your body. This includes on flights. Reserve an aisle seat in advance. If you’re unable to, I always let the person beside me know that I will be getting up often to stretch and use the restroom, and they would rather not be disturbed so they will let me have the aisle. Any flight over 2 hours, I am up and Adam for half the flight. Walking along the aisles, going into the restroom to stretch, and of course drinking a liter of water an hour keeps me up and moving as well. When I get off the plane, the first thing I’ll do is throw my bags in my room and then go outside and walk for 30-60 minutes. I then wake up 30-60 minutes earlier the next morning, drink 1 liter of warm lemon water, and then do the same. If I can’t get a gym or hotel body weight session in that day, at least I’ve moved my body. There are no excuses to not move your body. If you can’t find a gym, bring a resistance band with you (takes up an inch in your bag), and do some jump squats, tricep dips on a chair, Bulgarian split squats on a chair, pushups, sit ups, band kickbacks, bicep curls using liter water bottles (filled). The opportunities are endless, and all you need is 10-20 minutes a day of this before breakfast (I find once I have breakfast, the day becomes too crazy to get back to my room and get it done… so my early mornings are everything).
- Greens Powder, Emergen-C, and Probiotics. A tube of each of these a day goes a long way my friend! AmazingGrass has wonderful convenient packets of greens powder. At any point in the day, I’ll make sure to pour it into a glass of water and enjoy with my probiotics. Maintaining proper gut health is crucial when traveling. On the Expedition, I only got sick once, and it wasn’t even diarrhea or nausea. I attribute this to taking my multivitamin, probiotics and greens powder. Whenever I felt myself feeling sluggish, I’d slug down an Airbourne or Emergen-C, but this was rare, as I believe my morning warm lemon water kept my immune system feeling pretty happy most of the time.
- Use the stairs. You’d be surprised at the amount of people who do not use the stairs. It’s totally okay to not, but in my humble opinion, when it comes to travel, I believe that any extra step counts. Think about it; you’re sitting on a plane for hours, sitting in meetings for hours, watching a play for hours, sitting at a restaurant having good conversation for hours, and then sleeping on top of it all. When you travel, you can oftentimes end up spending more time than you’d like sitting on your behind as opposed to moving. So whether it’s hiking up the escalator at the airport (or using the stairs while everyone else is standing on the escalator), taking the stairs up to your hotel room as opposed to the elevator, or walking 20 minutes to that restaurant or play instead of Ubering or cabbing it up. This all helps towards keeping your energy in tact while also maintaining a proper energy in/energy out flow.
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
– Benjamin Franklin
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