Staying Healthy on the Road

How To Keep Fit While Traveling Long Term

One of the downsides of being a full-time traveller is that it’s very easy to fall out of a healthy routine. Between long travel days , getting settled in a new AirBnB and sampling local treats, there are a lot of stumbling blocks on the path to maintaining a consistent approach to health and fitness.

Fortunately for us, health and fitness is one of our top priorities, whether traveling or staying in place. So we’ve gone to great lengths to design a lifestyle that enables us to not only travel full-time but also exercise six times a week and eat healthy every single day. We strongly feel that this balance between travel and health can be achieved by anyone, and we have a few tips to help jumpstart a healthy lifestyle on the road.

To set the context, staying fit and healthy has been a lifelong pursuit for us. Prior to leaving our corporate careers and heading off to travel, we had been doing Crossfit for over seven years. In fact, Gillian loved it so much she became a Level 1 Crossfit trainer. In addition to all our exercise, we followed a very healthy diet with lots of protein, vegetables and healthy fats. 

During our most stressful times at work leading up to our early retirement, we used our focus on health and fitness as a tool to keep us energised and motivated.

Some people respond to work stress with overindulging on junk food, alcohol, television or other guilty pleasures; we responded with a disciplined lifestyle that emphasised fitness and healthy eating. The bonus was that we were also getting stronger and fitter in the process.

Of course, it’s important to note that all of our healthy practices were built up over many years, which brings us to the first key takeaway…

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Healthy habits

We have found that having a solid foundation of good habits is critical for maintaining health. We spent many years developing these habits and then carried them with us into our long term travels. We believe that anyone can figure out which healthy habits are right for them and start incorporating them in small ways to eventually build a healthy lifestyle.

For travelers specifically, we find that slow travel is more helpful for enabling healthy habits versus fast travel. If you’re staying a month in one place like we do, that gives time to maintain routines like working out regularly or cooking healthy meals.

For us, habits take the decision making process out of the activity. So we don’t waste time debating whether or not to go to the gym; we just go because it’s part of the everyday routine. 

If you’re looking to create a new habit, like working out regularly, it’s important to start small. When we first started going to Crossfit, we only went two to three times a week. It took many years to build up to going to the gym six days a week. 

Our current favourite apps for building healthy habits:

Headspace

We start each day with 10 minutes of meditation using the Headspace app. This routine helps us feel refreshed and ready to start the day, something we really appreciate since we sleep in a different bed each month. It also makes us feel more grounded and centred, which is important when our environment and activities are constantly changing.   

Todoist

Healthy habits depend on having good routines, whether it’s something we do on a daily basis or weekly or monthly. We find that the Todoist app keeps us on track with all the things we want to remember and tick off, from doing a 20-minute stretch every evening to running three times a week.   

Sleep

We take sleep very seriously as we function better with a full night’s sleep, which for us is at least 8 hours. When we were still working corporate jobs, we had a very disciplined routine. We were in bed by 8:30pm to wind down, ideally asleep by 9pm and then up at 4:45am to meditate and be at the gym by 6am. This was a very challenging schedule but it enabled us to both get to the gym everyday and be at our desks by 8:30am. 

Now that we are traveling full time, we have a much more relaxed sleep schedule although we’re still in bed by 9pm and up by 6am. This means we don’t have much of a night life but this is the right schedule for our priorities. Of course, bedtime is a very personal choice for people. The key takeaway is that it’s important to get a full night’s rest for optimal mental and physical performance the next day.

Since we’re changing bedrooms at least once a month and timezones almost as frequently, we have a couple essentials for getting a good night’s sleep. And they’re also non-negotiables for any long-haul flying we might do.

Eye Mask

No matter how light and bright the bedroom, a good eye mask ensures that it’s dark enough to hit a solid REM state. 

Ear Plugs

Of course, we always turn to our ear plugs to block out the buzz and clamour during our flights, whether or not we’re trying to nap. But ear plugs are just as important for trying to get some shuteye in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar noises. For example, during our first night in Istanbul when we woke during the wee hours to the strains of our upstairs neighbour singing along to XXX. 

Diet

Our everyday diet has remained consistent while we are on the road. Although we definitely love trying local foods, we make most of our meals at home with a focus on protein, vegetables and healthy fats. We avoid eating processed foods and refined sugar and don’t keep those items in the house. Our only treats at home are popcorn and dark chocolate. We do enjoy trying local desserts — of course you have to have gelato in Italy — but try to restrict that to once or twice a week.

We remove the temptation to have unhealthy snacks by not keeping any snack foods around.

If we want a special treat, we need to make an effort to get it. Again we find that slow travel helps keep us healthy. Since we usually stay a month in a place, it is easier to get stocked with all the essentials for cooking. We always make sure there is a good grocery store or market within walking distance of our accommodation and we stock up within the first day of arriving. And, of course, we rely on our own cooking essentials to ensure that we have the tools we need for making meals, from knives to cutting board to vegetable peeler and more.

One of the challenges of being a traveler is how to eat healthy on travel days. We always prepare food in advance versus buying convenience foods along the way. Basically we pack as much food as we think we’ll need for the entire travel day, which could include a couple meals and a snack depending on how long the day is. We travel with food containers, utensils and napkins, which makes our travel day picnics a lot easier. We find that packing food for travel days is not just healthier, it’s also a lot less expensive versus buying at the train station or airport.

Water Canteen

An essential for every traveler. We love these sturdy metal canteens that help us avoid buying wasteful plastic bottled water while we’re out and about.

Food Containers

We’ve experimented with a few types but this handy set of three were the winners. Metal bottoms for durability and longevity; plastic tops for a good seal against leaks. These have served us well for both at-home use and on-the-go. We’re fans of packing a full day’s worth of eating when we’re in transit between countries (never rely on an airline for your caloric intake) or off hiking the nearest mountain.

Bamboo Cutlery

The necessary and environmentally-sound accompaniment to the bento box: a set of bamboo fork, knife and spoon. Again, these come with us on every travel day and every expedition. You never know when you’ll need to spear a morsel of roasted chicken or slice off a piece of cheese while on a plane, a train or perched on the side of a mountain.

Cloth Bags

A true kitchen essential: cloth bags in multiple sizes. These are perfect for buying fruits and veggies at the local market or acting as a lunch bag for our bento boxes and cutlery. They can even double as stuff snacks for odds and ends when we’re packing up or work as a laundry bag in a pinch, but we’ll save that discussion for our packing essentials list.

Cloth Napkins 

The final item in our portable kitchen are a set of four cloth napkins. These can work as both napkin and tablecloth for on-the-go lunches and even as a tea towel if it’s lacking in our Airbnb.

Exercise

Sleep, diet and activity help us be healthy overall but it’s exercise that helps us to be fit and strong. When you’re a traveler, it is important to find a form of exercise both that you enjoy and can do while on the road.

We like to workout five to six days a week, which is a schedule that we built up to over many years. In places where we have access to a gym, we follow a weight lifting program. When we arrive in a new city, we always go for an orientation walk on the first day, which includes a few stops to check out local gyms. That way we get started on our fitness program within the first couple days of arrival. Most gyms offer monthly memberships, which fits our pace of travel. In places where we don’t have access to a gym, we do a combination of outdoor activities along with following an at-home bodyweight workout program.

Here are our essentials, whether we’re working out at the gym or at home:

Travel Yoga Mat

Although this mat is lightweight, it does take up precious luggage space. However, it’s worth making room for your suitcase if you’re serious about at-home workouts or even just stretching regularly. It provides far better cushion and grip versus a towel, which is the usual substitute for a long-term traveler. 

Resistance Bands

We use bands for getting into deeper stretches or for adding more resistance when we do bodyweight workouts. When we can’t access a gym for weight lifting, bands are a great way to get in a strength workout without leaving the house.  

Protein Powder & Shaker Cup

Before any morning workout, we top up our energy with a quick protein shake. Then we’re fueled up for anything: weight lifting at a local gym, a run by the ocean or push ups in the living room. There are two main types of protein we look for when stocking up: vegan protein, made up of a blend of vegetable sources, or whey isolate protein, sourced from dairy with the lactose removed.    

Feeling great

There’s one thing that keeps us motivated and on track with our healthy lifestyle: how great we feel every day.

We get a huge amount of satisfaction from challenging ourselves with workouts that make us sweat.

After our morning workout we can head into our day feeling that we got it started right.

Those are our best tips for maintaining health and fitness while traveling: build a foundation of healthy habits, get enough sleep, eat clean food, stay active and, of course, challenge yourself with a few workouts each week. And don’t forget to enjoy life along the way…being healthy makes everything feel better.