Staying in shape on vacation: the "just enough" strategies

Being away from home disrupts healthy routines. Don't lose your gains to a swamp of ice cream, alcohol and potato-chip summertime sedentarism.

Instead of spending vacation time fretting about calorie burn, stay within striking distance of optimal, through fractional movements.

Summer vacation is a two-sided proposition. On one hand, it’s the break you’ve been waiting for, to recharge your battery. On the other hand, vacations disrupt health & wellness practices—workouts, nutrition, sleep—you’ve honed into efficient routines.

But this summer, instead of either resigning yourself to turning into a walking carbohydrate or—equally unhelpfully—attempting to stick to your regular routine to fool your fitness tracker into thinking you never left home, try a version of what I’m doing on my vacation this year: just enough.

Just enough daily movement. Just enough healthy nutrition. Just enough alcohol regulation. Just enough sleep and, if you’re the type, just enough orchestrated alone time to avoid placing yourself in a huge health & wellness hole on summer vacation.

The “just enough” vacation health & wellness strategies

In my experience, you only need to do an itty-bitty fraction of your regular healthy-living routines to stay within striking distance of optimal. For example, instead of the normal strength-training workout you do twice a week at home, on vacation settle for a brisk 20-minute, post-prandial walk + 20 bodyweight squats while you’re brushing your teeth before bed. Anything that raises your heart rate, even for a few minutes each day, tells your body you’re keeping it top of mind. Your body will respond in kind.

---

---

Here’s my 5 specific fitness, nutrition & sleep strategies to consider on vacation:

1 | Set a minimum-movement floor

Instead of trying to replicate your regular strength or cardio routine while on vacation, replace it with a single, highly achievable daily minimum: that fast, 20-minute walk I mentioned above, and/or a 5-minute bodyweight circuit before you shower (eg, jumping squats, walking lunges, 25 slow-down, fast-up pushups). Low enough that you’ll actually do it tired, hungover or after destroying a bowl of ice cream with a beer.

The floor isn’t there to make you fitter; rather, to keep your baseline from eroding while you’re having a kick-ass holiday.

2 | Eat unprocessed food and fresh vegetables at least one meal a day

Or, if you can’t or don’t want to squeeze in a fully healthy meal in one sitting, fractionally eat the equivalent of one healthy meal over the 3 or 4 meals you have in a day: fresh berries with your pancake breakfast; a green salad with your fish & chips; lean protein with your mashed potatoes & gravy. The whole foods add up over the vacation days, and combined with your daily movement, make a big difference.

3 | Treat alcohol as a sleep concern, not a calorie concern

A few drinks can impair your sleep quality, and bad sleep is what increases the next day’s schlub factor—the skipped walk, the second pastry, the 2pm nap that keeps you up till 2am. A simple cap (an off-night rule, or a hard number) beats willpower in the moment. For many travelers, this is the single highest-leverage point, because it cascades into everything else.

4 | Let your destination be your “gym”

Terrain does the work and doesn’t feel like maintenance. Hike the trail, swim the lake, bike the town, walk the city. You burn the calories as a byproduct of the trip you came for, and you’re not negotiating whether to drag yourself to an over-air-conditioned hotel treadmill.

5 | Substitute people for screens

When I frame pulling out my phone as time I could otherwise spend interacting with my 10-year-old, it’s an obvious healthy swap, not a sacrifice. Isolation is a genuine health variable. Vacation time is one of the rare windows to talk to strangers—the guy at the next campsite, the bartender, the couple on the trail; the gas station attendant; the immigrant busting his tail to clean your table during the rush.

The phone is the path of least resistance precisely when you have time and a reason to do the harder, better thing. Aim the freed-up attention at humans. You won’t regret it. Your kid, and family, certainly won’t.

What are your vacation health & wellness strategies? Leave a comment.