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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Stay Fit and Eat Smart: Top Travel Hacks for Active Vacations
Imagine returning from your vacation not just with amazing memories, but also feeling fitter and even a few pounds lighter! In this episode, we share our top travel hacks to help you stay active and maintain your fitness goals while exploring new destinations. From the importance of building muscle before you travel to boost your resting calorie burn, to the benefits of a consistent sleep schedule for optimal metabolism, we've got you covered. Discover how incorporating more walking into your itinerary not only enhances your fitness but also allows you to immerse yourself in local culture. We'll introduce you to the "radius rule," a simple yet powerful strategy to encourage walking to nearby destinations instead of relying on transportation.
Stay active and eat right without sacrificing the fun of your vacation! We offer practical tips like taking beach walks, choosing stairs over elevators, and maximizing your steps on cruises. We'll also share strategies for staying active at airports and using hotel or cruise gyms for lighter workouts. Plus, we dive into mindful eating habits, helping you strike a balance between indulging in delicious local cuisine and maintaining your fitness goals. Whether you're exploring a bustling city or relaxing at a resort, these tips will ensure you stay active and eat smart, making the most of your travel adventures.
What's up everybody and welcome to another episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Aren't you lucky? You get me two weeks in a row? Yeah, really excited. I want to talk about a cool little episode. This will be quick for all of you on your drives home and I know summer is an absolutely crazy time, so you don't want all that in-detail depth Dive into the deep, sturdy episode like I did on the macronutrient one.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about travel tips, right? Why did this come up? This came up because my wife and I were talking about our vacation and obviously we were talking to the people about it and I was made a joke. I was like you know, I lose every trip a couple pounds and people look at me like I'm crazy. I'm just like how do you lose weight on vacation? Like, do you diet? I'm like no. Like what do you do? Control? No. And then we start talking about what we do on vacation and it turns out we take our vacations differently, and that's something I wanted to pass on. It's like what does a trainer do or what does someone that's really into fitness do while they're on vacation? So let's start with some simple basics, right? So, first and foremost, just have an understanding If you listen to last week's episode.
Speaker 1:Muscle burns calories at rest, right? So if I have a lot of muscle in my body, I'm going to burn a lot of calories at rest. Therefore, I do a lot of weight training leading up to going away so I can sustain all the muscle on my body by eating enough food, and I can just eat enough food. I can sit there and eat a lot of food because I'm burning at such a higher rate before I even start my day. So that's the first thing. The second thing is sleep. Sleep is a great way to get yourself kind of ready to go burn a lot of calories, and you burn most of your calories while you're sleeping. So making sure you still kind of keep on the steady, go to sleep and wake up time it does help a lot with keeping that weight off. We've done a lot of episodes on sleep guys, so please go back and take a look at that.
Speaker 1:The next thing and this is probably the biggest thing that helps me is we walk a lot. I mean a lot. For example, we were just in Syracuse about a month ago and we clocked like 30,000 steps, because we don't like hopping in cars and driving five minutes down the road, or taking a cab and driving five minutes down the road. You get to see so much more of the city. As you get to go explore, you get to go do so much more. Like we were in orlando, we got up and walked to breakfast. We found a place with about a half a mile away and we walked there. So walking there and walking back, it's a mile already before you even start your day. It's a great way to bond with your loved one and get to go walk to a destination, see more of what the city has to offer and get your steps in and really just feel good of being outside. So walking is important.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to an episode I did years ago on something I call the radius rule. What is the radius rule? The radius rule simply states and something that I made up something's within a certain distance of where I am pending obviously safe situations. Then I have to walk to that location. So this helps me. Very simply, it could be 0.1 miles In the beginning. It's 0.1 miles. I'm 0.1 miles away. I am not getting in my car, I am walking there and you slowly can expand that radius as you get more and more comfortable walking out Now on vacation, expand that radius. As you get more and more comfortable walking out Now on vacation, that radius gets almost doubled. So it's usually around like half a mile and I jump it to a mile when I'm away because I have the time to walk. I get to go see the cities and go walk around and it's just so much more of experience to embrace cultures when you're not just jumping in and out of a cab. So if I walk to somewhere that's a mile away, right, and then I walk back from that location, that's already two miles right there roughly to get 10,000 steps. So you need between three and four miles and doing just one thing, like I talked about, breakfast a half a mile there and back I'm already a third of the way done with my steps, just to hit a normal amount of steps.
Speaker 1:What if you're doing a beach vacation? Well, walking on a beach is phenomenal. It's actually way harder. Your muscles start burning more because you're on uneven surfaces and you could really start even building the strength up in your ankles. So just going for a walk at a beach and breaking it up and bonding over, that is huge. So if you're laying out in the sun. Do 10 minute, like every 10 minutes. Get up and go for a little walk with your spouse. Just 10 minutes. Five minutes one end, five minutes back. Go back, lay down for an hour. You'll be surprised how many steps you get in that alone.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about someone's favorite thing ever staircases. Try not to take elevators. Obviously you have luggage on you or you're on like the hundredth floor. Take the elevator. Don't sit here and say I think they told me to jump 100 flights of stairs. No, I didn't Do it if it's within a couple of floors. So if you're on like the second, third, fourth floor, take the stairs. Even if you struggle walking upstairs, at least take the stairs down, right, it's a lot easier to walk downstairs than it is to walk upstairs, so you can just create that as a simple. You know we're gonna walk down the stairs every time you go downstairs. You'll be surprised how many steps you can. So many times you go up and down between your room and the bottom of the hotel.
Speaker 1:Take cruises. You're going to cruise. It's even easier. Never take the stairs. The most you're going to get is 12 flights and you're not even walking all 12 flights, right, you're doing, at best, three or four flights of stairs while on cruises, and these cruises now are like half a mile long. So if you just added stairs and you just walked to different destinations and you bounced around with the cruisers offering, there's zero reason you're getting under 20 000 steps a day just within that alone. So there's a lot of different tips and tricks you could take away from traveling, just by having a radius rule and understanding that if I just did this little thing, I'm not going to be super discouraged to myself when I get home and like just want to beat myself up and be like what was the point If I just did little things? That didn't interfere with my vacation, but it's actually. Let me enjoy my vacation even more and show me to see more of the world by just simply walking.
Speaker 1:Now, what about the gym? Right, all hotels have gyms, cruises have gyms. Different destination spots do have gyms. If you're going away for a couple of days you want to work out, great. If you don't, it's not the end of the world, right? Your body actually needs a week off, about once every three to six months, of you doing hard weightlifting. I want to clarify hard, I mean you're consistently coming over four days a week. If you're doing that, you need a week off between every three to six months.
Speaker 1:So someone like myself, I do take it as an opportunity to take off, depending on where the vacation lies. If I'm doing two within a three to six month period, I'm still working out and going to the hotel gym or using the cruise gym while on vacation. I'm not doing as vigorous of workouts as I'm doing at home because a lot of the time it does lack in equipment. But there's always ways to do things. For example, even if there's no gym, you can do push-ups, planks, you can do a lot of mobility stuff right then, and there Like super easy to be able to get a little workout in, just even on your hotel room floor or at whatever gym they may offer. Even if you throw in one going for like 12 days extended time, throwing one or two space on par three to four days, it's only an hour out of your time. Just wake up a little earlier and go do it plus. It feels so much better for the day. Anyway, it helps significantly.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to the walking because let me just pop into my mind that I remember I'm a huge advocate when I fly. I absolutely hate sitting at the gate, like hate it. You're going to show up two hours early for your flight You're flying internationally or an hour and a half early for going domestic. You're going to sit for that time period to go sit on a plane, to sit when you land, to sit in the car. You see where I'm going with this. So while you get to the airport, walk the airport right. It's so easy just to pace the airport and you're like I've clocked, depending if it's a layover or not like literally 10,000 steps, just walking airports, depending if there's a layover or not. Like literally 10,000 steps, just walking airports, and you feel good and the back doesn't hurt as much because you're not sitting for sometimes nine, 10 hours, depending on your flight and how often you showed up beforehand. So little things like that do go a long way. This is the key for travel. A little does go truly a long way when you're on vacation.
Speaker 1:What about eating right? So when I eat when I'm away on vacation, I still avoid sodas, I still avoid candies. I don't avoid dessert altogether. It depends where I go. I'm going to Italy. I'm having sorbet. I can't stop it, but I'm not getting a lot. I'm doing enough to get the taste. I usually get smalls of. I can't stop it, but I'm not getting a lot. I'm doing enough to get the taste. I usually get smalls of everything Enjoying it. Yes, I'll have it more than one every week, but I'm having small amounts and I'm walking so much I'm burning through that just by having my day-to-day activity while we're away on vacation.
Speaker 1:So, on top of that eating, when you're choosing foods right, you want to make sure you're focusing still on proteins, and it's obviously impossible because you are going to be going out to eat A lot of times on vacations. You don't have time to cook. So ordering protein-heavy meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner is a must. I don't care as much because you are on vacation. What everything else is Protein heavy on all three because it's going to fill you up. It's going to prevent you from snacking on garbage throughout the day. And the key here if you listen to last week's episode if you don't eat enough protein and you spent all that time working out in the gym for six months you don't want your body eating away your muscle tissue. So making sure you're getting your protein in helps you tremendously.
Speaker 1:I was just at a hotel a few weeks ago and I went to breakfast. I ordered my seven eggs because they had an egg station, and I just watched how people literally just grabbed bacon and hash browns, like that was it, that was the meals and juice, and they're like, oh, it's healthy, I'm having orange juice. If you listen to last week's episode, you know that obviously juice isn't good for you. Obviously bacon's not good for you. Obviously fried potatoes aren't good for you.
Speaker 1:So you can make these simple choices, especially during breakfast, when a lot of the times when you're traveling, that country is not known for breakfast foods. I'd say 90 of countries don't have a breakfast, so they're like you need to have this. It's always the same avoid the high sugar foods, try to go for the eggs, try to go for the fruit. Try to go for the eggs, try to go for the fruit, try to go for the vegetables. Get at least breakfast starting right, because you know you're going to be walking a lot, you know you've got a lot of protein in the morning and then when you get to lunch and dinner and you're out about in town, you're in the country. Go enjoy whatever that country's foods they're known for it. Go enjoy that pasta, go enjoy that pizza, go enjoy that bratwurst. At least, if you can control one meal, you're doing amazing. If you go away for 10 days, as an example, and you just control one meal, that's 10 meals in that 10 days. That you did really well on. And if you didn't, if you had all three bad, that's 30 meals you screwed up, as opposed to 20, right, so it does balance a little bit. When you're looking at lunch and dinner, remember protein first, protein first. Try to avoid those fried foods, try to avoid those juices.
Speaker 1:Now let's go talk about drinking, right? Alcohol. Everyone loves alcohol, right? We talked about previously alcohol, for every gram is seven calories you can have. If you're laying on a beach, nothing wrong with one margarita. Just note it's about 500 calories for frozen margarita Crazy. So if you can, don't just have something like that.
Speaker 1:If you're going to drink because you're like, hey, anthony, I'm on vacation, I'm going to drink, go for cleaner options. Less is more when it comes to alcohol. So light beers, wine, mixed drinks, avoid things that are frozen. So frozen pina coladas, frozen margaritas five 600 calories a drink. So if you have five of them, that's already an extra 2,500 calories, oh my God. So go for things that are clear, right Vodka and soda, rum and seltzer, tequila seltzer and I'll even have them muddle in like a fresh lime and a fresh orange right, it's cleaner tasting. Go for a skinny mark over a regular margarita, which just has less sugar in it. So there's little things. You can still have fun, you can still enjoy your trip, but have the understanding that a little goes a long way, because everything's going to exponentially increase, depending how long you're on vacation. For 10 days of straight drinking, 2,500 extra calories, that's 25,000 calories. At the end of the 10 days, that's about six pounds of fat you just put on your body right there. Think about that before you say I'm having frozen margaritas five a day and then when you are drinking, cannibalism.
Speaker 1:Once you're walking, go for walks, go dancing. We love dancing, even if you suck at it. Go dance, it's so much fun. No one cares. You're never going to see those people again. Just get on the floor and go.
Speaker 1:You want an extreme amount of calories by getting your body moving, going out dancing. Go to a country concert, go wherever. Get up, move your body, do a little more. A little does truly go a long way and take anything away from this. Create a radius rule. Figure out in your head what distance means you have to walk to that location, barring safe circumstances. But you have to walk if it's under X amount. If you're new to this, start about 0.25, 0.3. If you're a pro, do a mile, go big or go home, take the stairs. Thank you, guys. I hope you all enjoy your vacations this summer. I know I will. Please, don't forget, share these episodes with a friend. It's the only way this show does grow. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, hit the five-star review if you think we're doing a great job, if you want to see more. And remember fitness is medicine. Until next time. So Outro Music.
