We often travel to get a break from our everyday routine, from the city pace of life. While we find perspective and liberation on the open road, staying healthy is a common challenge. It can be tough (especially if you’re traveling on a tight budget) to find healthy food in a new country, consistently eat right, and know how to help yourself recover if you’ve taken ill.

Leaving behind a rigid lifestyle is undoubtedly a healthy decision, but it takes some time to find the right balance for yourself when getting used to flexibility. I’ve put together a comprehensive traveler’s guide to staying healthy, because health isn’t just about food.

Body
Image Credit : Tamz Explores

Immunity is the very first thing to get compromised when we travel. A schedule with no consistency whatsoever (new food, place, people, environment) will put your body through stress even if you may not feel stressed out. Stress exhausts the immune system, leaving us vulnerable to all sorts of health issues. While the last thing we might want is to follow a routine, it’s important to exercise and put nutritious food into your body regularly. Prioritizing these small self-care practices will keep your immunity boosted so you can enjoy yourself!

Exercise everyday, or at least 5 days a week. This could be even 30 minutes of stretching or yoga in the morning, walking up hundreds of steps to a temple you’re visiting, strolling around for a few hours exploring a town, swimming, or hiking through nature—so much variety! If you’re staying in once play for an extended period of time, I’d recommend signing up for a local martial arts or yoga class. Meeting others and exercising with a group helps sustain motivation and deepens your connection with a place.

It can be challenging and frustrating to find fresh, healthy food for a decent price when you’re on the move. But it’s actually not that difficult if you make it a point not to eat out all the time. Go to the local market and buy fresh produce. Eat your fruits in the morning before anything else. Even if you’re eating a salad or a healthy meal at a restaurant, it’s going to be significantly more expensive and less healthy than if you were to make it yourself. As a solution, you can choose to book a home stay instead of a hotel. You’ll have access to home cooked food and could cook for yourself/ with your host.

Snacks are crucial when traveling. In moments of desperation, a small bag of nuts or dates that have been long forgotten at the bottom of your bag can be a lifesaver. Avoid processed foods and always keep nutrient dense nibbles on hand.

 

Mind
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Supporting your mental health goes hand in hand with eating and exercising. If you’re active and eating well, your mood will reflect that. While traveling in good spirits stress factors will be sure to pop up.  But don’t worry, you can manage them in a healthy way.

If you’re going through something emotional or stressful, or even if you’re not, try and give yourself time to engage in activities that you love. It could be reading poetry, catching some live music, a film, or a sports game, playing a team sport, or even meditating. Whatever it is that you need to release stress (which you might have been carrying with you from before), put some importance on doing it.

Finding personal space while traveling can definitely require some deliberate effort. Even if you’re traveling alone, you could get swept up in chatting with people or meeting people all the time, and it can be exhausting. Remembering to take some time just for yourself (that doesn’t necessitate sitting in a room alone) is so important in staying healthy.

Communication
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Maintaining relationships and friendships is sometimes a huge pain when you’re in your own flow, far away from everyone you know and love. This is your time to form new bonds, but you don’t want to disconnect from the old ones. Many travelers blog to keep their friends and family posted, but sometimes it’s nice to send personal messages to people. Have you experienced something that reminded you of someone? Drop them a line, it won’t take long. A short message can go a long way and perpetuate your relatability.

Staying connected to the world might be important to you. Social media is not really the best place to find out what’s going on; bookmark your favourite editorials, news and art sources, and online magazines to stay informed.  

Environment
Image Credit : Pexels

Last but not least. Please take care of your surroundings. Being healthy isn’t just about what’s within, but also what you put out there. Respecting localities perpetuates a healthy environment for all. We would all appreciate courtesy from fellow travelers and should give them the same as well. Travel responsibly. I’m giving you a small checklist to show you how simple practices can reduce your impact on the planet as a traveler.

 

  • avoid animal attractions—riding elephants and petting chained tigers is supporting animal cruelty. There’s no grey area here, and there are so many humane ways to experience wildlife.
  • carry a refillable water bottle, don’t buy disposable plastic bottles
  • get yourself a reusable box (with utensils) to fill up if you’re buying street food or getting takeaway
  • bring cloth carry bags for shopping in markets or picking up groceries
  • take public transport if possible and convenient
  • say no to straws

 

It may seem like developing wellness habits while you travel takes a lot of effort, but once you adopt certain practices, it’ll become second nature. Healthy travels are happy travels.

This post was contributed by our guest author Hanna.

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17 comments

  1. Falling sick while you are on the move?? Oh no, I cannot think of something worse! Your tips are very easy to adapt and it is wise to keep them somewhere safe, and use them whenever you may need them!

  2. Awesome tips. Emotional health is indeed as important as physical, as you’ve mentioned. Also, falling ill at a place where you wanted to visit sine ages, is really depressing. I had a fever the night before I visited Sun temple at Konark in India, a UNESCO site! Thankfully with a medicine I was good to go the next day! And recently after a couple of bad bathroom experiences, I just ordered a FUD too!!!

  3. Falling sick while traveling is the worst, usually happens when traveling with a large group. I find that my health level is great when I venture out with a small group of people or just solo.

  4. This is great advice! It can be really hard to stay healthy while traveling. I try to exercise by walking as much as I can–but I absolutely love to eat out when I travel so that part’s hard for me. The advice about sending message to people is good too.

  5. I think your first point, about the immune system breaking down, is the most important. If I could sum up staying healthy on the road, it would probably be: get enough sleep. That will help you fight off the other things.

  6. Couldn’t agree more! Especially saying no to straws and buying a reusable bottle. We can each make such a big difference! Love the tips on looking after yourself when travelling too. I’m guilty of putting the experience first and often getting sick during or afterwards! Great post.

  7. Great article, it sucks so much to be ill during travel so always need to stay healthy and enjoy it to the max! I remember once Mitch was sick as in Fiji, it wasn’t as fun of a vaca 🙁

  8. Thank you so much for putting the “avoid animal attractions” bullet point in there. I try to write about this and share a lot about that subject on social media. But I often come across bloggers who feature their ride on elephants or swim with dolphins. It’s important to raise awareness for responsible tourisme!

  9. Great post, whenever we travel internationally one of the family gets sick and passes it around! Super information on how to stay healthy – for sure that immune system goes down without sleep and a schedule on crazy trips! Thanks for sharing sometimes I forget in the midst of packing to take care of myself!

  10. I love these tips from Hanna — and am so happy she included things like communication and mental health. The body is easier to look after, but the mind can easily become stressed when traveling so we always have to look out for that!

  11. This is a very helpful post… falling sick while traveling is the last thing I want.
    Traveling with kids can be more demanding and such tips are helpful.

  12. So interesting to read! I know it’s not good but I generally don’t think about what you mentioned when travelling, only when I get back. But I think you’re right, you just have to get used to it 🙂

  13. I really like what you have covered and said in your post. While traveling we should not comprise on our health, mind, and friends. Leaving a personal message will actually not take much time. And yes it is really important to be a responsible tourist who can maintain the environment too.

  14. Holidays and travel should not only be about exploring but also taking it slow and enjoying, ultimately keeping your mind and body sharp, fresh and ready to be back to busy life. You have covered some really valid points that people forget during travel.

  15. There is nothing worst than be ill during travel. So I always make sure to be onservant to my body and what I eat to avoid any problems.

  16. Health while traveling is important so that you get the best of place . Falling ill when traveling spoils everything. Glad you have addressed this in a broad sense

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