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Why and how should you maintain your healthy lifestyle on holidays


Taking a break is extremely beneficial for our well-being. New environment, no work (ideally), plenty of free time, fresh air and sun, operating in a contemplative mode, all that help to switch off and decrease stress, to relax. And of course, we all switch off a bit our healthy lifestyle routines as well, this is just natural in a different place. Being without our own kitchen, filled solely with healthy ingredients, and we might not even find (or don’t want to spend time searching for) our usual food in another country. Besides, holiday is about enjoying, trying out new things, and definitely food is a major aspect of exploring a new culture. Not to mention the tremendous interesting tourist attractions the holiday destination offers for us, which just make it so costly to take time for exercise. Here we are, with so many reasonable factors pointing to the direction of a total healthy-lifestyle-apocalypse, and still, some inner conflict is there since we do want to stay healthy, now and forever, right?

If we talk about healthy lifestyle, it definitely includes a kind of diet that you follow. It can be vegetarian, vegan, sugar- or lactose- or gluten-free, macrobiotic, or any combination of them. So, what happens if you are too loose on your diet while spending your vacation? Most probably you will experience some of the following symptoms: stomach pains, bloating or other digestive discomfort, in worse cases diarrhea or constipation. Since your organism is already cleaner, hopefully, thanks to the healthy diet track you are on, it reacts more to the “unclean” aliments (the ones you usually don’t consume). And, there is no doubts about it, the reaction is going to turn your sightseeing and relaxing much less pleasant, as if you’d have a calm digestive system.

What about leaving your exercise routine behind, when you take off to holiday-land? This might be somewhat less obvious than the effects of a sudden turn in your eating habits. Actually, it depends on the level of physical activity you usually maintain. If you do little or no exercise at all, well, that doesn’t count as a healthy lifestyle, and that you indeed shouldn’t maintain while on holiday. However, if you have a slightly active lifestyle (meaning light exercise between once and three times per week), you might already feel a difference suspending it. With a moderately active lifestyle (moderate exercise three to five days per week) and above this level, you will definitely feel that something is wrong. As for me, if I stop, after just a few days my mood starts to be totally different. Not in the good way. I start to be annoyed, more irritable, negative, without enthusiasm, I’d say like constantly “not in a good mood”. I feel lack of energy, and maybe even some muscle pains that come to surface always if a person that does regular exercise, stops for some reason.

Leaving both exercising and the usual healthy diet at the same time is even worse. Physical exercise aids significantly our metabolism, our detoxifying mechanisms. So, imagine how it turns out if you start to eat more unclean food, more toxic substances, less greens and fiber that could help eliminate all this from your digestive tract, and above all you stop with exercise. You could end up suffering from pain and bad mood instead of enjoying your holiday.

Balance can be the approach that helps us here. You might be familiar with the 80-20 rule, mainly from business. It implies that 80 percent of the results we produce, come from 20 percent of concentrated efforts. In the nutrition world, there is a diet called 80-20 diet, and it requires clean eating in 80% of the time, allowing for some indulgence in moderation in the remaining 20%. Rather than a diet in the common sense of the term (centered around weight loss), I consider the 80-20 rule as a general healthy nutrition principle. It is a balanced, sustainable approach to healthy eating. We are social beings going out to eat in restaurants or friends’ places, visiting new countries with different foods, so we need some flexibility in the diet for it to be mentally healthy. For me, this is a good balance, even because if you never eat certain substances, for example gluten, you might have serious intolerance reactions when once you happen to eat it in something. And you save yourself from the stress of finding a place on your travel that meets all your diet requirements.

According to the 80-20 rule, in the 20% of your meals, you can eat literally anything (although in moderate portions). Outside of travelling, however, as a general healthy nutrition principle, for me it does include totally forbidden things. There are certain aliments that you should try to avoid completely, such as fries and highly processed foods, alcohol and sugar. Do exceptions really only once in a while, and don’t feel guilty about it. On holidays, however, these exceptions can go up to 20% of your meals, still you will probably feel fine.

Now let’s put it into practice, here come some ideas to help you adopt the 80-20 principle while travelling. It’s very very difficult, I don’t want to paint a naïve picture. Exploring a country without tasting its traditional dishes sounds even stupid to me. Food is such an important part of a culture, and I, personally, love to discover the tastes of new lands. Being vegetarian, since meat is not in the flexible zone for ethical reasons, I’m never going to try out anything, but there are always options.

Visit a big local market, where you can see the fresh ingredients the local cuisine uses. Another one of my favorite tricks, also because I love all kinds of fruits, is to explore the fruits of the new place. Is there something I don’t know or don’t usually eat? Then go for it. Discovering the vegetables too, plus some nuts and I already have healthy snacks to eat on the go instead of the commonly offered sweets or pastries. The greens are especially important, too, since you will probably eat more “acid forming” foods such as meat, sugar and alcohol, that greens, being “alkaline formers”, can balance. Besides helping your confused digestion with fiber and essential vitamins.

Beautiful Central Market Hall in Budapest.

Try at least one or two vegetarian dishes of the visited country. This is not only a wise trick to include some leaner meals in the holiday menu, but an amazing way of getting to know new vegetarian dishes that you might want to look up later on the internet, learn and prepare for yourself as a new color in your diet.

Stay hydrated, drink a lot of water. This can help you rule out some evil snacks by the day. Since being dehydrated can actually feel like being hungry, a wise trick is to drink a glass of water first when feeling “hungry” or lack of energy. It is very important, given 5% decrease in hydration can correlate to a 20% decrease in energy level.

Maintaining some kind of exercise on holidays is already much easier. Your body is always with you, walking, running, hiking, yoga, and bodyweight training are just at your hand. Make sure you pack your sports shoes, which are by the way essential for big sightseeing walks, and you can already register a daily 2-3 hours walk in the city, or on the beach, wherever. If you practice yoga for a while, for sure you know already several postures that you can do on your own, again anywhere. Go for a run early on the beach, or look up if there is a park nearby in the city or just run in the neighborhood (who said that you cannot explore a place by running?), combine it with some bodyweight exercises and stretching, and I guarantee that you will feel great after.

text: “Maybe you even find a beautiful place like this in the heart of Budapest, Margaret Island. Enjoy the 5.3 km rekortan running track and the outdoor workout machines, surrounded by beautiful trees and with such a view to river Danube!"

Besides walking, cycling is just the ultimate holiday sport. The heaven of public bikes is waiting for tourists in so many cities already! This trend is something that particularly warms up my heart. They can be easily combined with other public transport vehicles, so you can plan a nice city tour including some cycling too.

As a last tip, get enough sleep. When we are exhausted due to lack of sleep, we tend to be hungrier, consume more calories and get less physical activity.

Enjoy your holidays, maintain your healthy lifestyle routines so it’s going to be much easier to continue with them when the holidays are over.

Wishing you a neat and healthy life,

Healthy Lifestyle Coaching

"For a Neat Life."

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