Road to Wellness: Mastering Health, Habits and Mindset During Your Epic Travel

This past week we left northern New Mexico to make the 18 hour drive to northern Illinois for the summer.

For many, extensive travel like can be a slippery slope.

Sure, who doesn't love a good road trip? but it also comes with a huge immediate shift in your routine and for many can lead down a dangerous path to some unhealthy habits and actions.

So today we are talking about how to travel and stay on track with your sanity, mindset, habits and food.

But first its important to break things down a bit.

I like to break travel down into 3 components.

1. The week leading up to departure.
2. The travel day(s)
3. Arrival to new destination

Knowing what you want to accomplish and feel like with each makes the "to do" much easier to identify.

I'll use this trip as an example.

Week Leading Up to Departure:

What I Want to Feel Like: I still had a lot of daily responsibilities so I wanted each day to feel light, not overwhelming. Travel can be stressful, and we've done a LOT of travel the last 2 years. I also wanted to have as little to do on our travel day as possible.

To Do: Packing up a little bit each day before leaving.

Travel Day:

What I Want to Feel Like: I wanted to be sure I had food available during the car ride so we could feel light and energetic. I then wanted a restaurant I could quickly grab something at once we got to our overnight stop. Because I knew it'd be 8-9pm, I knew I wanted something light but plentiful so a salad is what I was looking for.

To Do: Prepping extra food for travel days as I prepped dinner the night before. Looking up restaurants close to the hotel we were staying at to ensure the options we wanted were available.

Arrival:

What I Want to Feel Like: Once we got into Illinois, and after an 8 or 9 hour drive, I wanted to be sure I moved my body to release any built up tension from being in the car for 18 hours the past 2 days.

To Do: I had planned a 1-2 mile walk around the neighborhood once we got into town.

An that's it!

Things went smoothly and according to plan and because of the I felt energetic, excited and happy once we arrived.

Traveling and being on the road doesn't have to be a death sentence to your energy, mindset and health.

With a little thought, prep and planning you can actually travel with ease and comfort and it doesn't have to be the stressful thing that it is for so many.

So in summary:

Next time you travel consider thinking about what you want the week before to look and feel like, what you want the travel day itself to look and feel like and then the actions that'll ground you and help you calibrate once you arrive.

As my acting teacher once told me years ago

"through preparation, you relieve the anxiety."

Hope this is useful to you.

PS For helpful tips on how to eat out while traveling check out this short guide I wrote a while back.