Taking Your Fitness On The Road

Reading time: approx. 5 minutes

Hey Brothers! 

Welcome to LenDentonThrive Letter #64!

The mission of the LenDentonThrive Letter is to provide you with practical, science-backed information and strategies that help you lose weight, get fit, and stay fit… all in a smarter, not harder way. 

Taking Your Fitness On The Road

I’m writing today from a hotel as I complete a 10-day cross-country road trip across the legendary Route 66. I decided this would be a great time to write about the importance of maintaining your fitness while you’re away from your everyday routine. So, whether you’re traveling for work or pleasure, this week’s edition of the LDT Letter will give you some ideas on how to keep your fitness going while you’re on the road. And, because I’m on the move, this week’s letter will be a bit shorter.

Traveling With Your ThriveLife

Our ThriveLives are sustainable, healthy lifestyles that are built on a set of smart daily practices. I’ve written about these practices here. The best thing about building your ThriveLife is that it’s custom-tuned to your specific needs and preferences. And, the better it fits, the better it works!

So, if you’re building or maintaining your ThriveLife, travel can be a real test for your daily practices. It might be an event that you can simply take in stride and keep progressing. Or, it could become a situation that can derail your efforts and create a setback. 

To ensure you can successfully take your fitness (your ThriveLife) on the road, consider two important tips - design and preparation. Let’s take a deeper look at each of these.

#1 - Design Well

As I noted above, our ThriveLives are custom-tuned to our specific needs and preferences. This means that every ThriveLife is slightly different because we’re all different. It also means that design is essential to creating a successful ThriveLife. To help guys choose the best daily practices to build their ThriveLife, I created a process called 4-PM. It stands for:

       Personal - Practical - Portable - Permanent - Measurable 

4-PM leads us to consider important aspects of our everyday lives when we choose daily practices. That includes things like how much we travel and the types of exercise we perform. For example, if you seldom travel and enjoy lifting weights in the gym, you’ll likely choose a different exercise routine than someone who travels frequently for work. And if you travel frequently and enjoy lifting at the gym, you’ll probably need to keep your membership at a gym that offers you lots of locations in places you travel to. You can read more about the 4-PM process here.

A second aspect of designing your ThriveLife well is Eating Smarter to manage your food so it's constantly working for your fitness goals instead of working against them. I wrote about Eating Smarter here. 

Eating Smarter while on the road can be tricky, because travel usually means eating out a lot. So, I created The Eating Smarter Guide to Dining Out to help make good food choices easier. You can check out the guide here.

Designing your ThriveLife so that it fits your life well is key to successfully maintaining your fitness while on the road.

#2 - Plan Ahead

A second key to maintaining your fitness while you travel is good planning - specifically planning ahead! This is an important part of your ThriveLife where you look ahead to ensure that you can perform your smart daily practices…on a daily basis)! 

My 4-PM exercises are primarily walking and bodyweight exercises, which travel rather easily. (Hint: that’s by design because I’m a frequent traveler!) So, here are some examples of planning ahead that I do as I prepare for a trip:

• Pack my fitness kit (shoes, workout clothes, Fitbit charger, etc.)

• Pack healthy snacks for the ride.

• Check hotels for fitness center amenities

• Do meal-planning a day ahead so I can find good food choices at restaurants

Traveling with my ThriveLife over the past 10 years has shown me that finding good food choices while on the road is possible. Most well-known restaurant chains have menu selections that fit my Eating Smarter approach. There are even a few good fast-food choices. The key is to plan ahead so you don’t find yourself being stuck with only bad choices. 

Eating Smarter Tip: Check the restaurant menu online before arriving to evaluate their selections so you can make good choices when ordering. 

Enjoy The Journey!

Travel doesn’t have to mean that you put your fitness on hold. When you design your ThriveLife to fit the kind of life you’re actually living, you’ve taken the first crucial step to stay fit while you travel. Then, planning ahead will help you avoid situations that create bad fitness outcomes. So, enjoy your journey!

Thanks for stopping by.

Smarter, not harder.

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