lifestyles travel with you on vacation

lifestyles travel with you on vacation

You may have noticed the lack of new posts around here lately. Well, I was vacationing last week with my family - and it was awesome. Six days of lounging beach-side, soaking up the sun, and letting life's hustle and bustle fade into the background. Ah, paradise.

(never mind the double-work before I left, or the mountain of paper and email staring me in the face this morning. Gotta let that stuff go while you're "hanging loose.")

The best thing about this trip was that I never once had to "exercise" or "diet", yet I got plenty of exercise and I ate great food the whole week!

That's the power of slow and steady. I've spent the last year making small changes to how I approach diet and exercise, so that it's not about a system, a plan, a routine, or a specific type of diet.

Dieting - I eat what I want, when I want. When given a choice, I opt for the foods with fewer man-made chemicals and ingredients in them. I watch my portion sizes - I try to order the smaller version, or I'll try not to lick my plate clean.

As for exercise, I spend less time at the gym and more time playing with my kids. Sure, I still get to the kettlebells or a Fit-20 workout a couple times a week. But gone are the days of spending hours on the bike or the treadmill.

This week on vacation, I walked a lot with my family - up and down the beach and around the town. I raced my boys to whatever point ahead of us they wanted to run. I played smashball with my wife and younger son. I climbed on the rocks at the jetty. I played soccer at the park. Whatever and whenever - we got outside and had fun. It turned out to be plenty of exercise, without once having to do a workout.

rock climbing on the jetty

lunch with family at a beachside grille

smash ball on the beach

hanging out in town

goofing around at the local park

Overall, I learned two things on this trip:

1.) Lifestyle changes have a much stronger impact than diet systems. I can't imagine how frustrating last week would have been if I had been restricted by what I could and couldn't eat, or if I had had to find time to get to a gym.

2.) I need to take a vacation like this more often!

How about you - what have you had success with (or failure we could learn from) while on vacation?

-Chris Butterworth

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