photo credit: late night movie

Note: This is a guest post from Zen to Fit­ness.  Zen to Fit­ness has a pas­sion for fit­ness and liv­ing a sim­ple life — along with read­ing, writ­ing, and travel.  About six months ago, he began eat­ing an improved diet of whole foods, while also adding more exer­cise — and he has seen great results from this.

Keep­ing Fit While Traveling

Fit­ness and Nutri­tion while on Holiday/Traveling is harder than we come to expect.  Stay­ing in shape dur­ing these times can be a test of will and ded­i­ca­tion.  I have picked up the fol­low­ing tips that helped me keep in shape dur­ing my busiest periods:

• Eat a light break­fast or fast if you do not exer­cise that morn­ing. Usu­ally I will get up and get going pick­ing up a black cof­fee en route fol­lowed by some fresh fruit/nuts and cold water. This nor­mally keeps me full until mid­day time if I haven’t exer­cised. Plus it keeps me men­tally sharp and feel­ing light.  If I do exer­cise that morn­ing I will have a more sub­stan­tial break­fast around 1 hour after the work­out — some­thing along the lines of some eggs/bacon and fruit or a high fiber break­fast like yogurt, nuts and berries.
• Impro­vise with your work­outs.  Go for short runs with sprints and jump­ing squats mixed in, do pull-ups in play­grounds and do loads of pushups (put some books in a back­pack to add weight to these).  Use your suit­case as a weight.  Keep your work­outs short and intense and play as much as you can.
• Want a $10 (or less) gym?  Buy a used back­pack.  Now do 3sets of 10 reps of pushups, pullups, lunges (up a hill), 1 legged squats.  Add weight to the back­pack to increase your resis­tance.  No excuse not to work­out, adjust weights as needed….and if you really want some fun, hold the weighted back­pack over your head while you lunge up a hill (dis­claimer — my ver­sion of fun may be dif­fer­ent from yours).
• Try to explore by rent­ing a bike or going for a jog if your in a new city.
• Don’t get too tied up with what you eat!  Often our eat­ing is a lit­tle less con­trolled.  We need to social­ize and that may mean eat­ing pizza, ice cream, cake what­ever.  Just try to eat whole­some foods 80% of the time and eat what life throws at you for the other 20%.  I usu­ally find after an evening of bad eat­ing my will to eat well and exer­cise is far stronger.
• Enjoy the fresh Local things. I always find that when trav­el­ing, the best foods are always things like the local fruits and veg­eta­bles, or cheeses — so enjoy these things.  They are great for you and may be some­thing you won’t be able to get again at home.
• If you have a big din­ner with drinks, etc and over indulge — go for a quick run fasted in the morn­ing.  This will help flush the tox­ins out of your body and burn up last nights food.  Morn­ing is a great time to exer­cise while trav­el­ing, as it leaves you with the rest of the day to do what you want.
• Remem­ber to keep your brain fit.  When trav­el­ing you have less dis­trac­tions and more time to read.

Finally, enjoy the jour­ney, have fun, try new things, and keep fit.  At times it will seem hard to go for a work­out or run, but you will always feel bet­ter afterwards.

photo credit: Pandiyan

“The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.” ~ Robert Frost

5K Race Report

Race:  Sat­ur­day morn­ing, 8:30 AM.  Local state park.  Small event.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing started with beau­ti­ful weather for run­ning.  Tem­per­a­tures in the upper 60’s.  Our whole fam­ily was run­ning the race.  There were maybe 150 peo­ple entered in the race.  We’ve run this race the last four years.

The thing is, we know this course.  Unlike the first year.  We know, the first half of the course is mostly uphill.  And just when you think you’re done…another hill!  It’s a fun run for me, because it’s a trail run.  Usu­ally I run on the road, so get­ting out into the woods to run is a fun change of scenery and pace.

And this year was no dif­fer­ent.  The hills came.  The hills con­tin­ued.  And we ran.  And some of us walked parts.  And we all fin­ished.  Hot.  Smelly.  Exhausted.  Inspired.

In our fam­ily, I fin­ished sec­ond.  I ran the whole race.  My old­est son (13) had fin­ished a cou­ple of min­utes before me, and … he walked a cou­ple of the hills.  I guess I didn’t run all that fast!  Shortly after, every­one else in my fam­ily came in.

What’s inter­est­ing about this race, is that is is par­tially spon­sored by a local micro brew­ery.  So, at 9 AM in the morn­ing, there’s a half-barrel of beer.  This seemed weird to me the first year we did this.  Now…I like it!  Every­one else (in my fam­ily) likes the fact that they have door­prizes they draw for after the run.  We came home with a case of soda and sev­eral golf balls.

Due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties at the event, they did not have a print­out of the times — that’s ok.  My (our) time was noth­ing to write about (hey, what am I doing then???).  I fin­ished, and that was suc­cess for me!

Les­son in All Of This

So, the les­son to be had from this:  Some bat­tles are uphill bat­tles.  And in those bat­tles we face, we have the choice to stop on con­tinue on.  And when we con­tinue on, vic­tory is ours.  Maybe it’s not a first place award.  Maybe it’s not fame or for­tune.  But, in con­quer­ing the uphill bat­tles, the vic­tory we achieve is a per­sonal one.  It is ours, we have earned it.  Com­ple­tion has come through our hard work and per­se­ver­ance.  These are vic­to­ries that last.  We come out bet­ter for hav­ing com­pleted the task at hand.

When we’re faced with dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, the per­sonal vic­to­ries we’ve faced dur­ing some of the uphill bat­tles life has thrown at us will make us bet­ter pre­pared to face these new chal­lenges.  So, when the next uphill bat­tle comes into your life, if it’s one you really want…continue on.  The vic­tory, what­ever that is for you, is waiting!

photo credit: Norma Desmond

“Dis­eases of the soul are more dan­ger­ous and more numer­ous than those of the body.” ~ Cicero

Have you ever had a bad day? Or just don’t feel quite as chip­per as you usu­ally do? A sure-fire way to change this is … exercise!

Every time I exer­cise, I come away with a “high”. Oh, I might feel tired, beat up, and phys­i­cally exhausted. But, my men­tal atti­tude is always “bet­ter” than it was before I exer­cised. A few days ago, I biked home from work in a strong head­wind. By the time I arrived at home, I was tired and later than planned. But I still felt great about being out there, mov­ing my body. I felt great even though I felt tired!

Exer­cise can take many forms. A walk around the block, foot­ball in the back­yard, run­ning a 5K race, strength train­ing, play­ing tag, the list goes on and on. So, make some time to exer­cise every day. Mix it up, mak­ing some days more stren­u­ous than oth­ers. Find things you like to do that will keep you active. And then get out there and do it. Your body and mind will be renewed!