It’s time for a holiday!
It is always a great time to plan a holiday and to spend some time differently to break our daily routine. We can definitely improve our mood, social life, and to give us some positive feelings that might help our general state. Some people like to visit places they haven’t seen before, others have some usual preferences and sometimes we even don’t need to travel so far to enjoy our time.
This article discusses some aspects related to maintain a healthy regime when we go for a holiday including food habits, physical and social activities, which might help you to stay in the green zone even if, it might be difficult sometimes to not indulge with cocktails and a large amount of food that you might come across with.
The key is to find a good balance between enjoyment and the ability to keep efficiently our previously efforts.
Here follows some tips to maintain different healthy habits to better control your body weight and to help you to stay on a healthy plan even on a holiday.
Stay hydrated
- Consider keeping yourself well hydrated almost of the time, especially if you walk under the sun in summer season.
- Keep with yourself a bottle of water and try to refill it as much as you can during your excursions
- Dehydration can cause many problems, including headaches, loss of balance, fatigue, muscle cramps and lack of energy.
- You can also use electrolytes which are usually sold in power bags, to help the body to recover the minerals and the other compounds which are dismissed with intense sweating. Sodium, chloride and potassium are a sample of electrolytes.
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Balance your diet
For each meal and snack you should manage a good balance between carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
The macro nutrient distribution range recommended by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies should be as follows:
- 45 to 65 % of calories from carbohydrates
- 20 to 35 % of calories from fat
- 10 to 35 % of calories from proteins
Keep your diet on track
Give a preference to whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Put some healthy snacks in your bag such as unsalted nuts, low calories proteins bars. Consume more food on the basis on the activity that you are doing and moderate food intakes if you are more sedentary.
You can use different ways to track your food like food tracking apps, paper diaries, or even scrap paper. Tracking your food intake will also help you to reinforce your healthy habits and to indulge yourself more occasionally.
Tips at the restaurants
Travel can increase the times to eat outside which it can be exciting in a way but, we should also plan what type of food is available on the menu in order to avoid food impulse decisions and to opt for a healthy choice.
It could be useful also to consider the following tips:
- Ask about food preparation if not sure and request dressing on the side.
- Grilled choice is always better than fried.
- Swap fries for extra greens like veggies or salad.
- Drink water or plain ice tea instead of soda.
- Take a glass of water before eating your meals.
Prevent insect bites
Depending on where you travel it is always a good rule to take with you some insect spray or wearing clothes that can protect your skin from some nasty insects. Mosquitoes in particularly apart from that unpleasant itching feeling can be in some countries cause of bad diseases transmissions like malaria, yellow fever, Zika and more illnesses.
Make sure to be aware before you travel of what type of vaccinations you might need in the country or place you are visiting.
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Keep active and dynamic
It should be considered also to do some physical activities to keep your body fit, not necessarily hitting the gym but for example if you are with some friends you can be involved in some beach games, excursions, walking or renting a motorbike to make nice tours.
Keep your hands clean and safe distance from crowd!
Unfortunately with the event of Covid 19 our social interaction habits have been affected by the fear of the recent virus that has caused unthinkable issues in the last few months. While we are waiting for a possible vaccine which hopefully will be able to fix the problem it is recommended to follow normal hygiene procedures like to wash the hands frequently, wear a mask in indoor places and keep a safe distance with the crowd. At the moment this is the only remedy to avoid the spread of the virus and to arrest the pandemic.
Pack your medication in a carry bag
Wherever you are traveling it is a useful habit to carry apart from your prescription drugs also other useful medication that you might need especially if you are going to visit different places and you might not be able to access a pharmacy straight away.
My list usually includes:
Paracetamol tables which are always useful for any type of pain.
- Diarrhea tablets.
- Anti- hitching cream
- stomach pain tablets
- Anti-histamine tablets
Have a nice Holiday!
Have you already packed your bag? Well I hope I was able to give you some useful tips in order to stay healthy and to enjoy your time off. Sometime just little advises on food choices, activities and few precautions can be useful to maintain our healthy routine. Moreover, don’t be frightened to treat yourself a few times. That is also an important aspect of the holiday which should take you out from your daily patterns and give you great pleasure as well !
