It’s been over a week since I returned from a family trip to New England and I’m feeling somewhat accomplished. While fighting a nasty bug that my toddler brought from daycare, I managed to catch up with family and a few friends. I was also successful at maintaining health and fitness while away on vacation with few disruptions of family time.
I took a leap of faith and checked out the hotel gym a few times during the trip. Since the March 2020 lockdown, I had only stepped foot in a gym only 2 or 3 times. Amazingly, it turned out to be one of the best decisions for my health and fitness, which I’ll elaborate on in a future post. I forayed into the gym despite the recent volatility in COVID numbers and the very-laxed approach most were taking as I saw few masks anywhere in the area let alone our hotel.
My first trip to the gym was a bit weird as I had far more weights to choose from than the limited rack in my “home gym,” which was essentially a corner of our kid-themed living room. It was great to test out different dumbbells for my full body workout, but then two other guests came to check out the cardio machines. For some odd reason, I was flustered by two strangers operating on cardio machines at separate ends of a row standard hotel gym equipment. No one bothered me, but I was clearly out of my element.
After a mini-panic attack, I carried on with no issue and even returned another morning for a workout before the end of our trip. I got in most of my fitness activity from walking on the beach or in a few museums, while not highly intensive still counted (in my head) as exercise. Especially walking on the sandy beaches, which actually provides quite a few health benefits! A few steps here and there would add up for me. Our last day of the trip would be a journey as we ended up walking in and around the NYC Meatpacking District for hours, which was cool yet exhausting. The Hudson Yards was also fun to check out.
All this activity was aided, of course, by some reasonably healthy food choices. While in the District, we ended up grabbing lunch at cool Israeli chain called Miznon. The menu had lots of yummy meat-based choices to choose from, but I ended ordering their “Ratatouille” pita sandwich, a mouthwatering combination of “tomato perfumed eggplant, tahini, spicy & hardboiled egg.” I never thought I would grow to a point where I would have such a sandwich combination, but I ate it slowly, enjoying every tidbit of flavor from the eggplant, the spice, and the funky texture of the egg.
This experience was a microcosm of my eating for most of the trip. I naturally gravitated towards tasty, but healthier food choices without any pressure. After more than two years of healthy eating, I just felt surprisingly more comfortable eating a wider variety of foods that include veggies and other sources of protein, fat outside of meat.
Now, I certainly had a few treats during the trip. Two notable stops for indulgence were in the Fairfield, Connecticut area. One was Gruel Britannia, an English-comfort food spot on the outskirts of Fairfield. My spouse and I snacked there as part of a rare date night (Thanks to our amazing sitter!) and enjoyed some berry crisps with custard. Before dessert, we dined at another Fairfield institution, Sweet Basil, an Asian cuisine restaurant with an amazing outdoor patio for sampling menu items.
For most of the week, I kept it simple: steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, maybe a few eggs or breakfast meat and black coffee from the hotel breakfast bar. We stocked the room with fruits, veggies, and a few treats for the kids from a local supermarket. I found it relatively easy to maintain normal eating habits.
There were a few awkward moments where I chose not to force ice cream down when I everyone else wanted a frozen treat or to forgo a cheeseburger in the drive thru when everyone else was craving one. In those moments, I just thought about my health and my appetite. Why should I force junky stuff in my body if I didn’t want it? My family still loved me. Sure, it made for some awkward moments, but we moved on.
I learned that maintaining health and fitness while away on vacation was very possible. Was it precise? Perfect? No, but I found it doable. The trip wasn’t perfect, but it worked out much better than I could’ve imagined!