Staying Healthy While Traveling
This past week my wife and I returned from Munich after a two-week riverboat tour on the Danube and Rhine Rivers and a few final days in Amsterdam. We had also traveled to a family wedding the weekend before departing and to Portugal and Morocco in the weeks before that as well. We don’t usually travel this much but some of these were scheduled a while back and the challenge of traveling for most of 2 months while trying to remain fit was no easy task.
There’s an old scientific study where healthy 20-year-olds were made totally inactive and fed for a few weeks; despite no sickness, they lost major strength and organ function quickly. The study reports they needed an average of seven days of normal function for every one day of inactivity to recover their baseline. In short, it’s much easier to stay in shape than to get back in shape and we were facing 14 days of exotic European food exquisitely prepared with unlimited local wines and beers to mirror our travel locations. This standard Viking riverboat had no fitness room, and the upstairs walking deck was closed many days for tight underpasses.
I thought it might be helpful to pass along some health tips that we learned on our trip:
Be sure to check out some of our photos at the end.