How HR Executives Plan for Healthy Travel

Have you ever had one of those 24-hour business trips where you were in and out so fast that the whole trip seemed like a blur? According to a recent article in Fast Company, the premise of a recent study found that frequent business travelers should be very wary of their health. "It’s not the travel that will kill you, it’s the lifestyle that goes along with it."

The article states that companies should consider employee education programs on stress management and strategies to improve diet and activity while traveling. The author also goes on to say that companies should book rooms only with hotel chains that have gyms, and provide financial incentives to employees to exercise while traveling. While this all sounds like good advice on the surface, people don’t want advice or incentives, they want solutions that fit their life.

Today I find myself at the Calgary airport after one of those 24-hour business trips and here is how I planned my 24-hour stay (keyword “planned”). After arriving at the hotel in Calgary at 10pm Toronto time, the first order of business was to check out the gym and grab some dinner. The gym was nothing special with only a couple of treadmills so I planned at that point to do my workout in my room the next morning.

The hotel check-in had provided me with 2 free drink tickets from the lounge and 20% off any food order so my dinner plans were set. I planned to enjoy a guilt free Guinness (125 calories and 14g of sugar) and a spinach salad with a 6oz side of sliced steak (plants and lean protein) before even going to the restaurant. Always ask for the dressing on the side, otherwise your salad will be swimming in unwanted and unknown quantities of sugar and calories.

I planned to be in bed by 10pm Calgary time (midnight in Toronto) just after the Oilers game (I am in Calgary, right?) and off to bed for a good night sleep. The following solutions offered are how I planned my diet and exercise for the rest of the trip. These solutions may or many not be right for you, but they work for me based on some pretty sound perspective routed in science. People always ask me what I do to exercise and eat on the road and the following solutions are what work for me.

3 Heartfit Solutions to help you plan for Exercise and travel:

1. Plan for a good night’s sleep. Wear ear plugs and set your alarm to get up 1 hour early. Your mind goes through 90 minute sleep cycles so plan accordingly to get up either 6 or 7 ? hours after you go to bed. Midnight Toronto time means 6am Calgary time giving me roughly 7 ? hours of sleep.

2. Plan your exercise. Even if you hate the idea of exercise and have no motivation to get started, check out Fitness Blender on YouTube. What I love about these HIIT workouts is that they have over 500 videos to choose from, many are simple body weight resistance workouts so you can do them from the comfort of your hotel room, no equipment required. Even though my workouts are very structured and consist of swim/bike/run most days, I blend in 30 minute HIIT routines all the time to build muscle and maintain cardio while traveling so today's workouts consisted of Bodyweight Only Strength and Endurance Challenge - Beginner or Advanced Lower Body Workout & Brutal HIIT Ladder Workout - 20 Minute HIIT Workout at Home for a total of one hour of exercise. I planned my workouts prior to my trip and had them loaded up on my laptop so no time would be wasted searching in the morning for the right workout. Wi-Fi was connected upon arrival at the hotel so in the morning I was good to go.

3. Plan to work and walk the airport. Following my 9am meeting, I planned to head straight back to the airport. Now I know many people would want to avoid sitting around the airport at all costs, but flying by the seat of your pants to get through security and to your flight on time can cause very real and unnecessary stress. Even though my flight was boarding at 3:30pm, I was back at the airport by 11:30am to get through security (today was the start of March break and the line-ups, craziness and lack of patience were all in abundance) and begin the rest of my workday from today’s mobile office, the Calgary airport. Over the next 3 hours before my flight boarded, I worked and sent out emails in peace and quiet from one of the cleanest, peaceful and inspiring airports in Canada. It put my usual mobile coffee shop office to shame.

After lunch at Montana's, I located my gate and picked a comfortable corner to plug into a power source to finish my work and write this blog, all while enjoying the sunshine and view of the foothills and downtown Calgary. One hour prior to boarding and it’s time for my planned walk. Sitting is the new smoking, even if you exercise and I know I will be sitting for the next 4 hours on a plane so one hour before boarding, I go for a 60-minute walk of the entire airport. Walking gets the blood flowing and stretches out my organs that are about to be compressed in the sitting position. Who knows, you might even find a friendly dog or two to help you De-stress along the way.

3 Heartfit Solutions to help you plan for FOOD and travel:

1. Drink plenty of water. Staying hydrated is key for performance in both thought and action so plan on drinking a glass of water when you wake up in the morning and plan on bringing a bottle of water onto the plane to sip throughout your flight. Skip the alcohol and soda, hidden sugar doesn’t cause your anxiety of flying, but it can make it worse.

2. Bring your own protein snacks. I plan ahead knowing I won't be getting a meal in flight so I have modified this homemade protein bar recipe from MyFitnessPal to my taste and liking. It’s better than any prepacked food you can buy and it only takes 30 minutes to make. I cut the bars into typical “granola bar” portions and plan to eat one every two hours (not the whole lot in one sitting). These bars stay perfectly well in a zip lock lunch bag for 3 or 4 days if they last that long.

3. Think whole foods and lean proteins when ordering your meals. I’m not perfect and I do indulge in pasta and bread on occasion (How to stop eating sugar and flour), but once you start to kick the refined carbs addiction, craving those carbs gets a whole lot easier and it will happen quicker than you think. The only food I planned to purchase from the airport was lunch at Montana’s (grilled chicken, rice and veggies) and a green smoothie that I watched get made with real food right before my eyes. This was my pre-boarding meal one hour before boarding the plane.

Final Heartfit Solution for the drive home from the airport:

Maybe this goes back to my baseball days but I do love my sunflower seeds. My wife can’t stand it when I eat them in the car but they top my list for a healthy snack on any road trip and they perform just as well as red bull to keep you awake without all the sugar and caffeine. My drive home from the airport is just over one hour so I plan ahead to have my bag of Spicy BBQ Spitz in the car along with a cup for shells ready to go along with an additional bottle of water. For proper baseball player sunflower eating technique, watch this short YouTube video and no, you don’t have to spit the sunflower shells over to a cup, I just keep the cup in my hand and then dump the shells when the cup gets full. Pro Tip: Blow the shell into the cup, don't spit as the name might suggest.

So why is frequent travel so bad for us? Because we are really good at planning for the travel and lodging but not so good at planning the lifestyle of working on the road. Planning is the key. Allowing yourself to make food decisions on the fly while you are hungry and tired is not a good plan. Just think about what you purchased from the grocery store the last time you went shopping hungry.

My solutions may or may not be the right fit for you, but having a plan is the key takeaway.

You can find more Heartfit articles on my Blog at Heartfit365.com