4 Steps to Get Back on Track After Vacation

This has been quite a full month of travel for me. I spent almost a week in Phoenix with my older son at an indoor volleyball tournament. Then after a week at home, we were in Florida for a week at another tournament. We are now home for about a week before we leave again for our annual camping trip.

All of this travel has made it challenging for me to stay committed to my own self-care. I have done a pretty good job overall. But there have been days where I did not eat that well, or sleep that well, or exercise.

Getting back on track

Each time I have returned home, I committed to getting “back on track” until the next trip. Then I made plans for how to stay on track during the next trip. Overall, I would give myself a B+ for my efforts. Even though it is not as great as I was hoping, I am celebrating the accomplishment of doing as well as I did. In years past, I would go away and let go of ALL self-care. Then I would return feeling achy, overweight, sluggish and not well-rested from my trip. These trips have felt different. Although the travel itself can take a toll, I have returned home feeling refreshed and ready to go for the most part.

Since this is a time of year that many of us take trips, I thought this was a great topic to cover in this week’s blog.

How is your self-care when you travel?

Based on that answer, how do you feel when you return home?

There are 4 areas that I encourage you to focus on, both when you travel (if possible) and definitely when you return home.

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Sleep and travel

This is a big one. It can be easy to stay up too late and get up too early when we travel, especially when we are visiting loved ones. But starving ourselves of sleep can have a cumulative effect that can leave us feeling sluggish, stressed and maybe even sick. If you stay up too late one night on vacation, you can make up for it somewhat by going to bed earlier the next night.

This can be especially important for our children. When our schedules deprive them of much-needed sleep, this can lead to temper tantrums, meltdowns and general tension for everyone. If they stay up too late one night, try to get them back on track the next night.

When you return home from travel, try to get back to your and your children’s routine as quickly as possible. Whether that is essential oil in a diffuser, a bath and bedtime story, sleeping in their own bed, etc., getting back to the routine will help everyone to feel better more quickly.

Movement and travel

This is another big one. Try to squeeze in movement as often as possible when you travel, both for you and your children. It can be a challenge if you are used to going to a gym but have no access when you travel. But there are many body-weight exercises that you can do, or (like me) you can run while you are away. Or walk. There are many ways to fit in movement.

When you return home, try to get back to your usual routine as fast as possible. You will feel so much better for doing it. For example, when we returned home from Florida, once we got the car unpacked and the laundry started, I leashed up the dog and took him out for a run. Good for him AND for me. And afterwards, I felt really proud of myself for jumping right back in.

Eating and drinking and travel

Wow, can this be a challenge when we travel or what? Especially if our diets are fairly specific when we are at home. Or if we have allergies. It can be very tough to find food that we normally eat when we travel. This can leave us eating things we don’t normally consume. And that can lead to stomach upset and a general yucky feeling. It is also easy to become dehydrated, which is never good.

When you return home, get back to the foods you are used to eating as soon as you can. This can go a long way towards helping you to settle back in. Also, drink water as soon as you return to begin to rehydrate yourself after travel. This goes for your children too. It can be very easy with their smaller bodies to get dehydrated.

Finding peace upon returning home

Travel can be so much fun. But the preparation of travel, being with loved ones 24/7 on our trip and returning home can add to our stress level. It can be so powerful to bring meditation into or back into our lives when we get home. One stressor I felt the day we returned home from Florida was the desire to have everything unpacked, cleaned up, laundry done, etc. in two minutes flat. I had to work hard to stay calm and not allow the feeling of overwhelm that was trying settle in. A regular meditation practice helped me to be aware of what I was feeling and manage the feelings to keep them at bay.

Travel can be so much fun, but too many times I see people who allow travel to stress them. And then what use is it? Follow the steps above in order to make travel enjoyable for everyone.