My vacation and staying fit

Vacations, we all love them,cherish them and eagerly await them. We even diet and exercise right before our vacation in order to look good, maybe even hot, and to perhaps feel great while on our retreat.  But most of the time we will throw all of that hard work out the window when we go away, only to feel bloated, guilty and maybe 5 pounds heavier when we return.

I don't know about you, but I can still have a great time on my vacation if I take the time out to squeeze in exercise and plan some healthy meals and snacks.  I know this isn't a very popular idea, but trust me, if you give it a try you won't be disappointed.

Recently, my family and I had the opportunity to take some time off and travel to Florida to visit with my mom and also my dad. We stayed at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, Kidani Village.  First off, we were blessed to stay at this amazing resort.  It made it very easy to keep up with eating right and sticking to my P90X routine (at the time of my vacation I was in week 11 now in week 12).  We stayed in a room with a fully equipped kitchen. I know there are a lot of people who don't find cooking on their vacation fun, but with 4 kids it really saves us from a lot of headaches and spending too much money on food.  Knowing we would have the kitchen, I packed my vanilla whey protein and Shakeology, along with things like plain oatmeal, whole grain bread, beans, brown rice and other healthy goodies.  Once we got down there I hit up Wal-Mart for the rest of our pantry. 

You can save a ton of money, time and calories by just eating breakfast in your room. With a dishwasher right there all we had to do was prepare, eat and stack dishes. Then we were ready to hit the pool.

We did indulge a few times and ordered private poolside dining, but we tried to stay healthy with that too.  The resort made it easy to pick healthy choices such as Tandoori chicken with chickpeas.  But for most of the days, I just ran up to the room to blend up (well my husband did that) a chocolate and peanut butter Shakeology.

Exercise wasn't a problem and I really looked forward to that part of the day. I woke up around 6:30 am (I know, I'm crazy), every morning to stretch and then take a walk to the fitness center.  I know this doesn't sound like something to look forward to, but the walk to the fitness center was so beautiful, relaxing and peaceful. The sun would just be coming up, there were flowers everywhere and cool little lamps to guide your way.  I really enjoyed this sacred time to myself every morning and felt this was truly one of the best parts of my vacation.

I stuck to my P90X schedule as closely as possible. Since I was on vacation, I didn't want to spend too much time in the gym, so I adjusted my routine to include 25 minutes on the treadmill or stepper and then 25 minutes of a strength routine.  Then on my scheduled cardio days I did 35-40 minutes on the treadmill or stepper and then 10 minutes of abs.  I feel like even though it was a quick routine, I worked really hard.

Again, I know most of you might find this not fun at all, or maybe even slightly crazy, but I didn't gain any weight while away and no feelings of "why did I eat that much?" type guilt.

I've got lots more to blog about, but will wait until later on.

I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to comment or send me an email to fitwithjessica@live.com.