Vacations and Exercising

The most important part of balancing a fun vacation and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is moderation. This weekend I traveled with my family, best friend and boyfriend to the one and only sin city: Las Vegas! While it is much harder to eat and exercise healthy when you’re not cooking at home and on a routine, there are definitely some perks to working out on vacation.

First off, being on vacation we are constantly active! This weekend I completely skipped cardio all together. While most of the hotels are next door to each other, the infamous Vegas strip entails much more walking than you’d expect. The hotels themselves are gigantic, as they all house casinos, theaters, restaurants, night clubs, shopping malls and of course hundreds of suites. Considering I was going to be doing a lot of walking, as well as a ton of cardio dancing at Tao Night Club one night, and grooving to Calvin Harris at Hakkasan another night, I chose to stick with weight training.

  

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Second, one of the best parts about a vacation is staying at a hotel that has a fantastic exercise facility. The gym at The Venetian had dozens of cardio machines as well as an entire room dedicated to weights– weight machines, free weights, dumbbells, kettle balls, and everything else you could want. I find that when there is much more variety to choose from, it is easier to spend more time at the gym experimenting with muscle groups. When I do weights, I do a rotation of isolated body muscles, meaning each day I only work one or two muscle areas. While I only made it to the gym twice out of the three day stay, I blame leg and butt day with the combination of wearing heels for more than eight hours that made me unable to get out of bed for day three.

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The one thing I love best about exercising is the post-workout “healthy mentality,” which makes me want to continue my day by making healthy decisions. This feeling also doubles as an excuse to indulge. So my third point is that a great work out in a great facility can continue to motivate you to make health-conscious decision. In terms of food, they say “Abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym,” and that a fit body is 10% exercise and 90% clean eating. Well we all know how challenging this can be, especially with all of the great restaurants I was eating at this weekend. My favorites were dinner at Tao Asian Bistro, lunch at Gordan Ramsey’s Pub and Grill, and a late night sushi binge at Mizumi. I did try to be health conscious in the sense that I didn’t order dessert, and I often chose seafood over meat, but I also indulged when I wanted to!

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Above is the soy ginger glazed salmon from Tao, and the White Gummy Goblet from Sugar Factory— this drink came smoking with liquid nitrogen and filled with tons of gummy worms and it tasted delicious!

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So next time you’re on vacation, don’t feel pressured to work out every day or to skip out on that tasty dessert you’re eyeing. The key is doing what makes you happy and keeping everything within moderation!