How to Stay Healthy While Traveling

If you’re a frequent traveler for work or pleasure, you know that staying healthy on the road (or in the air) can feel like an uphill battle. After all, travel often means sitting for long stretches, getting less sleep, and abandoning your usual healthy habits.

While a home-cooked meal or a night of sleep in your own bed might be out of reach, incorporating a few key practices into your travel routine can keep you feeling better than ever when you’re away from home. Ahead, we’re breaking down a few tips for how to stay healthy while traveling—including how to exercise when you’re on the go. 

How to Stay Healthy While Traveling

Whether you’re heading to a conference or going on vacation, here are a few essential tips for staying healthy while traveling, according to Ronald A. Primas, MD, a board-certified internist, preventive medicine specialist, travel medicine expert, and clinical instructor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine:

1. Get a Head Start on Hydration

It’s easy to forget to drink water even on a normal day. When you’re traveling though, getting enough fluids is even more important to help you feel your best, since dehydration can lead to headaches, fatigue, and dizziness. 

A moist mucus barrier protects our nasal passages from bacteria and viruses, Dr. Primas says. But when you’re dehydrated, the mucus becomes thicker and less effective at trapping and flushing out those harmful pathogens, he explains.

Since flying can be particularly dehydrating, Dr. Primas suggests upping your water intake leading up to your trip. “You want to make sure that you’re hydrating the day before the flight—like all day long—not just right before,” he says. (For longer flights, waiting until you’re already en route to start chugging can also lead to sleep-disrupting trips to the bathroom, he adds.) 

2. Prioritize Sleep Before and During Travel 

For international travel especially, it can help to adjust your sleep schedule before your trip to prepare your body. “If you’re traveling to another time zone, it helps to try and go to bed either an hour earlier or an hour later (depending on the direction you’re traveling) for about five to seven days prior,” Dr. Primas says. 

And even though that glass of red wine might be tempting, experts say it can also help to limit alcohol, especially while flying when sleep is already hard to come by. “If you wear a sleep tracker, you know that alcohol is a sleep disruptor,” Dr. Primas says. Ditto for limiting caffeine, which is also counterproductive for your Zzzs, he says.

3. Exercise Right Before You Go

In between packing and other pre-travel to-dos, it pays off to squeeze in a quick workout. That’s because exercise can potentially give your immune system a helpful boost, Dr. Primas says. “You have more immune fighting cells in your bloodstream when you exercise—and for a few hours after that,” he says. 

Exercising before a packed travel day can also give you a necessary jolt of energy, in part by boosting oxygen circulation.

4. Wash Your Hands Frequently 

It’s never fun to feel under the weather, but when you’re on a vacation or work trip, you really don’t want to get sick. That’s why the importance of proper hand-washing can’t be overstated when you’re traveling, since “almost all diseases spread by hands,” Dr. Primas says.

Whether hand to mouth (like eating airplane pretzels) or hand to face (say, scratching your nose), we can unknowingly expose ourselves to bugs if we aren’t mindful about washing our hands often. He also suggests skipping shaking hands and opting for an elbow or fist-bump instead—his own long-standing trick to stay healthy while traveling. 

5. Use Breathwork to De-Stress

Whether you’re sitting in traffic or waiting in the airport security line, travel can have stressful moments. Luckily, even just a few minutes of breathwork can be an effective tool to combat anxiety that springs up when you’re on the move. 

“A lot of people with anxiety breathe from the chest and not the belly—and if you aren’t taking deep enough breaths, your body, in order to compensate, has to increase the rate of breathing,” Dr. Primas says. This puts you in a state of high alert, making anxiety worse and creating a vicious cycle, he says.

Breathing exercises (which you can find on the Peloton App, by the way) help to break that cycle and calm your nervous system. “Whether it’s deep breathing, belly breathing, box breathing, or yogic breathing, this style has been shown to really reduce stress and anxiety,” Dr. Primas says.

6. Get up and Move on Long Flights

Sitting for long periods of time causes blood to pool in your legs and prevents proper circulation, which increases the risk of clotting, Dr. Primas says. In fact, frequent travelers are one group of people who are at higher risk of getting blood clots, or deep vein thrombosis (DVT), he says. (Your genetic makeup, family history, and health conditions also play a role.) 

“The most important thing you can do is get up and move,” he says. Of course, you’ll also just feel better and less achy too. “Moving around keeps you from being stiff and keeps your muscles from cramping up.” 

Especially on long flights, make a point to change positions in your seat, stretch your legs, and get up to walk around every few hours. There likely won’t be space for a proper “workout,” but if possible, use the bay area (sometimes near the bathroom) to squat down and stand up a few times to get the muscles moving and your circulation going, Dr. Primas suggests.

More Tips for Prioritizing Fitness and Wellness at Your Destination

Once you’ve reached your destination, making time for movement can go a long way to help you feel your best when you’re away from your usual routine. Whether you do a quick workout from your hotel room or explore places on foot, here are a few ways to prioritize your health and wellbeing when you’re traveling:

Shift Your Perspective

Rather than thinking of exercise as something you have to do while traveling, shift your mindset to view it as something enjoyable you get to do on your own terms. 

“Use vacation as this opportunity to really explore what a workout could be for you versus more of a prescriptive training model,” suggests Peloton instructor Jess King. “For me personally, vacation is an opportunity where I get to enjoy my workouts. There’s no pressure, I don’t have to do it for work, and I don’t have to cram it into a packed day. It’s this joyous, playful hour or two in my day where I'm just with my body doing this thing that I love.”

Head to the Hotel Gym 

Being away from home doesn’t mean your fitness routine has to falter. In fact, working out when you’re traveling is now easier than ever.

Case in point: There are hundreds of hotels with Peloton equipment in destinations throughout the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Austria, and Australia. This includes Peloton Bikes in the fitness center at every Hilton hotel in the US, and many hotels across Canada, the UK, Austria, and Germany available for anyone to use for free. 

That means you don’t have to skip your favorite Peloton instructor’s cycling class or lose your workout streak when you’re away from home. And if you haven’t tried a Peloton Bike before, travel is a great time to do so. (You just might leave your trip with a new favorite way to move.)

Squeeze In a Workout from Your Room

Of course, if you’d rather skip the gym altogether and opt for a bodyweight workout, you can also use the Peloton App to squeeze in a hotel room workout before you head out for the day. 

And when you stay at select Hilton hotels, you can now access a complimentary collection of equipment-free workouts through Peloton’s on-demand fitness content on connected TVs in your hotel room. With a selection of classes across yoga, strength, barre, cardio, stretching, and Pilates, you have the flexibility to choose a workout that fits your schedule and the type of movement you’re in the mood for, whether it’s a 20-minute evening stretch or a 10-minute HIIT cardio class. 

And of course, Peloton’s best-in-class instructors will make any workout you choose feel extra motivating: “We’re always going to be your best friend and companion to keep you accountable and make it fun, and also make you feel like you’re not alone out there,” Jess says. 

At certain Hilton hotels, you can even choose to have a Peloton Bike right in your own hotel room with the Five Feet to Fitness™ program.

Get Steps In When You Can

If you’re exploring a new city, walking a ton might already be on your agenda. Other times, finding opportunities to explore your destination on foot might feel more challenging. Whether that means taking a few laps around the airport before your flight or walking rather than taking a car to dinner, getting in those steps might just require a little extra intention. 

Either way, it’ll probably pay off: A daily walk is still an excellent form of exercise—and it’s great for your mental health too.

Try Out Local Activities

Whether it’s hiking in Colorado, surfing in California, or even taking a Flamenco dance class in Spain, trying something new is a fun way to stay active while also experiencing the culture of your destination. “Get creative with ways to move your body, especially if you’re traveling in places where you can hike or be outdoors,” Jess suggests.