What Cancun Taught Me About My Fitness Lifestyle

What can five days away from your regular exercise and eating program teach you?

Here’s what I learned about myself and the woman in my life after our much-needed getaway last week south of the border:

1. It’s good to carve out time for yourself and your relationship partner to just “be” away from everything and everyone else in your daily routine, even if you love both.
2. You can worry too much about what you’re going to eat and whether you’re going to work out while you’re on vacation. Don’t.
3. Eating for pleasure is different than eating for nourishment. They can cross over but do, and should, have different priorities.
4. Even if you’re not moving much during your vacation, don’t sweat it. You’d have to stay pretty sedentary if you were sick or injured during the same time frame. But laying around the pool is much more fun. You’ll live through both experiences.
5. Go all-inclusive if you can. The less you have to worry about while you’re on vacation the more you’ll be able to relax. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
6. If you’re an early riser, go with it. Quiet mornings are different away from home and your alone time on the beach or by the lake or wherever you’re at can add a lot to the richness of the experience.
7. Enjoy and make use of your above-average fitness level but don’t try to impress anyone or test yourself for the sake of proving something. A half day excursion that included repelling, zip lining and snorkeling in a cenote (a sinkhole created by a collapsed limestone cavern) was plenty of physical activity and enough of a time commitment for our few days on the Mayan Riviera.
8. Dwelling on the cost or the obligations you’re taking a break from is a habit rooted in worry and a sense of unworthiness. Drop both for a few days.
9. Traveling together is another good way to find out how well suited you are with your partner.
10. Any place, lodging destination, activity and/or group of people that reduce or eliminate your stress and help you enjoy being alive more is difficult to overvalue.

Thanks to our awesome travel professional, Suzanne Kostalnick, who found and delivered exactly what we’d hoped for, and who allowed us to enjoy for ourselves what we try to deliver to others each day at our fitness studio: a reminder of how good it feels to be alive.

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is a 20+year fitness trainer and writer, former faculty member for ACE and NASM and owner of Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They provide personal training and small group fitness solutions at their studio and an innovative, medically endorsed web-based group healthy eating coaching program.