How to maintain the luxury you experience on the road while at home.

So you’re travelling for business and feeling really amazing about this health thing while you’re away.

You’re in your hotel room doing those workouts you promised yourself you would start doing in January.

You’ve found an amazing, healthy restaurant and are eating delicious food that lights you up and tastes AMAZING the whole time you’re there. It’s so easy…THEY make it and THEY bring it to you and THEY clean.

You are on such a high because you get to talk about the very thing you love to talk about to a room full of people who have PAID to hear you speak.

Brilliant!

But then you go home.

Gone is the sexy waiter. Food prep is tedious and boring. Especially where families and kids and multiple tastes are involved. Schedules are insane and well, let’s face it, YOU are to make it and YOU bring it to you and YOU clean.

What happened to the white glove service?

I get it, as a busines woman and mom to two young boys there are some days where it takes me around 3 hours to finally eat my breakfast – and if you know anything about me, you know that I am a breakfast tyrant – you MUST eat it.

But life gets in the way. 

So how can you maintain this modicum of luxury you experience on the road while at home?

1- Hire help. I have a nanny that helps me with my boys so that I can work, this is an absolute non-negotiable for me. She makes the boys dinner on the days she is here, and I eat whatever is cooked, adding a nice side salad or extra veggies and a glass of wine. With 80% of the work done for me, it’s a no-brainer and it kinda sorta feels like restaurant service. Then I delegate the washing up to my dishwasher. If you don’t have small kids, hire a housekeeper who can help with meal prep. They can wash and prep your veggies, gather up recipes and buy the ingredients. If you enjoy cooking, having the prep done by someone else shaves tons of time off your kitchen time.

2 – Make moving your body a non-negotiable for you. It’s so easy to do it while you’re working. Do 10 squats and 10 pushups between calls. Do some yoga stretches between meetings. Go for a walk. And if you’re a gym rat or prefer doing actual workouts, SCHEDULE the damn things in or you will NEVER do it. In the same way you’ve scheduled your clients or meetings, you have to schedule yourself in there too. My clients are amazed at how productive they are when they take breaks. Yes, they feel the inevitable guilt of taking time for themselves and not ploughing through, but they do it anyway and find themselves even more productive as a result.

3 – Finding the calm in the chaos. This is the holy grail of existence, isn’t it? Trying to feel calm, relaxed, like a boss in times of business overwhelm, or when the kids are screaming, or the kitchen’s a mess or other priorities that don’t show up for you on the road, happen. This is where all that wonderful mindset and meditation work you’ve been practicing at 2-5 minute intervals each day comes in handy.  Like my client, D, she was about to embark on a crazy stressful weekend with her family – a situation that triggers anxiety, self-doubt, and overwhelm in her. She mentioned that when she gardens it’s an incredibly peaceful and meditative state for her – so I said: “Take your garden with you”. When the shit hits the fan in your life, close your eyes, or escape to the bathroom or somewhere quiet, and for a couple minutes bring in the feeling you feel when you’re in your version of a “garden”. Could be the beach you were just lounging on, your backyard oasis, or the yoga retreat you went on earlier in the year. Once you feel that peace and calm, bring that with you to the chaos. Observe the chaos from afar, like you’re a scientist, observing a specimen, and hold that space of calm within you as long as you can. That’s the power of doing the mindset work required to get you to 2.0 level living. 

4 – Find a food delivery service. Either something that brings you cooked or ingredients and you can cook it yourself, or have an organic veggie delivery service bring you food every week. Check out what’s available to you locally. I used Chef’s Plate and because I like to cook the concept worked beautifully for me – they delivered ingredients and a recipe card, all I had to do was cook it. Brilliant. Just be careful – some of these places have super low-calorie options which I do not support because it won’t give you the energy you need to get through your day and further supports the bullshit diet mentality. Find places that use fresh, whole ingredients – ones you recognize, and choose the dishes that are not heavy in creams or breaded.

The last point would be to ask yourself why life away is better than life at home and what you can do about it to make it better. Do you need to decorate your bedroom so it looks like a hotel room? Do you need to implement a few hours a week of YOU time so that you can have the mind space to think, create and just be? (Similar to what you’d get on the plane on your way somewhere…). 

If you travel a lot, check out my blog on 10 healthy tips for traveling here. 

Tell me in the comments what things you’ve done to make life easier for you at home.