Tips for Staying on Track While Traveling and Under Stress: 46

Well, hello friends, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. This is going to be take 2 of what was already a very long day, but getting ready to be on the move again, so I really needed to get this recorded and I didn't want to wait any longer. So welcome to an edition of the podcast that is going to be focused on a little update on what has been going on in my life and secondarily about being on the road and traveling and how to kind of keep up with your active lifestyle, your dietary needs, all the things that, you know, we work on as people that are involved with Ultimate Wellness. So it's definitely more challenging on the road, but not impossible. So I just want to talk about that a little bit and give you some tips for the future in case you find yourself traveling a lot or in a situation like I am right now. So just to give you a little update, if you happen to be watching this on video, you'll notice that I'm in a very different setting than usual. I am a little in a little fishing cabin on the Gallatin River in Montana. And let me tell you a little bit about how I got here. So a couple months ago, my husband and I decided that we would sell our house in Cincinnati, take advantage of this crazy market. And it sold extremely quickly. Uh, you know, we kind of expected that because that's what the market's been doing lately, but we found ourselves under contract in just a couple days and closing on this house very quickly because the people wanted to get it before their kids got in school. So as far as kids being in school too, that was a big part of this decision. Of course, we wouldn't have done it except for our oldest is off to college at Marquette. He's a freshman. He'll be playing in the spring some lacrosse there. So if you're into lacrosse, be looking for McColgan on the Marquette team. And our younger son, who is still in high school, actually got recruited also for lacrosse to go to Culver, which is basically the number one lacrosse school in the nation. So that was pretty exciting. And he is, um, it's a boarding school, so he's there. And so that means that we were are empty nesters much more quickly than we anticipated. We expected at least a few more years before the youngest one was off to college. And you know, then we would sell the big house in Cincinnati. But since this happened and since the market, housing market is what it is right now, we decided to go ahead and sell it. So the plan was not to buy another house immediately because as you know, you you can only take advantage of a good market and, you know, making a little money on it if you don't go and buy something right away after that. Because if you buy something else right away, uh, we could have downsized, we could have bought something smaller. Uh, but basically the whole, you know, housing market, everything is still elevated at this point, although there do seem to be signs of it softening, uh, with the Fed hiking rates, interest rates being so much higher. Uh, we're definitely seeing, you know, a little bit more, uh, houses staying on the market longer, some price reductions, things like that. So, Hopefully if we can just hold out for a couple more months, then we will be in a much better place to purchase again. And we sort of haven't decided yet whether that will be in Cincinnati or it might be somewhere else, which is part of the reason that we are taking this little vagabond tour. So let me explain that name. If you haven't been on the website lately, first of all, I highly recommend you pop over right now to healnourishgrow.com because we have a brand new web design that just launched this week. I'm recording this on September 14th. 17th on Wednesday, and it actually launched on Monday. And it is a much better user experience. Things are much easier to find. It looks nicer. It's got more functions. Uh, I think you'll just find it a lot more user-friendly, and it's long overdue for there to be a refresh on that because I just had the 4th anniversary of Heal, Nourish, Grow launching this past summer. So it's been that same design for quite a while now, so it's overdue. So I hope that you enjoy that. But on the new site, if you go to the category Healthy Lifestyle and click on Travel, you'll find a special section that's all about the Vagabond Tour. And that's basically about this process of us selling our house and deciding to go on the road for a few months while we're waiting out the housing market. That's the theory anyway. And so we spent the first month visiting some friends and family in Michigan. Lots of places to stay there with people. So we just packed up our Suburban with all of our gear, which includes all of 3 snowboard bags because we're staying out here through the winter. And you know, that's one of our favorite things to do, snowboard. And now we'll be able to do it a lot more since we'll be out west. And it was about, you know, a case of wine was in there, our clothes of course, some random kitchen items that I need, my podcast equipment. You can see I have my regular old mic here. And so the The Suburban was pretty darn full, but we pared it down to that for the next 6 months. And then after we went to Michigan, we went to Chicago to visit Peter's brother, which was perfect because Chicago is perfectly positioned right in the middle of Marquette, which is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Culver, which is kind of in Indiana, close to Notre Dame. So while the boys were moving in and getting settled, we were there to like visit with them and, you know, help them with the process a bit. And then we drove across country and we stopped in South Dakota, went to Deadwood, saw Mount Rushmore, saw the Badlands National Park. So took a couple days over the weekend to do that and obviously worked during the days and drove a little bit in the late afternoon, evening, and finally made it out here to Montana, which is where we are parked until the end of September. Um, but this week we're actually going back to Cincinnati for a wedding and some meetings, and so we'll be there for a whole week. Uh, so we won't have as much time in the little fishing cabin as we might have liked, but that's okay because it is kind of out in the middle of nowhere and the internet has definitely been a challenge. They have satellite internet and it's, um, serviceable, but for doing what I do, a lot of research online, uploading, downloading, like working on this podcast, it has all been a lot more challenging than it has been in the past. So I'll be glad to get back to a new, much faster internet connection when we move on to Sedona, Arizona in October. Um, but for now we're in the fishing cabin, we're in Montana until the end of September. So it's been great getting back to things. So I guess now that I've explained to you the whole vagabond tour and why the podcast quality going forward might be slightly different, uh, just as far as sound quality, I don't have my little podcast studio under the stairs anymore, obviously. So, uh, right now I am in the upstairs. Stairs portion of fishing cabin. You can see there's a sink behind me. They kind of have the shower in one room and the sink out here in this other bedroom. And, um, so yesterday to record for a podcast, the internet connection is so slow, so I'm just recording on my computer. That's no problem. But when I need to have a connection when I'm with a guest recording a streaming episode, the internet connection here is not nearly fast enough. So what I had to do was drive about 40 minutes into Bozeman. I found a great little coworking space there. It was called Sky Oro. If you ever happen to be in the area, it's really fantastic and it's woman-owned and they focus on supporting women entrepreneurs and they are so welcoming and they had a day pass. So that was perfect. And I was able to reserve a little meeting booth or what do you call that? Like a telephone booth, kind of like what I used to have at my old job way back at INET. Whenever I'd have to write, I'd call it going in the closet, but it was really like this little soundproof booth. But there, Booths were not quite soundproof, so there was a little bit of background noise. There was a big meeting going on when I first got there, uh, but then by the time I was recording my first guest, they had, they had left, but there was still some little, um, noise in the background. And if you watch the podcast on video, you'll see in those episodes sometimes there's people walking by that you can see through the glass door. So it's not the perfect scenario, but it certainly enabled me to do it, which is the most important thing to me, that I keep, uh, consistently putting out content for you guys every week. And if I didn't have a good internet connection here at the cabin, I wouldn't have been able to record any new episodes except for me just doing these solo episodes like this, which are great, but I think doing that week after week, all of us would get tired of that, right? So, so I wanted to have my guests on and went there for the day, recorded. So that was great. Um, so now, now that you've got all the background on the podcast and the Vagabound Tour, what I really wanted to talk about a little bit is The last several months of this process of moving, being under stress, kind of being displaced, how does that affect, you know, still living your healthy lifestyle and the ability to maintain eating low carb when you're staying with different people, when you're on the road, all those sorts of things. So just to give you a few tips, and there is a web— at the website there's an article that was actually written by my sister. She travels a lot for work and she had her best tips and tricks for staying healthy while traveling, so be sure to check out that article. But what I wanted to talk about here is, first I should tell you about an injury that I don't think I've shared about at all on my Instagram or publicly really, but it was— it's been quite painful. And so since last— I think it's about last December, so it's gonna be going on close to a year now— but I started having this right hip and glute pain that was fairly severe. I've had dry needling done on it twice and it's been very, very slow to heal. And it got so bad about 3 months ago that I actually had to take a whole 2 months off from, you know, I walk every day or hike every day. It's just part of my lifestyle. I've done it for so many years, 17 years. I was a runner, and then when my knees said I couldn't do that anymore, I just, you know, now I walk and I hike, and I'm just thankful to be pain-free with my knees for the most part. But the hip thing has really gotten me, and so I, it got It's to a point where I just had to take some time off, uh, 'cause I kept pushing through it and it just wasn't getting any better. So I thought, okay, it's time to just rest for a little bit, let this heal. And it did get quite a bit better, but it was still, uh, lingering on. So I did finally go to an orthopedic guy and I have tendinosis, which is a little different than tendonitis, uh, but it's in the right hip and glute area. And, uh, it's about, I'd say I'm about 70% now, so it's definitely better. And so since we have been out here, I've started— and since we went up to Michigan, I've started being active again, walking every day, hiking. And it's, um, amount of pain that is totally livable. It's not 100% healed yet, but I don't think I'm overly aggravating it anymore at this point. So, uh, so yeah, getting back to being active has been really nice because it's just such a part of what I do on a day-to-day basis that it was very weird not having that. But I will say that because during the move, you know how it is to move, a lot of things to clean, a lot of things to pack, having people in and out of your house, doing showings, all that stuff. I definitely had plenty of activity going on, just not the kind where I'm actually out in nature and kind of moving my body in the way that I'm used to. And then there was a fair amount of stress. And what I observed, and I've, I've talked about this in the past and I have noticed it in myself, is that during that couple months when we were preparing for the move and doing all that stuff, I, my weight was creeping up. Now, part of it could be that I was taking time off for my hip and I wasn't quite as active, but you all know that I really believe that activity, I mean, it's definitely part of your healthy lifestyle. It's definitely part of your wellness program is to make your heart healthy, is to get stronger. But as far as a weight loss tactic, it doesn't have a huge amount of impact on your weight loss abilities. It's really, you know, I always say 80 to 90% diet and 10 to activity. They're both very important for wellness and for health. But if you want to lose weight and that's your focus, you really have to clean up your diet. That's the most important. Um, but what I've observed, like I said, this time and in the past when I've been in super stressful situations, I think that the stress hormones can just have a bigger impact on us than we like to give them credit for. Because during that couple months, my weight kept creeping up, creeping up. I really wasn't doing anything different, eating the same, doing all the things I normally do, drinking ketones, you know, all the things. And my weight was creeping up and I couldn't figure it out, but I was too— like, there was too much going on for me to worry too much about it. I was like, okay, this too shall pass. Yeah, I've been at this long enough, healthy lifestyle, and having had periods of stress in the past where I put on a few pounds, it's totally normal. It's annoying, but it is totally normal. And so what I've observed now since we've been out here, started being active again, definitely the stress level is much reduced. I'm in nature, I'm in the mountains, I'm in my happy place. And you know, I get to look at this beautiful river out the back door every day. And so what I've noticed is my weight is creeping back down just perfectly. It's almost back to where it was before the whole move thing started. And so just to say that, you know, keep in mind that stress definitely affects us and our weight and our hormones much more than we like to give it credit for. Credit for. And during those times, sometimes it's good to just not worry about it too much. Don't add extra stress by stressing out that you're gaining a little bit of weight when you're in a super stressful time. Now, I'm not saying ignore it or anything, but I knew that this was a temporary situation. It was a stress that I knew was going to go away at some point soon, so I wasn't too concerned. Um, and then there's the part of being on the road and what do you do when you're staying with people who don't eat the way that you eat and that might have things around. Now I'm kind of lucky I've been doing this long enough now that it doesn't faze me whatsoever if I, you know, if there's a bunch of bread or donuts or cakes or cookies or whatever is in somebody else's house or somebody that I'm staying with and I'm a guest. I don't have a temptation for that. But what I did notice, it was very difficult for me to stay with my priority being protein. And you know, I've talked about that so much in the past. So there's this process in your body called muscle protein synthesis. And to trigger that, you have to get a certain amount of protein each and every meal that you eat in order to trigger that. And I suggest that you do aim for that because when you stimulate muscle protein synthesis, you are maintaining and possibly building muscle if you're putting enough, um, you know, stress on your muscle through resistance training or bodyweight exercises. So you always want to hit that protein amount every single time you eat. It's the best way to make sure that you're maintaining muscle and, you know, staying healthy as we age, because one of the biggest factors in aging is this loss of muscle mass over time. And if you don't do something to combat it, once you're after 30, you just lose muscle mass continuously. Now, if you eat the proper amount of protein, stay active, do resistance training, you can maintain your muscle and gain muscle into a much quote, I'm going to use air quotes, older age. Um, so, but it is possible and it's important though, to be focused on it. So even if you don't resistance train, at the very least what you can do to prevent this loss of muscle with aging, and if you ever hear the term sarcopenia, that's what it is. It's muscle loss, is to eat the proper amount of protein. So that amount, so it's really about leucine. Leucine is a specific amino acid and that's what's required to trigger muscle protein synthesis. But the way to just make sure that you get the proper amount. So for anybody under the age of about 35, you can probably get away with 30 grams of protein. Anytime that you eat 30 grams of protein, you're gonna stimulate muscle protein synthesis. For us older folks, I would say try to get 35 to 40 grams of protein in each and every time you eat to stimulate that process. And so what I observed of staying with other people and eating out in restaurant, restaurants in particular are the worst because their servings, they rely on carbs to fill people up, right? They rely on the processed foods and they put a very small amount of meat unless you're ordering a steak. If you order a steak, you know, the amount of meat you're getting, that can get pricey after a while. So if I would order things like, uh, I remember one order, I ordered fajitas without the rice and beans, without the tortillas. So basically just the veggies and the meat on a sizzling plate. And it came and it looked wonderful. It was this huge mound of food. But it was virtually all onions and peppers and like maybe 2 ounces of meat. It was kind of ridiculous. It was a very small amount. So that was what I observed was the most challenging thing, was to really keep my protein intake up. Now I did bring along my little mini NutriBullet blender and my protein powder and stuff, but it was kind of buried in the truck and so I couldn't access it. That was poor planning on my part. So that's a tip for you if you are going on an extended trip or something like that, you can take protein powder with you and a blender, small blender with you, but you just got to make sure that you're able to access it and find it. So that is something I could have done a little better. As far as anything else about that, I mean, just kind of oddball eating times, not sticking— and I'm not super strict, I intermittent fast every day, but if I have a particular day that I wake up super hungry for whatever reason, or if I was very active the day before and I'm, and I'm I'm really hungry, I don't stress myself out about it. I'll just go ahead and eat a little earlier. It doesn't bother me. But any given day, I am always trying to, at the bare minimum, have 12 hours without eating. That's, that's easy for anybody. And that's where you should absolutely start if you're not already. So cutting off your eating at about, you know, 8 o'clock at night, and then having that overnight fast and then not eating until 8 in the morning. That's very easy for most people. And absolutely the most bare minimum you need to do for metabolic health. I generally will try to do 14, 16, 18 hours without food before I go, you know, into my eating window. And so definitely with traveling and time changes and that stuff, that was probably one of the things that was most challenging. But like I said, I don't stress out about it because I just go with the flow on that stuff for the most part. There were a couple times we were, I think, in the middle of South Dakota, and we had planned on, you know, stopping to eat somewhere, and we kind of passed up our last opportunity and just really got in a spot where there was nothing to eat. And not like there's anything that great to eat on the road anyway. I mean, it ends up being, you know, like McDonald's sausage, egg, and cheese without the bun, or, you know, other things that aren't that awesome. But we did kind of wait until later in the day, and then we were actually hungry. So what I found was that, you know, I hadn't shopped quote unquote shopped in a gas station in quite a long time, but went into the gas station and was able to find, you know, there's generally plenty of beef jerky in a gas station. The only thing you have to watch with that is some of them have sugar, some of them don't, and some of them are really chewy. And really, I prefer Carnivore Crisp, which if you guys haven't tried that, oh my gosh, they're so delicious. And there's a link, I'll put the link in the show notes, has the discount code for you, but they're fantastic. If I had planned ahead, that would have been a great thing to have in the car. I try not to have snacks in the car, though, which is kind of a weird thing because you're thinking if you have a particular diet, you might be better off having snacks in the car so that way you don't have to go shopping in the gas station. But by the same token, if you have too much stuff in the car with you, you might be more tempted to snack on it, especially if it's stuff that you know that you can eat and that are healthy snacks. Because, you know, just riding in a car for hours and hours and hours, there's a lot of boredom there. And that's when people tend tend to snack, right? So I wouldn't recommend having too many snacks unless you just know the kind of person you are and you know that you can easily just have them when you need them. So like, this would have been a great backup to have in the car. And the other thing that I found in the— I didn't end up getting any of the beef jerky, by the way. I'm usually not a fan of that. But they did have hard-boiled eggs, and generally almost every gas station will have like pistachios or cashews or some kind of nuts in a bag, something like that. So there's always going to be something that you can find on the road. It's just a matter of being, you know, a little bit disciplined and not succumbing to, oh, there's all these chips right here and I just really am tired and bored and whatever and I want chips. Just, you know, if you're trying to stick with your goals while you're traveling or you're in those kind of situations, just know what you're kind of quote unquote allowed to eat and choose that and just stick with that. Because, you know, the other thing about shopping in a gas station is a lot of that stuff has— it a lot of extra sodium and preservatives and things that will just make you feel even worse while you're traveling and tired and all that sort of stuff. So there's definitely ways to stay on track. It just requires a little bit of planning. And then of course, staying active while you're on the road or in the car for a long time. We tried to stop every couple of hours, just stretch our legs a little bit. And then we also did stopping at kind of like roadside oddities sort of things where we'd at least get to walk around a little bit. And just kind of break up the monotony of driving across the plains of the Midwest and towards Montana. So hopefully you found that somewhat useful. I would say just plan ahead. That's the best thing that you can do. Like I said, I did some good planning. I brought the protein powder and the shake, but then I didn't put it in the right box or was easily, easily accessible. So just think about those things ahead of time. And, you know, part of the problem with us is that we kind of had it— we were down to the wire on the move. The last 2 days, I actually didn't even pack the clothes that I was going to bring with us on this 6-month excursion until the second day that the movers were there, because I was still running around the house doing packing in the house and stuff. So it'll be a miracle if I really have actually what I need for this 6 months in terms of clothing. I know I have my snowboard gear, so that's the most important thing, but Um, yeah, just give yourself the time that you need before a trip to plan, to prepare, to get the things that you need to have with you in place, and that will make things a whole lot easier. So, uh, going forward, I'm planning things out right now to the end of the year. I've got some great guests coming up. I'm recording again in the little booth in Bozeman, uh, in 2 weeks, and I'll basically have the rest of the episodes episodes for this year completed, which is good because like I said, we're going to be traveling, it's going to be the holidays, there's going to be a whole lot going on. But in terms of content, especially going into the new year, I'll have some things on, you know, getting started with keto. Beginning of the new year, there's always a lot of people interested in weight loss or other goals like changing their habits. And so there will always be a lot of content around that because, you know, that's what I'm passionate about. But if there's anything that you think of that you would love to hear more about, you would love to have researched more, you would love to hear from a particular guest, a particular expert in some field, let me know because I will always do my best to provide the content for you. I want to provide the content that helps you reach your goals and live your best life and feel healthy and feel happy and all of those kinds of things. So I'm always open to suggestions for guests. I'm also open to anyone who's been living the low-carb life for extended amount of time, like say over a year, those people are such a great wealth of information. How to make this lifestyle sustainable, tips and tricks, things that you can eat, different recipes, different ways to think of how you can live low carb and not feel like you're missing out. So I always love to hear from those kind of guests. I had more of those in the beginning. The challenge is that, you know, of course expert guests are used to talking and being on video and, and love doing that sort of stuff and promoting whatever their latest work is. But us kind of like quote unquote average or everyday keto low-carb people, you know, they're busy with work, they're busy with their kids, they're not used to being on camera, they don't know if they want to tell their story to the whole world. But if you are out there and that's you, I want to hear from you. So I'm always available at info@healnourishgrow.com. Just send me an email or there is actually a form on the website if you are submitting an idea for a guest, you can put it on there as well. But also things to write about, any recipes for the holidays, all that sort of stuff. That's what I'm working on the next few months. So please be sure to let me know how I can help you reach your food goals, help your holiday table stay keto, whatever it is. I'm here for it. So, um, so anyway, that is the update. I hope that you found some useful information in here. I know that a lot of people have been kind of interested in this whole little Vegabond tour just because it's like, you know, when in your life you ever get to do this? It's not very often, especially once you have kids and you're married and that kind of thing. This, this kind of opportunity to be in different places and experience some new things doesn't come around very often. So we're really thankful that we got to do this, and we're looking forward to getting our boys out with us for the holidays. We're going to be back in Cincinnati for a week to around Christmas to be with them and then to take them snowboarding, hopefully in January over their break. So it's all good. And see our friends, of course, because we already miss them quite a bit. But you know, there's, like I said, there's times in your life, how often can you do this? And how often do you have the chance to visit a few places that you might think about living that you haven't experienced before? It's, it's kind of a, it's real blessing because A lot of people, you move for a job or move for something, you have no idea if you're gonna like the area. But at least we can live in an area for a month or visit it over the weekend and look at it with a more critical eye towards living there and just use that information to hopefully make a good decision going forward. But I will say I'm already kind of feeling a little bit like Dorothy, like there's no place like home. And there is this beauty of what you're familiar with and your friends and people that you know and places that you know that has a definite draw to it. And I'm already feeling that, so it'll just be interesting to see where we end up. So my other question to you guys, since I haven't had one of these like solo episodes in a long time, is if you do find this whole vagabond tour idea interesting, would it be, you know, would you like me to put out a mini episode each week. Won't have a lot of editing. I might not even do video, maybe just audio and just, you know, tell you what we've done for the week or what we've experienced or what sites we see. I know some people prefer the audio content. They prefer, it's like, you know, read a book on tape, you are book in the car, taking it with you on your run. You can easily catch up on things via audio that you might not have time to actually read. So if that sounds of interest or if there's any other kind of little mini episode that you would like, let me know, cuz I'm, like I said, I'm here for it. I wanna help you guys. I wanna help you meet your goals. And if you think this is entertaining or interesting, or it would help you go on your walk to have like a little 15-minute blurb about, you know, kind of like where, instead of where's Waldo, where's Cheryl McColgan this week. So anyway, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Let me know how I can help, and I will be with you on next Wednesday.