In this solo YouTube guide, JJ Virgin explains how to keep fitness, weight‑loss, and sleep goals on track while traveling for business or pleasure. She starts by emphasizing daily self‑monitoring with a portable bio‑impedance scale, then walks through pre‑trip planning—booking hotels with functional gyms, scouting equipment, and packing a TRX or resistance bands plus workout shoes for on‑the‑go exercise. Nutrition is tackled next: she recommends packing protein‑rich bars, shakes, grass‑fed beef sticks, essential amino acids, creatine, electrolytes, enzymes, a food scale, and using the Cronometer app and a protein cheat sheet to hit macro targets. Hydration is addressed with a reusable water bottle and electrolytes to avoid the swelling that comes from flight‑induced dehydration. For jet‑lag and sleep, she outlines a multi‑pronged protocol—changing phone time zones immediately, using caffeine strategically, morning workouts, bright‑light exposure, blue‑blocker glasses, eye masks, earplugs, Sleep Candy, magnesium, and meditation (via Emily Fletcher’s Ziva). She ends by teasing a follow‑up video on the impact of alcohol on weight‑loss. Throughout, JJ blends practical product suggestions with habit‑forming strategies to ensure travelers don’t lose progress on their health goals.
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Just because you're going on vacation doesn't mean your health goals get time off too. Now, whether you're traveling for business or for pleasure, your wellness routine doesn't have to take a back seat, no matter how stamped your passport is. You won't always have access to a complete gym or all the equipment you use daily, of course, but with a little motivation and creativity and some planning, your fitness and weight loss goals can move with you wherever you go. So here are the things that I do because I travel about 80% of the time. The first one is I bring my scale. Now, this has got a benefit too because then you can weigh your luggage, right? But I bring my scale. I literally get on the scale every single day. And again, when I talk scale, I'm talking about a bioimpedance scale so I can look at what's going on with my total body water and get those guesstimates for my body fat and my muscle mass. So that's the first thing that I always make sure that I have. And if you can't bring a whole big one, Renpho actually has a small travel scale too. So you can fit one in, no excuses there. Next thing is I plan ahead. So I always try to book these, book hotels with gyms, and I actually will find out what they have in their gym because I've gone to enough of these places over the years that I've been duped where they go, we have a fitness center. First of all, if they have a fitness room, you know you're in trouble. But generally they'll say something, I go in there and it's like a broken treadmill, right? So what you want to make sure of is that you actually know what's in the gym. Or if there's a gym close by. And the other thing that I do is I travel with a TRX because I can throw that into a door jamb and I can work out anywhere. So you can travel with a TRX, you can travel with bands, and of course travel with your workout shoes 'cause you can always go for a hike or a walk or whatever. What I like to do when I'm traveling is to look at what's around to see if I can try something new, especially if there's something like a great hiking area nearby. So the other thing I do is travel with food, and this is a huge one because otherwise you are going to waste a bunch of money on stuff that's going to hurt your health. So I will travel with my bars, I travel with my shakes, I travel with beef sticks, grass-fed beef sticks, I travel with my essential amino acids and my creatine and my Electro Replenish and my enzymes. I also travel with a food scale, and of course I've got my Cronometer app on my phone. And why I do this is so that I make sure that I can get my protein in. By the way, I've got a protein cheat sheet to make this easy for you, jjvirgin.com/proteincheatsheet. But a lot of times you'll end up somewhere and they either don't have anything that has protein in it, or it has like, you know, you'll get like a little piece of chicken with your meal. And I'm like, what was that? So I know that I've got my bars, my shakes, the beef sticks. I am covered. And at the very least, if I've got some essential amino acid, I'm covered. So I always do that. And I always have my enzymes because I never know what kind of food I'm going to be facing. And I know I'm going to need a little help. So there's that. And while I might pack some of that in my travel, my suitcase, in my carry-on, I make sure I always have enough stuff because you never ever know when you're going to get stuck somewhere and there's nothing around for you. I also always have a water bottle in my carry-on so that I'm covered. Now for time zone adjusting, and this is super huge. I don't know what's been going on lately, but it seems like I've been going back and forth between the West Coast and the East Coast like every 2 weeks, and that can really mess you up. I mean, think about just how much daylight savings time adjustment can mess you up. So what I do for time zone adjusting is I use caffeine, I use my sleep candy, and I use light, and I use blue blocker glasses. Here's what I do. First thing that I do is as soon as I get on the plane, I change my phone to the new time zone and I start living as if I'm going to the new time zone. Now, I will make sure that I've set myself up so that I have ample time to sleep. Um, and also I will use workouts. Like in the morning, I will get up, have some caffeine, get a workout in so I'm back on my schedule. And of course, you get up in the morning, expose yourself to light because that tells your brain you're awake. I will also use dark glasses and blue blockers. So at night, if I need to, I'll start using my blue blockers to get away from the screens, or I'll use sunglasses even to just make my brain think that it's more nighttime. So we travel with these little dots. You can even use duct tape to put over the ridiculous things they have in hotel rooms, like all of the different TVs and stuff that are blinky. Those will mess up your sleep. Speaking of sleep, you can either travel with the little dots if you don't happen to have them. An eye mask works great., and I have a very specific eye mask that I use. I will put it into the show notes. That is a complete blocker of all light and also doesn't mess up your eyelashes, women. So that's important. Now, you never know where you're going to be and what the situation is going to be with light and noise. Just, I was trying to think of where I was recently. I was in Berkeley, California, and the hotel, the way the drapes closed, they didn't close. Like there was a whole thing of light on either side. So we had to wear our eye masks and we were in Berkeley on the street so you could hear everything. So earplugs, eye masks for the win. Always travel with those, and especially on the plane, you're going to definitely need those things. And again, Sleep Candy and magnesium. I'll use Sleep Candy to start to help me. I know that, let's say I'm switching to West Coast to East Coast and I need to keep— get myself to fall asleep a little bit earlier, I will use Sleep Candy. I'll take it 2 hours before I really need to to help me start to fall asleep sooner. And magnesium also works well too. Now, this is the one I got from my girlfriend Emily Fletcher of Ziva Meditation. She goes, you know, I can totally hack jet lag and I just use meditation to do it. Do that to help you fall asleep at night. There's great sleeping meditations. Emily's got a great one. So meditation can work really well here too. And then one more, and you think about this, this is why I travel with that water bottle in my carry-on, because first of all, you don't want to go drink out of plastic bottles, right? And now every airport's got some kind of a water fountain. So I travel in my carry-on with my water bottle with electrolytes so that I can make sure that I still stay well hydrated as well. A lot of times if you've been traveling, you've been on a lot of flights, you come out and you just feel like swollen and puffy. That's not being overhydrated, that's being dehydrated. And now you've got, you know, all this extracellular swelling. And so what you want to do here is make sure that you are drinking Good clean water, add some electrolytes, that will help a bunch. Now I know that when you're traveling could mean that you're eating out more too. Again, that's why I always travel with my enzymes and I check out menus ahead of time, but also might mean you're drinking more too. And when I say drinking, I mean alcohol. So the big question is, do you have to avoid alcohol to reach your ideal weight? Let's talk about this. Watch this next video where I'm gonna dive into the science on how alcohol impacts your body and whether or not there's a place for it on the path to your weight loss goals.
