6 Healthy Things I Learned While On Vacation
I spent last week with my family, helping to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday. We headed to a warm, tropical location for some much-appreciated time en famille with sun, sand and sea. While we did little more than laze about and linger by the pool, I did stumble upon a few healthy thoughts while sitting in the shade.
1. Tortilla chips are much better when you're somewhere warm and/or tropical. Think about it: crispy chips consumed in front of the boob tube in the dead of winter may have the whole "comfort", "cozy" thing going for them, but the idea makes me feel shut-in, parched, and puffy. BUT, when consumed at the end of a sunny day, while watching the sunset and accompanied by fresh salsa and a cold beer—oh so much more appealing! And bad for the waistline when eaten at the pace/frequency we did. (Note: Just because the chips we chomped were from blue corn doesn't make them that much healthier. Just marginally so.)
2. A power outage can be a lot of fun. I was not yet living in New York City during one of the most recent, most infamous blackouts (in the summer of 2003) but the several-hour-long power outage in our condo rental last week made for some serious comedy—just me, my husband and my nutty parents, stuck in the dark with nary a flashlight. (The baby was asleep.) I think they call that "quality time."
3. Even a diehard Real Simple-type needs a break from being organized. For whatever reason, my normal tendencies to keep things neat, tidy and ever-so-stacked-up dissolve when I'm on vacation. And by that I mean, I can trash a hotel room in 15 minutes, and looking at my room in the condo you'd have thought that ten slobby teens lived there. I find the time off from housekeeping so liberating—if only for a week, in someone else's house. Back at home I resume my regularly scheduled programming of constant toddler-pick-up, corralling the magazines and books and keeping up with the dishes, but being a short-term slob is liberating.
4. Looser clothes=lifted spirits. At the end of most workdays, I can't wait to tear off my clothes and slip into something more comfortable—literally. While I'm hardly wearing Hérve Léger to work, I am aware of my snug waistband and other sartorial constraints. So what a pleasure it is for the body AND soul to be released from such bondage for a few days—nothing but kaftans and cover-ups and drawstring waists, yessiree. I swear I think that can lower your blood pressure by a few digits.
5. When groceries are that expensive, you HAVE to eat simply and healthy. As in many tourist destinations, the items at the grocery store were very, very expensive—in many cases nearly double the cost. So when it came time to whip up healthy but tasty dinners what weren't double digit expenditures per person, the fewer, the simpler, and the more local the ingredients the better. Fish with a few veggies, grilled meats, fresh fruit for dessert (even a pint of ice cream was nearly $12)—nothing too fancy or involved, and certainly not packaged or processed. In the end, while it may have been challenging at first, our meals were easy and healthier than the ones we might have prepared if we'd been able to fill the cart in ways we might ordinarily!
6. Fear of the sun is a generational thing. Each afternoon, as we headed out for a late visit to the beach, I'd slap tons of sunscreen on myself and on my toddler. After all, even though it was 4 pm doesn't mean the sun wasn't still capable of burning! And yet every day my mom made a comment about how this time of day was so wonderful, since the "The sun can't do anything now!" I gave her a hard time about it, even though I myself didn't start wearing sunscreen until I was a college student and willingly fried myself on many a teenage vacation. (Of course, the latest news is that it's not too late to lotion up—most people get just 23 percent of their sun exposure before age 18!) My parents' generation didn't wear sunscreen AT ALL, of course. It wasn't widely available until the 60s and 70s and even then—usually billed as "sun tan lotion" it wasn't as protective as today's varieties! So I can hardly blame her for still holding onto some beliefs from an earlier, bronzed era.
