25 Tips for Nomads to Stay Healthy
About Us
Darren and I are early retirees who left corporate careers in our late 40s. We are nomadic except for three months a year when we spend time in our tiny home in the Great Plains of the United States.
We spend 40 - 120 days per year thru-hiking in the EU and about 90 days per year in the Caribbean and Central America. This blog documents our journey to nomadic living and financial independence and the adjustments we’ve made to make the lifestyle work.
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Health and Vitality in Early Retirement
Staying healthy and fit while traveling can be challenging for several reasons. When traveling, daily schedules are often irregular, so keeping a regular sleep and exercise routine can be challenging. Exercise equipment may not be readily available, and while eating out at restaurants is enjoyable, it can result in eating more than one normally would or choosing less healthy options. Traveling frequently also means we can catch a colds, viruses, or other diseases our bodies are not immune to.
We used to travel a lot for work and pleasure during our corporate careers and unfortunately experienced all of these issues. During that time, we also gained quite a bit of weight. Although not all of it could be attributed to the travel, we frequently noticed we had added an extra pound or two when returning from a multi-day business trip.
After Weight Loss, Maintenance is a Challenge
During the Covid pandemic, we joined most of the world in ceasing our travels. Instead, we prepared and ate meals at home and maintained a regular sleep and exercise schedule. We made frequent use of the nearby walking trails and sidewalks. Rather than drive to the grocery store a mile away, we walked. Through these changes, we each lost 40 lbs.
A year later, as we started our nomadic life, one concern we had was how to maintain our health while traveling full-time. Our previous travel experiences had taught us that it is harder to maintain health and fitness while “away from home.” We also know that as people age, they begin losing muscle mass. Because we had lost quite a bit of weight and had become stronger, we were particularly concerned with maintaining what we had accomplished.
Although less significant, another consideration is the financial value of maintaining our health. Regular exercise and staying healthy can save Americans over $2000 a year. This can be particularly noticeable to early retirees as they begin paying health insurance premiums themselves before Medicare kicks begins.
25 Ideas for Staying Healthy While Being Nomadic
Set Your Goals
While “health” is a great thing to be concerned with, it’s not specific enough to count as a goal. Ideally, your goals are metrics that can be measured and tracked.
Consider setting some goals such as:
Take X number of steps per day every day.
Improve my core strength enough to carry a 20 lb backpack for six hours per day by June.
Lower my BMI to 23-25 by the end of the year.
Maintain my metabolic age range within five years of chronological age.
2. Select Self-Catered Lodging
While it can be tempting to book the least expensive option for lodging or select a hotel room based on loyalty to the hotel brand, we often elect to stay in self-catered lodging. We spend less per night most of the time and eat healthier food when our accommodation has food preparation and storage capabilities (i.e. kitchen or kitchenette).
For a one or two-night stay, a place with a microwave and refrigerator will generally suffice. These are typically found in most midscale hotels in the US and overseas in hostels, gites, and B&Bs. For more extended stays, we look for lodging with a kitchen, refrigerator, some basic pots and pans, and a sink.
3. Pack Fitness Clothes
It's pretty easy to find excuses not to exercise while traveling. One of the easiest is to say, “I don’t have the right clothes/shoes with me.” To avoid this trap, always travel with clean and comfortable fitness wear and keep it readily available. Fitness wear doesn’t need to be fancy. We keep it basic—short sleeve shirt, fast-dry bra and underwear, socks, and shorts or yoga pants. For shoes, we pick athletic shoes in a dark or neutral color that can multitask and pair with casual outfits.
The aerobic activity we are most consistent with is walking. It is free and can be done indoors and outdoors. Another option is jogging and running. Whether you walk, jog, or run, it can be done almost anywhere and is a great way to see the local area that requires basic clothing and shoes.
4. Pack Some Basic Fitness Supplies
As we age, it is crucial to stay physically active and do regular strengthening exercises to minimize muscle mass loss. Many of the places we travel to do not have exercise facilities on site or nearby. Therefore, we take along a few essential pieces of equipment.
We worked with a personal fitness trainer who helped us develop a workout routine using our body weight, resistance bands, and some light weights. If you don’t have access to a trainer, we highly recommend the workouts in the book by Mind Pump podcast host Sal De Stefano, especially for folks in middle age.
Our trainer suggested these travel-friendly weights, which can be filled at your short-term rental with sand from a home improvement store for just a few dollars.
We’ve also used these resistance bands to add in some 5 to 25-pound resistance. They’ve held up quite well, weigh only a few ounces, and pack nicely.
Another excellent option for travel-friendly fitness is to practice yoga. It’s often easy to buy a four or six-week package from a local studio in a mid-size or larger city.
5. Pack Basic Health Monitoring Supplies
To monitor our health, we travel with a scale and our Charge4 FitBits. By measuring and tracking health metrics, we can better stay on track with our goals.
We like the Fitbit Charge 4 and Fitbit App as they make it easy to track sleep, the number of steps per day, and food intake. While we aren’t consistent with logging our food, we do look every day to check our sleep, the number of miles we are walking, and the number of calories we are burning.
The travel-friendly scale we use to measure our weight has been highly recommended by other nomads, and we’ve enjoyed using it for the past two years as it is robust and lightweight, weighing only 1.5 pounds.
6. Pack A First Aid Kit and Basic Medications
We travel with a small First Aid kit to deal with minor injuries should (when) they occur. We also keep a couple days’ worth of cold and flu medications. While essential medications are readily available wherever we travel, sometimes a cut, scrape, cold, cough, or even bad allergies can happen late in the evening or on a weekend or holiday when stores are closed and might not open for another day or two.
7. Stay Hydrated
There are many water consumption myths out there. We’ve found that we simply feel better when we are well-hydrated. We more or less drink water when we feel thirsty, and the best way to stay hydrated is to have a water bottle nearby all the time.
Our favorite water bottle is the Hydro Flask 32-ounce Trail Series. Water stays cool for up to 24 hours, fits easily into my backpack and daypack, and is easy to clean and constructed of durable stainless steel.
We don’t usually take electrolytes but rather generally rely on getting enough electrolytes from our usual food intake, which frequently includes some fresh fruit with a bit of salt for snacks. However, when we are through-hiking six to eight hours a day in warm weather and expect we will be sweating a lot, we will take along some salty nuts and some powdered electrolyte drink mix.
8. Have a Repertoire of Delicious Healthy Meals
We keep a list of favorite healthy recipes that include ingredients common enough to find anywhere we go. Most come from one Skinnytaste. What we like about Skinnytaste recipes is that the nutritional information is provided by a registered dietician, Heather K. Jones. We also love that Gina’s recipes are slimmed-down versions of favorite foods with whole ingredients and lots of flavors. The Skinnytaste website and cookbooks contain recipes from different cuisines and cultures.
If you decide to purchase a Skinnytaste book via the Kindle store, follow Gina Homolka as an author. Fairly frequently, you can get other cookbooks from her via Kindle at significant discounts throughout the year. Our favorite cookbook of hers at the moment is her original book.
In addition to keeping all of Gina’s books on our Kindle app, we’ve uploaded a few of our favorites into an app called Paprika. Not only does Paprika store your favorite recipes in an easy-to-use app, it also has a shopping list function which makes it easy to use in-store while shopping. Another feature of Paprika we appreciate is that it will quickly scale recipe ingredients up or down.
9. Pack Basic Cooking Supplies
When staying at an Airbnb or other self-catered lodging, you can almost count on the knives being dull, measuring utensils being missing or inadequate, and decent storage containers lacking.
To have enjoyable cooking experiences on the road, we recommend a few items to pack: a food scale, measuring cups, sharp knives, and a couple of your favorite storage containers. They take up little space or weight in our luggage and make cooking “at home” more pleasant.
We’ve already owned the kitchen items we take on the road. In case you don’t already have a lightweight kitchen scale, we highly recommend this one due to its easy on/off switch (so that it doesn’t drain the battery while in your luggage), measuring ability in grams and ounces, and small size. At under $15 and just 8 ounces, you’ll never have to convert foreign recipes into teaspoons or tablespoons; just use this handy food scale!
10. Have a Meal and Snack Plan
While it’s tempting to “wing it” when on the road, having a meal and snack plan that you can easily stick to will be a tremendous help in achieving and maintaining weight loss while living as a nomad. Our favorite planning tool is the Skinnytaste Ultimate Meal Planner, with a removable menu and shopping list.
11. Purchase Groceries Based On Your Meal Plan
Upon arrival at a new destination, we usually make a reconnaissance trip to the local market or grocery store to see what is available, scope out local specialties, and pick up something simple for the first meal or two. Our nomadic standbys are pasta, some veggies, a salad for dinner, coffee, cream or milk, and oatmeal for breakfast.
We then put together a meal plan for the next several days or weeks before heading to the grocery store. We often pick two or three local specialty items to try out; however, we’ve done best by sticking to our meal plan and the shopping list in our Paprika app.
12. Get Plenty of Sleep
We didn’t realize it then, but we spent much of our corporate life sleep-deprived. It wasn’t until we left our careers that we realized just how sleep-deprived we were and learned about the connection between sleep deprivation and weight gain, as well as other severe ailments like diabetes and other chronic illnesses that come with it.
While it’s not always possible to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night, we aim to get a minimum of seven hours per day. There are many recommendations and even books about getting better sleep. One thing that has worked well for us is going to bed at a reasonably consistent time. We seldom set an alarm clock and usually wake up well before the sun rises.
13. Take a First Aid Course
We travel quite a bit in remote places and enjoy outdoor activities, so basic First Aid training and skills could be precious to us. Darren has taken First Aid and CPR training several times. I plan to refresh my First Aid skills by taking a First Aid class soon when we are at our home base in Kansas. Whether you travel to remote areas or not, consider getting First Aid training. You never know when you might need to be “the first responder” while waiting on help to arrive.
14. Get Health Insurance
Make sure you have health insurance that covers your potential needs wherever you go. This is more important in the United States than anywhere else since even moderate health situations can bankrupt most people. Shopping for reasonable options? Check out our article on health insurance for semi-nomadic people here.
If you leave the US for more than a year, you’ll have more flexibility in health insurance options. Your needs and options will vary depending on where you go and how long you stay. In some countries, you may be able to skip private health insurance as affordable health care is written into their country constitutions and accessible as self-pay. You’ll need proof of private health insurance to stay in the country. Be sure to check the requirements where you are going.
15. Get Regular Check-ups
In our corporate careers, an annual exam was covered, as well as procedures like mammograms and pap smears for women, so we used this coverage each year. After doing a little research, we found that annual exams may not be necessary, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. In this article, we learned that many doctors prefer a much more lengthy intake process to learn the patient's background and the development of “primary care maintenance” visits is in alignment with preventative care, new symptoms, or ongoing care.
As we’ve moved our home base from the east coast to the Great Plains, we will likely take this opportunity to find and establish a good relationship with a physician or nurse practitioner there, to learn more about appropriate preventative care in middle age, and reach out to them as needed while we are traveling.
The international health insurance that we use does not cover annual exams. This is one of the downsides of such a plan versus health insurance through the MarketPlace. The exams are, however, reimbursable through our self-funded HSA, and the expense goes toward our annual deductible.
16. Read and Listen to Podcasts on Health
Nomadic living often includes blocks of time when traveling from one place to another. These are great times to read a book on health or listen to podcasts on health topics that interest you.
A great podcast on health, longevity and midlife health topics is The Drive. Another podcast that reviews scientific evidence about a wide range of topics including health is Science Vs.
17. Stay Up to Date on Vaccines and Medications
It is never fun to get sick. It is even less fun when traveling in unfamiliar areas. Stay up to date on vaccines and medications. Reduce your risk of unplanned expenses and hassle of getting sick by getting vaccinated for preventable diseases. If you are unsure what vaccinations might be required and recommended where and when you plan to travel, consult your doctor or travel physician.
If you are concerned that your personal physician may not be familiar with vaccination and medical needs where you plan to travel, we highly recommend seeing a travel doctor. A travel doctor takes a more nuanced approach by reviewing your itinerary and recommending treatments and providing advice specific to the locations you will be going.
18. Use the CDC website
Stay up to date on travel health notices, required and recommended vaccinations, non-vaccine-preventable diseases, and other health issues in other countries by accessing the CDC Travelers Health Portal. This can be very useful when traveling to the tropics and less developed countries.
As an example, I am writing this article while in Bonaire. After going to the CDC site, I checked the recommended vaccines and found I was up to date. I did learn that Dengue and Zika viruses—both spread by mosquitoes—can be found on the island, and that the government health department recommends avoiding bug bites.
19. Use Insect Repellent
In the suburban US, the incidence of disease-carrying mosquitoes is much less than in much of the world. In many other regions, mosquitos are a serious health risk. Therefore, avoiding mosquito bites becomes more important when living a nomadic lifestyle. It should be noted that many of the “natural” insect repellents that are on the market in the US are not labeled as effective for disease prevention.
We recommend using a DEET product while traveling to areas with insect-borne diseases. If you like the “natural” products, save them for areas with negligible risk of contracting a serious insect-vectored disease. If you have a strong personal aversion to using DEET, you may want to reconsider traveling to regions or countries where virus-vectoring insects are a problem.
20. Use Sunscreen
Skin cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer in the United States. It is estimated that 1 in 5 Americans will develop skin cancer in their lives. It’s relatively inexpensive to use sunscreen as a preventative measure to reduce damage to our skin. This is especially important for those in their teens and 20s, as most skin cancers that develop in our 40s and 50s are from sun or sunbed exposure that occurred when we were younger.
If your nomadic activities include ocean swimming, snorkeling and diving, we recommend using a reef-safe UVA/UVB sunscreen to keep your skin and wildlife, such as coral- and fish-safe. Our favorite reef-safe sunscreen is Sun Bum—it does not feel greasy and does not clog pores.
When traveling with sunscreen and other liquids that have a lid that opens easily to dispense, we recommend placing a piece of plastic wrap between the lid and bottle to serve as a protective barrier so that the bottle does not expel its contents during air travel should the lid open.
21. Keep Digital Medical Records Accessible
In an earlier article, we discussed how to keep your records and information safe while being nomadic. Many healthcare providers now have online portals for accessing digital medical records. We recommend setting up your access and then keeping your username and password for your medical record portal in your password manager (like 1Password). As a backup—if you don’t have internet access at a time when you may have to show proof of insurance, vaccination records, or other critical medical information—we recommend keeping an electronic version (PDF, photo, etc) on your phone.
22. Don’t Drink Too Much Alcohol
Many early retirees find that they drink less alcohol in early retirement than they did while working. A lot of drinking culture circles around cocktails after work and on business trips. For some it also includes drinking in response to a stressful job. Find other ways to relax while enjoying your nomadic lifestyle, like long walks or enjoying non-alcoholic beverages unique to the place you are staying.
23. Focus on Flexibility and Posture
As one increases or starts a new physical activity, some underlying health issues may emerge that you never knew about before. Two common issues are bulging discs and back pain from from poor posture while sitting too long at a desk. Additionally, aging bodies tend to become less flexible and slower to recover after physical activities. Regular stretching, yoga, and staying physically active can help people remain flexible and thus less susceptible to injuries.
Hiring a personal trainer to design exercises for you to stay fit and/or to address a chronic issue can be really beneficial to your health and happiness. Nomads can also work virtually with personal trainers throughout their travels.
24. Remember—Mental Health Is Also Part of Your Health
Many early retirees report struggling with mental health issues. Work was often a distraction from other issues for many people, or a source of identity for decades. Now with more free time available and freedom (ie. less direction), retirees often struggle with purpose, identity, and relationships.
Through online courses, books and podcasts, we’ve learned over the past couple of years that most of our thoughts, stories, and life scripts are things we inherit or are the result of a very active mind. With the time freedom that can come with early retirement, many retirees may learn that they’ve suffered from some mental illness (e.g. depression) or they are not neurotypical (e.g. autism spectrum).
In the US we’re often not taught about how the mind works. As mental health has only really recently received emphasis in the wake of the Covid-10 pandemic, there are more but not adequate resources. We highly recommend that people in early retirement learn how the mind works and how they can also maintain or improve their mental health. Helpful resources are therapy, reading about the mind and happiness, or finding a support group in your community or online.
25. Stay Active
Either keep doing physically active activities or begin them. It has been recognized for some time that a sedentary lifestyle increases many causes of death including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancers, not to mention many other issues like obesity, loss of muscle strength, stress, depression, and anxiety.
Remaining physically active may be a simple as going for a walk every day or more active like gardening, swimming, and backpacking. Regardless of what type of activities one chooses, simply remaining active can significantly improve one’s physical and mental health and longevity.
Staying Healthy On The Road: Our Summary
There are many ways to stay healthy when traveling full time that we hadn’t considered when we traveled for work and infrequent vacations. With the increase in our free time, we now have the bandwidth to better focus on our health. As a result, we eat better, sleep better, and are lighter, stronger, and more aware of our minds and bodies.
While this is certainly not a comprehensive list, we hope that you find some of these tips helpful in your own travels and reaching your health goals.
Do you have any other nomadic health tips that you feel should be included? If so, please leave us a note in the comments.
