Can You Live Life Naturally While Traveling?
How to maintain your natural lifestyle standards while traveling? You have your systems, habits, and routines at home to maintain your lifestyle standards: whole foods, less waste, and plenty made from scratch. Travel can disrupt the systems you had set up. How to actually keep your standards and live life naturally even abroad, away from your normal daily life?
What Does It Mean to Live Life Naturally While Traveling?
In this post, I am unpacking for you the ways you can travel mindfully and keep the values of life with you on the go. We are not focusing too much on the travel options or how to choose a hotel, but more on what to pack, how to pack, and the healthy habits to live a more natural lifestyle on the road.
The natural lifestyle is not about perfection; you just need to find a way to adapt your current lifestyle to the new surroundings for a short time period.
So let’s dive deeper!
Your Values Travel With You
Traveling does not need to mean you have to leave your natural lifestyle behind when you leave home. If a natural lifestyle with consuming less and avoiding waste is part of your standards and who you are, it travels with you and doesn’t magically stop when you leave home.
Living naturally simply looks a bit different while traveling.
Your systems need to adapt to different environments, but your values will help to guide you on what is important for you for your trip.
Reality is Different at Home
While at home, you might have an ideal time to wake up, structured habits for movement, and time set aside to bake homemade bread. You use whole foods to make your meals, preferably the majority from scratch, even.
When traveling, you can still hit the farmers’ market, choose amazing natural sights for walking, and make sure you get enough sleep.
The most important things will follow when you use a bit of time ahead to plan and identify your non-negotiables and what your way to travel naturally is.
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Identify Your Non-Negotiables
To figure out what you actually keep important and what you want to carry to vacation with you, start with these simple questions:
- What habits help me feel my best?
- Which routines support my physical and mental well-being?
- What do I miss most when I am away from home?
- What are the 3–5 habits that make me feel like I’m living naturally, even when everything else around me changes?
These are the standards that help you live naturally, even when you’re away from home.
Start Small
If you’re new to natural living, don’t try to maintain twenty different habits while traveling. Pick three things that matter most to you and focus on those first.
For example, here are some of my non-negotiables when I travel:
- Drinking enough water to keep hydrated
- Getting enough sleep to feel energized
- Eating mostly whole foods, avoiding unhealthy foods
- Moving daily in nature and spending time outdoors
- Limiting waste where possible and practical
These habits I have developed and created over the years, not in one night. Once you know your own priorities, it becomes easier to maintain them while travelling.
| RELATED: Natural Lifestyle Habits You Should Start
Traveling is meant to be enjoyed.
The purpose of these habits is to help you enjoy your trip, not restrict it.
Try to think about moments when traveling that you have felt uneasy about doing and what you would not do at home normally. Those pain points are your cues to dig deeper. Everything goes smoother when you already know what you can research, plan, or prepare before you leave on a vacation.
Prepare Before You Leave
Preparation starts at home before the departure date.
Scale Down Your Groceries
About a week before you are actually leaving, start reducing grocery purchases. Use perishables first, and freeze or dry what you see you cannot consume before departure. Freezing some meals will also help you when returning home, as well as reduce unnecessary food waste.
Examples on How to Wrap up the Kitchen Before Leaving
- Grate leftover cheese and roll in potato starch to freeze grated cheese for cooking later.
- Chop any bouquets of herbs to freeze or hang to dry.
- Freeze any leftover milk or yoghurt for future pancakes or crêpes.
Prepare Simple Travel Snacks
To avoid lots of single-use packaging and food waste, make some simple snacks on the go. For example, these are our tried-and-tested natural snacks and bites on the go:
- Dry-roasted almonds and dry-roasted cashews, mixed with raisins or other dried fruits
- Bananas, mandarins, carrots or boiled eggs – things that don’t need any packages
- Swedish oven pancakes with honey or seed butter spread and piled like sandwich
- Simple carrot flatbreads
Consider also making familiar snacks, make it easier to maintain habits on the road. Homemade snacks also help avoid relying entirely on convenience foods.
| RELATED: Homemade snacks and bites
Pack for a Natural Lifestyle While Traveling
A big part of the waste when traveling comes from unnecessary packaging, which could be simply avoided.
Bring the Basics That Support Your Habits
Reusable containers help reduce waste and make healthy choices easier. Pack your own food on the road if you prefer to avoid excess sugar, salt, additives, and colorants and single-use packages.
- Soap bar with a metal soap box
- Reusable water bottle and/ or thermos bottle
- Metal food containers for snacks
| RELATED: My Favourite Reusable Takeaway Dishes
Water on the Go
Fill your reusable bottle whenever possible. If the tap water at the destination is not drinkable, consider buying a canister of water or a larger bottle to fill your travel bottle for the day trips instead of buying a hundred tiny plastic bottles on the go.
Eat Naturally While Traveling
Natural lifestyle choices might feel difficult in some destinations. Not just avoiding street food packages, but as well choosing the healthy options might be tricky.
Focus on Balance Rather Than Perfection
Travelling is not about following your home routine perfectly. Try to enjoy the local foods and experiences, but on your terms and not overconsume. Think: would you choose that as well at home? If you eat a heavier lunch, make sure you get some walking miles and lighter portions in the evening to balance it out.
Focus on foods that help you feel good.
Eating Out
Choose a restaurant over takeaway to reduce unnecessary packaging. Google restaurant menus in advance to scout out the area you are heading and not to be troubled at the destination when you are feeling hungry. Pick portions that align with how you want to feel and what are aligned with your standards and values.
| RELATED: Sourcing Locally Grown Vegetables
Sleep and Maintain Your Rhythm
Sleep is actually one of the easiest habits to neglect while travelling. A few times, we joked with my husband that, after returning from the trip, we feel that we need another vacation to recover from the voyage. That was for us a sign to reconsider our core sleep standards before the next trip.
For the easiest switch to travel mode, maintain a rhythm that resembles your regular life when possible. Also, returning home is easier when sleep habits stay relatively consistent. If the irregular bedtime does not affect you, don’t stress about it. The main thing is that you feel good and aligned throughout the trip.
Let there be enough sleep to support your energy to make your vacation worth having!
Move Your Body Naturally
Moving daily is easy for many on a voyage when there is so much to see. Be mindful of how you move and what transport you can use to add to your voyage.
Walking
Walking helps you discover places you would otherwise miss. It is mostly the easiest form of movement while traveling. Pack comfortable shoes, keep your reusable water bottle with you, and get lost in whole new places and neighbourhoods.
Public Transport
Prioritise public transport and local ways to move when possible. Use trains, buses, and trams to see as well your surroundings from another perspective. It is simple to combine walking trips and hikes with public transport, and it is one of the lowest-pollution modes.
Bikes
Embrace the city bike systems, hotel bikes, and other bike rentals. Some places are best seen by bike. Many cities offer day passes for city bikes so that you can drop your bikes off in several locations when you prefer to continue on foot.
Running
If you are a runner in your mind, it is one of the most beautiful ways to discover new places. Think about running the morning streets in Barcelona, the beautiful parks in Paris, or on the Atlantic shoreline in Tangier (these are my favourite running places IMHO!).
Pack super light and just choose one direction, and keep the pace comfortable.
Outdoor Gyms
For many, the gym is forgotten during travel because “it’s hard to find a gym” or “you don’t need it”. But what if you need it? What if it is such an inseparable part of your healthy lifestyle that you actually want to hit the gym?
Several cities have outdoor gyms, especially those situated next to a beach. Scout the places where locals spend their weekends to find out about the gyms in the forest area or beach gyms. They have at least a few basic machines to keep the feeling good.
We tried and had a super early workout session in a beautiful forest in Morocco. The morning air was fresh, and the place was at the top of the hill, so it was perfect for a run before and after the workout.
If you cannot find any outdoor gyms, try whole-body workouts using your body weight, or pack a simple set of stretch bands to make your workout efficient wherever you travel.
And you know what’s the best? The refreshing swim after a good workout next to the beach!
Hiking
When planning your travel, scout whether you have any nature destinations nearby. Combining movement with nature immersion is one of the simplest ways to enjoy your travel naturally.
Make daily hikes in the Alpujarras near Granada in Spain or Italian Cinqueterre (next on our bucket list!). If heading to Northern Europe, try also Muotka in Northern Finland for a complete hiking trip!
Yoga and Pilates
Nowadays, yoga and Pilates are almost universal ways to move, and there are several yoga studios and even some hotels that organize retreats. Subscribe to yoga classes in Imsouane, Southern Morocco, or scan Facebook to participate in local free yoga sessions in city parks.
You see, nothing is stopping you from adapting things you already do in different locations! You might make new like-minded friends who are loving the natural way of life as you do.
Choose Accommodation That Supports Your Habits
When planning your travel, make choices that support the way you want to live during the vacation.
Apartment vs Hotel
Choose apartments or AirBnBs if you want to cook some meals yourself. For example, make breakfasts and snacks, and taste the local flavours for lunch and dinner. Making even some of your meals can help maintain healthy food habits you already have built at home.
Save Natural Resources Like You Would at Home
When staying at a hotel, think about the habits you already follow at home. Do you change your towels every day? Probably not. If the hotel offers optional towel changes or cleaning services, use them only when needed. Turn off lights and air conditioning when leaving the room, avoid unnecessarily long showers, and turn off the tap while brushing your teeth.
Simple habits like these help save resources wherever you travel.
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When Travel Doesn’t Go as Planned
Even with the best planning, things do not always go as expected. Flights get delayed, restaurants are closed, sleep schedules shift, and sometimes the only food available is not what you would normally choose.
When this happens, remember that one choice does not define your lifestyle.
The goal is not to travel perfectly. The goal is to return to your standards and habits at the next opportunity. If one meal was not as nourishing as you hoped, make the next one better. If you missed a workout, enjoy a walk the following day. If you slept poorly one night, prioritize rest when you can. It is not the one event but the way you balance it naturally.
Your trip is meant to be experienced, not perfected. Give yourself room for flexibility while keeping your values close by.
Progress Over Perfection
Most of all, focus on the voyage to feel good and live aligned with what you believe in. Natural living is not all-or-nothing.
Missing one workout does not erase your lifestyle.
Enjoying local treats does not erase your lifestyle.
Sleeping in one morning does not erase your lifestyle.
Just keep on focusing on returning to the habits that matter most to you, your life, and your well-being, even if you are not in your normal surroundings. Your natural lifestyle is not something that you leave at home if you don’t want to. It is part of you, and it is something you take with you wherever you travel. The habits may look different while travelling, but the values behind them will stay with you wherever you go.
