Let’s face it, we have to stay in shape (this is where my dad would remind me jokingly that round is a shape). You only get one life and you only get one body.

The biggest challenge we’ve found with being healthy while traveling in an RV is routine. It just so happens that the biggest challenge of being healthy in a traditional sticks & bricks home is routine also.

Fact: America is fat and unhealthy.

In fact, with an obese rate of over 35% we are the fattest country in the world. This comes with a big price tag; not just financially but with heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer.

Too often people get in the routine of eating unhealthy, and not being active.

Our habits shape us. Here’s a few of the habits and reasons why we’ve found to be easier to build in an RV than in a traditional environment.

Being Active

This is probably the most obvious health benefit of RVing. You’re often in very scenic locations doing fun, outdoor activity. Just being in the outdoors helps drive you to want to be more active doing things like tossing the football around.

Even when we’re chilling at the campground, it’s easy to go out for a walk or do something active near the RV.

Many campgrounds make it really easy by offering activities like basketball courts, tennis, heated pools, etc.

Access to Healthy Options

When I worked as an executive in Orange County, I worked in a large office and had a lot of responsibilities. Because of my workload, I rarely left the office for lunch. The vast majority of the time I would work through my lunch and never took breaks.

When I would leave the office for lunch, I’d come back with such a large workload that it would be tough to justify doing it again. So I’d bring my lunch everyday and eat it in just a few minutes at my desk while working.

I also would have a plan to eat 6-8 small meals a day but the walk to the kitchen in the office was so far that I would usually not take the time from running the business.

Now that I work from the RV, at any given time I’m just steps away from a large selection of healthy choices. It’s made it very easy to fill our bodies with the right nutrition to fuel our adventures and hopefully life a long and active life.

Of course, unless you have a huge amount of self discipline this doesn’t work. If you keep junk food sitting around, odds are you’re going to eat it. I’ve found that I’m not strong enough to avoid the junk. If there’s Cool Ranch Doritos, they will be eaten very quickly… So we have to be conscious about what we buy at the grocery store.

Juicing

Many years ago we watched the documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead“. It had an impact on us and we were one of the many people who went out and bought a Breville Juicer (yeah, yeah, I know, the marketing got to us).

After the initial motivation of the movie wore off we dug in and did more research on the benefits and found that there are too many benefits to ignore. The downside is the time it takes to prepare and clean up, but we’ve made a commitment to our health and try to juice everyday.

Working Out

Just like with your diet, there are many different approaches to working out. When I was young I read a book called Body for Life by Bill Phillips. I’ve followed that general philosophy throughout the years and believe you don’t need to workout for long periods of time to get the benefits, but you do need to workout.

Many campgrounds offer workout centers, however, it has been rare for us to find many with free weights. I’ve had some in the RV over the years and in the past year upgraded to larger weights to gain a bit more size. Even if you don’t have weights, there are so many things you can do to still get in a good workout.

Fresh Food and Farmer’s Markets

You are LITERALLY what you eat. One of the things we’ve enjoyed throughout our travels is eating fresh food from local farmers and at markets.

California has taken the cake of providing mind blowing fruit that you can often buy directly from local farmers, but we’ve been able to enjoy fresh local food all over.

Sometimes when people give their opinions about health and wellness others can get their undies in a bunch. This is just to share with others how RVing has made it a little bit easier for us to stay on top of this area of our lives and hopefully can be a reminder to others to stay on top of their health in whatever way they see fit (pun intended).