That's Fit

Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Who in the world ever thought of going to Disney and eating healthy? Crazy talk, right? Wrong! Your loving online Fitzness Expert (me) who has extremely high standards on what I put in both my children's mouth and my own can spend a day at the Magic Kingdom or EPCOT and eat as well as I would in my own home. Disney has made grand efforts to improve the healthfulness of the foods they offer, and has even gone overboard with an abundance of fresh fruit stands located throughout each theme park.

I just spent a week at Walt Disney World in Florida and returned home half a pound less than I was the day before vacation. Want to eat right while enjoying the magic with Mickey Mouse? Read on.

• Mickey makes mealtime easy on the fitness fan. Every restaurant I ventured through offered several menu options based on lean grilled meat, veggies, and/or fruit. Even the children's meals come standard with side items like: grapes, carrot sticks, and unsweetened applesauce. They also come with bottled water or skim milk. Sweet! Parents would have to go out of their way to substitute french fries and soda for their children instead of the healthy stuff. Eww! You the fitness fan, certainly wouldn't do that!
• Sit down dining restaurants offer Egg Beaters cooked without oil in lieu of regular scrambled eggs. I enjoyed this perk while dining with Minnie and Goofy at Disney's Yacht Club Resort.
• Resort dining facilities offer endless refrigerators full of fresh fruit, veggies, yogurt, dried fruit, nutritious snack bars and more.
• Seek out healthier desserts. Anywhere they are served, Disney has made efforts to make reduced fat, low sugar or fresh fruit treats available.

On a regular basis, I make a habit of informing both my personal training clients and lecture guests of exactly when calories count. For some reason, this topic often seems more complicated than it is, so let me lay it out for you clearly.

When Calories Count:

• They count on Friday night.
• They count on your birthday.
• They count when you are out drinking.
• They count on Thanksgiving.

It's hard to say which day out of the six we spent a few weeks ago at the Walt Disney World Resort was my favorite, but day three really was special. It was jam packed with a variety of super fun activities that were both totally exciting and totally relaxing at the same time. The majority of day three was spent at Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort, where we were staying. We capped off a superb day with a glamorous evening at The California Grill, one of Disney's Signature Restaurants located on the top floor of The Contemporary Resort.

If you take your family to Disney, I highly recommend strategically placing at least one 'resort day' in the middle of your stay. The theme parks and water parks are amazing, but can be exhausting. Playing at your Disney resort still offers loads of fun, but doesn't drain. In fact, a 'resort day' is the perfect recharge for tired parents needed a break. The pools are wildly creative, the hot tubs....to die for, and the free organized activities are endless. Yes, you heard me right. Most of the Disney resorts offer planned activities for both children and adults.....FREE OF CHARGE! Whooohooooo!

As I've been leading you through the paces of enjoying the best Walt Disney World has to offer, without trashing your health and fitness habits, this is one of the easiest days to master. On our second day of vacation we headed to the holy land of wholesome family fun, The Magic Kingdom. Ahhh yes! This is the place where children squeal, Mommies well up with tears of joy on a regular basis, and Daddies shout like kids themselves on the roller coasters. It's also a place where every last visitor is likely to do a ton of physical work. In fact ... read on and you'll learn exactly how many calories we burned during this day. It's insane!

So! Our day consisted of pushing the kids in the double stroller, then watching the castle show. Did I mention each of my children weigh almost 40 pounds? Then we pushed the kids in the double stroller some more, and rode some rides in Fantasyland. In fact, before we even stopped for lunch, we pushed the double stroller again and rode rides in: Fantasyland, Tommorowland, back to Fantastyland, Mickey's Toontown Fair, Adventureland, back to Tommorowland and finally landed back in Adventureland for lunch. Then we ran circles in the water squirters at both Ariel's Grotto and Pooh's Corner to cool off for about an hour. The latter half of the day resembled the first half, except it seemed even busier.

I used to travel for work; often for three weeks out of the month if not more. I've stayed in my fair share of dives (in fact, there was one place in Texas where you had to request the "big room" otherwise you couldn't open the bathroom door without standing on the bed and jumping in). But even in the nicer hotels, fitness wasn't usually high on their list of comforts.

But my traveling days were several years ago; today, hotels are putting more emphasis on fitness equipment and making work outs easier for their guests. Some hotels are even adding to the standard weight machines and having Pilates and other classes conducted on site. The Kimpton hotel chain supplies guests with yoga mats and equipment; a channel on their in-room TV allows them to follow a yoga routine.

If you're traveling this summer and aren't sure your hotel room will be quite so well-equipped, consider throwing a jump rope in your suitcase. It hardly takes up any room at all and provides an excellent aerobic workout.

Today I bring to you the first day of our recent family vacation at the happiest healthiest place on earth, Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. To catch up with this feature, click here. As your online Fitzness Trainer, I'm eager to share with you the simple ways my family and I maintained and enjoyed our healthy lifestyle while on vacation. Disney has really made strides with their efforts to embrace healthy food and entertainment options. They've done a bang up job at it as well.

You'll see in this photo gallery that we started our day off at Typhoon Lagoon. Those energetic hours were followed by a ridiculously healthy dinner, scootering around our resort, and dancing our tushies off all night. It was both high-energy and a blast. Can you say "Quality Time"?

In my expert opinion, yes! Disney World is the healthiest place on earth. I just returned from a five-night, six-day vacation with my husband and two children and was blown away by the amount of physical activity both offered and required of ourselves in order to indulge in the full Disney experience.

We pushed our double-stroller miles through two theme parks, climbed thousands of stairs and jumped an equal amount of waves at two water-parks, danced our tushies off to live bands at various Disney resorts, and played game after game with our children as we giggled, oohed and ahhed at all the Disney magic. As a fitness trainer, one of my biggest obstacles is convincing my clients not to trash their fitness efforts when they head out on vacation. Disney offers the perfect opportunity to not only maintain one's fitness level, but improve it.

The physical adventures are endless, and Disney World has made a deliberate effort to increase the availability of legitimately nutritious, low fat, and lower sugar foods. Fruit stands have popped up all over the theme parks, and children's dining has switched from burgers and fries to grilled chicken with carrots and grapes offered as side dishes. Soda has been dumped for low fat milk! I can't get food that "clean" in my own neighborhood, unless I cook it myself! Of course, the old junkie favorites like popcorn, fries, and ice cream are still available, but if you do care about your health and want to maintain it on vacation ... Disney makes it easy.

A few months back I went to a place I like to call "Man Heaven" and wrote a few articles about it. Man Heaven is also known as ESPN: The Weekend at the Disney Hollywood Studios in Florida. The event was jam packed with dozens and dozens of your sports lovers' heroes from today and yesteryear. Football, basketball, baseball, tennis, hockey and golf stars flooded the theme park with ample opportunity for each Disney guest to get up close and personal with the athletic love of their life.

Of course, there were also a ton of female fans decked out in their team jerseys, but truly....this event was for boys. Young boys, elderly boys, and every boy in between. I saw big groups of men in coordinating jerseys riding the tram to the park, and then I saw tons of father/son duos shooting baskets with their favorite hoops star.

The event isn't until early next March, so you'll have plenty of time to book your air, hotel, and ticket reservations. He'll have lots of time to squirm with anticipation for the big event. Trust me.....if your guy loves sports, he will love ESPN: The Weekend and love you even more for sending him to it.

I don't know about you, but I tend to find one good running route wherever I live and stick with it. I might have variations on it -- right now I have a four-miler that can easily be made into a six- or a two-miler with little modification -- but if I'm happy with my route, I don't usually go out of my way to find something new.

And that, my friends, is boring. There are a million things to see here! There are wooded areas and the University of Florida and all kinds of gorgeous and interesting neighborhoods, but do I make an effort to run through them? No! And why not? Because I don't know a specific route, so I don't know how far I'll have to run, and I'm a dork who likes to know these things ahead of time.

Now I have no excuse. With Run.com I can plug in my city and find a bunch of cool new running routes, all with mileage listed and a description. In Gainesville, there are 16 routes listed (and I might just have to list my boring old route, too).

Do you have any great vacations planned for this summer? Along with a friend's family, my son and I are renting a cabin in what I deem as the prettiest part of our state. Also, if I can scrape together the funds, I might be bringing my son (who I adopted a year ago) back to his home state to visit his foster family. Whatever your summer plans are, don't let good nutrition go on "vacation" too. Some tips:

• When eating at a restaurant, don't order an appetizer and skip the bread basket.
  
• Select healthier fare from the menu -- for example, baked, broiled, or grilled foods are a better choice than deep-fried.
• Visit the local grocery store -- if you have a fridge in your hotel room your options are greater, but even if you don't you can still stock up on some foods that you can eat "in." Fresh fruits and veggies, sugar-free instant oatmeal (use the coffee pot to heat water). You can also use your hotel room's ice bucket to keep some foods chilled.
• Go on a picnic. Pack healthy foods and visit a park, beach, or nature reserve at your vacation destination. After lunch, go for a hike!
• Avoid the pastries and other high-carb options at the continental breakfast.
  

It's too late to try this trick for the holiday weekend, but some scientists at Harvard Medical School think that they may have discovered a "cure" for jet lag.

Normally, sleeping and eating times are dictated by our circadian rhythms, a kind of biological schedule that is at least partially triggered by daylight. When we travel by airplane to destinations that are far out of our time zone, it takes days or even over a week to catch up. Problem is, few vacations last much longer than that.

When the Harvard scientists worked with mice, however, they found that when food was scarce, a second sort of biological rhythm overrode circadian rhythms, which makes sense because if you sleep through dinner, you aren't going to survive long in the wild. It hasn't been tested in humans yet, but these researchers think that if you fast before your next long airplane ride -- at least 16 hours with no food -- you'll beat jet lag a lot faster than your fellow passengers. Worth a try? What do you think?

Have fitness questions? Fitz has your answer. Our ThatsFit.com fitness expert -- and now your own virtual personal trainer -- will help you get fit, increase your overall health and do it in a fun way. Drop your questions here in the Comments section below and we'll choose two per week to publish on That's Fit! Learn more about Fitz here.

Q. Hey Fitz. I'm heading out for a week's vacation on a cruise ship next month, and worried that once again I'll gain almost ten pounds while gone. That's what I've done the last few times I've gone on a cruise. How can I get around it? There is awesome food everywhere! Susan.

A. Susan, Susan, Susan. I'm shaking my head. The deal with vacations, cruises especially, is that they're a time for you to relax, get away from the daily grind and have some fun. Pigging out and gorging are simply not what you should be focusing on...wherever you are! Yes, there is a lot of tasty food on cruise ships. There is also a lot of yummy things available at your local grocery store every single day! That doesn't' mean you should run through the aisles like a lunatic shoving everything you can get your hands on into your mouth. Just because food is THERE, just because food is FREE, doesn't mean you have to eat it.

Anyone watch Biggest Loser this past week? The five remaining contestants traveled on a forever plane ride to Australia for sightseeing, a mini-triathlon, bridge climbing and delectable food. Travel down under was not kind to their overall weight loss. A couple gained a pound, a couple hardly lost any weight and one contestant did shed a miracle three pounds.

What this show told me was vacations are plain dangerous when it comes to weight gain. If Biggest Loser contestants have trouble losing weight on a quick jaunt to Australia, even with their careful calorie counting, intrepid hydration and stellar fitness efforts, how can us average folk keep off the inevitable five or ten pounds after a week basking on the beach, dinners out and bicycle rides to the island ice cream store?

Muffin-topping over your pants upon return from an exotic vacation is the quickest way to sabotage a week's relaxation. For me, a more reasonable goal is to keep my weight the same or gain no more than a pound or two. Beyond making sure to pack my scale, here's a handful of ideas to feel relaxed and fit into your tightest jeans after a week or two on holiday:

• Calorie Compromises -- eat a low-cal breakfast to enjoy a sumptuous dinner with dessert.
• Share high-caloric foods/desserts.
• Keep lifting and cardio on the radar (pack a fitness rubberband, go for walks/jogs/bicycle rides). Hotel/resort gyms are an added bonus to keep your fitness on track.

I've never been able to follow a training plan. I always check them out, but end up using them as guidelines, when it works for me and my schedule.

This is one of the reasons I don't think I could do a full marathon -- I can't commit completely to a training schedule over several months. I came across this post on Runner's World Daily about a guy who's in Marathon (in the Florida Keys), and he had a 16 mile training run to do, so he did it. In Marathon. That meant eight miles one way and eight miles back on hard, unshaded concrete, in the blazing heat. And, he's leaving tomorrow to go home.

That's some serious commitment. I think I would've put it off until I was somewhere more comfortable and less muggy. What about you? If your training plan called for a big run at the end of your vacation, would you do it? Or would you wait a couple of days and do it later? Or not at all? If you choose to follow one, there are tons of choices -- check them out in the gallery!

A few weeks ago I interviewed the TLC Trading Spaces host Paige Davis for my Celebrity Fitzness Report. Paige was open, honest, and hysterical. We blabbed for an hour and Oh Boy! did she fill it all up! One of the standard questions I ask my Celeb Fitzness guests is what their favorite vacation spot is, and whether or not they work out while on vacation. Paige gave me the best response I'd ever had to that question. Read on to find out what it is. Maybe you too, can incorporate her training into your other holiday activities?

**Actual excerpt from Celebrity Fitzness Report.interview with Paige Davis.

Fitz: Where is your favorite place to vacation?

Paige: Vegas. And, I know it's totally gag-me, but I love Disney World too!