Ep 12: Road Trip

Traveling this summer 

 -Alignment Tips

-Snack ideas 

-Tips to help you on the road with littles

-Ways to keep the kids entertained; great audiobooks, podcasts to listen to, games to play

 Free snack guide

Head to Raising_Healthyhumans on IG to see what we are up to and join us over in our FB community Form Fit Moms to share what road trips you have taken this summer.

Read the blog: Family road trip - Form Fit (formfitnaples.com)

Transcript

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Episode 12, let's take a road trip this summer, summer is definitely a time when we go on longer road trips. So I wanted to share some thoughts that I have in regards to traveling this summer. The first I'm going to do is has to do with the alignment while you're in your car, not the alignment of your car. But you because I know a lot of you that are listening are moms who no longer have kids at home. So I want to make sure I give you the information you need first. And then for those of you who want to continue to listen to traveling this summer with your children, you can continue on after this point. So when you are in your vehicle, especially for longer road trips, we want to start looking at how we sit in our car. And it really depending on whether you're driving for long periods of time, or even those daily trips, if you have like a 30 or 45 minute drive somewhere each and every day, this is really good information. Because just think about how your body sits in a position for a period of time and how it can affect how you move later. The first thing I want you to think about when you are driving in your car is letting that head rest back in the headrest. Now what a lot of people will do is they'll jump their chin up and let their head rest back that way. But I want you to think of it from an alignment standpoint. And I want you to think about how we all seem to tend to sit forward, I shouldn't say all many of us tend to jump our chin forward into that forward head posture. So a great opportunity, while we're in our car driving is to work on pulling our head back. So what you're going to do is you're going to drop your chin down slightly, you're going to lengthen up through your spine, and then you're going to try to move your head back towards the front of the headrest so that your head is resting in the headrest. So that is the first thing it's going to work on your alignment. And if you're in that position, if you were to touch your ear lobe, it should be pretty close to alignment with your shoulder. So that's the first thing. The second thing I want you to think about if you deal with low back tension while you're driving, pay attention to how you breathe. And one of the best things that you can do for your breathing pattern is to work into that back body expansion. And what do I mean by this. So what we're working on doing is breathing fully many of us breathe up high through our chest, and we don't let our ribs breathe the way they need to move so that our diaphragm works effectively. So what we're going to do is we're going to practice sitting in our seat, and you're going to think about breathing. And as you breathe, you want to try to bring your back to the seat of the car. And that will help you feel a little bit better in your low back it usually I'll help kind of stretch the back out a little bit. So that's one thing I like to do as well while I'm driving in the car, working on my forward head posture and then working on my back body breathing so that I can get a more full deep breath, which I'm going to talk a lot more about this in some upcoming episodes with you. So definitely stay tuned if you're interested in that. The other thing that I want you to think about when you're driving is where are your feet, there's a really cool thing with your feet, the car has been made ergonomically for you. So if you look down on your left hand side, there's a little pad where you can place your foot. So if you put your foot there, you will notice that your hips move better in alignment, you don't have your right hip shifting forward reaching for the pedal, and for some of you, you may need to move your seat forward a little bit so that left foot can rest on that pad. But when you do that, you'll notice that your feet sit more parallel to one another. Therefore your hips sit more parallel to one another. One thing that many of us do when we're in a vehicle is we bend our left knee and we're reaching with that right foot. And that kind of changes the position of our pelvis. We've kind of move forward and long periods of time in your vehicle like this can affect how you move throughout the day with your hips. So notice that and see if you can fix that and how it feels if it helps you to feel a little bit better. And then the last thing that I want you to focus on while you're driving in your car. is the position of your rib cage. So many of us again, will put our elbow up on either the center console or the side armrest. And what you do when you do this, you can try it now and see what happens, your rib cage shifts to one side. And most of us, when we do this, we stay stuck in this side. So every time we get in the car, we put our right arm on the console. So our body is always shifting to the right. When we're in a vehicle, you can see over time how this can affect how you move and your posture, we need to anytime we think about movement and alignment and things like that, we want to try to think about like what I do to one side, I want to try to even out and do to the other side. So I'm not saying that that means you shouldn't put your elbow on the center console, what I would recommend you do is try to go back and forth between the two sides, maybe on the trip to wherever not meaning on your long road trip, but you know, short distance trips, and you have your arm on the center console, that when you're driving back from wherever that is, you put your arm on the armrest on the left hand side, so you're getting that movement back and forth in between the two sides. So that is one thing that I would recommend you try doing for the ribs or even just try not to put an elbow on one side or the other and see what that feels like just sitting still in the vehicle without moving the ribs to one side or the other. Play around with that. See how you feel when you're in your vehicle. Especially for these longer road trips, we don't realize how long we can be stuck in a position and how it affects our body. So you might feel more tension when you're driving in a vehicle because some of these little things that you're doing so be cognizant of all that and see if you notice a difference. Okay, moving on. So now that we've got our alignment good, and we're ready to go, we need to make sure that we have plenty of snacks for our children because I don't know what it is. Well, I do know what it is. It's boredom. The kids get in the car, we drive for eight hours and they eat non stop, right they non stop. One thing that I recommend you do is grab some grapes, put them in the freezer and freeze them before the trip. And then you can use those frozen grapes as your little ice packs in like a little lunchbox or whatever you choose to take with you. So that is one thing that I recommend and as they start to thaw out, you know the kids can also eat them or they can eat the frozen grapes because everybody loves frozen grapes. So that is one thing that I recommend. Also, as with everything if you want to eat healthier on the road, you do need to create a plan and you need to meal prep or snack prep. So either purchase some pre cut veggie trays and things like that, or you can cut up some vegetables, fruits and vegetables before you go so that you have them on hand ready for your children. I like bringing some little snack pack dips. So you can buy these usually in the produce section of your grocery store. We all know the snack pack ranch dips, but I also have another favorite one and I'll post a picture on my racing underscore healthy humans Instagram page for you so you know what it is that I'm talking about. But it's from good foods and it's a plant based dip and I really like the buffalo style dip that they have. I believe they also have a case so did that maybe dairy free if I think about it, but these are really good. They're great for vegetables and they're healthy. Another thing is guacamole I'm thinking of like thicker depth so that they're not dripping and making a mess everywhere. So the buffalo dip the case so dip the healthy plant based case so dip and the guacamole would be my favorites that we have and they have larger ones but they also have like a little four pack snack pack. That is great. Another fun one that we will have on the road with us is banana sushi rolls. So you take a flour tortilla, you spread like peanut butter nut butter, we like sunflower seed butter, spread it on there and placed the banana in there and you can roll it up. If you want to add a little bit of honey depending on the type of nut butter you have. If there's not sugar in it, you might want to add a little bit honey, roll it up, chop it up, have it ready for them while they're on the road as well. Dried fruits and homemade trail mixes are a great option. If you have the time. I prefer Homemade trail mixes over store bought ones because you can control the amount of sugar. So we might make some granola at home. And then fill them with different things that the kids enjoy. You may want to also make some healthy muffins or cookies that you can take on the road as well. cheese and crackers are always great. String Cheese is always a great one. And then think about like the protein style boxes that you can get at Starbucks. That's one that I like to make for my kids where we do some chunks of cheese, some eggs and nut butter, and then something that they can place it on like a little English muffin or something that's a great one as well for them. And it's great because it's helping them get more protein. Rather than all these carbs. I feel like when you go on road trips, there's lots of carbs that they're eating. So looking for ways to add some protein into the meals, or there's even overnight oats. So if you have some time, you can also make overnight oats and have them in the vehicle in the morning, you know, grab them up, put them in their car. And that's a great one that you all can have. while you're driving. That way you don't have to stop for breakfast if you don't want to. And then make sure to always I've told you in the last one with hydration, always have your water bottle on hand, we fill up every single one of the water bottles before we leave, so that we have plenty of water before our first stop. Now I know a lot of people feel like they don't want to give their kids water and maybe they don't want to drink a lot of water themselves while they're traveling because they don't want to have to make a lot of stops on the road. But I encourage you to take time don't feel like you have to rush or be in the car for four hours before you stop, stop at the rest stations alongside the road, get out and move for a little bit. I feel like that is a healthier way for us to travel rather than feeling like we have to sit in the car for long periods of time before we stop at the next restaurant. All right, now that you've gotten your snacks all ready to go. The one thing that we as a family like to do, I shouldn't say we as a family. It's truly my husband who likes to do this. So he likes to wake up early in the morning. He wants to be up at 4am so that the kids can sleep for a portion of the trip. So he gets up packs the car with the last minute items gets the kids into the vehicle lets them sleep for at least hopefully another three or four hours. We also always try to make sure that our kids go to bed the night before with clothes that they can wear that are comfy to sleep in but then are also okay for them to wear into a restaurant. If we decide to stop on the road. Make sure to bring some fun card games for your kids. I know that technology tends to be something they go to the most but I think it's fun to change it up for them just to give them something different to do so go fish is a great one. You can also bring a jelly roll pan with magnetic letters for younger children to play with travel bingo cards are great or you can even create a fun scavenger hunt. Also know that there's some fun scavenger hunts on Pinterest. So you don't even have to create anything you can just print something out so that they can do for the duration of the trip. There's also things like smart games i g fit that I will put a link that you can look at there these balls that are in different shapes, and you have to try to connect them into this pattern. So that's always a fun one. Wicky sticks, Mad Libs, have them bring books, or even playing the classic car games like the license plate game or the alphabet game or the I'm going on a road trip. Another thing is audio books. audiobooks are a great thing. Find some family friendly books. Harry Potter is always a great one any of the Roald Dahl books are great. We wrote like nevermore series. That's the trials of Morgan Crowe series because there is another series out there called Nevermore. It's the trials of Morgan Crowe. The Benedict society books are great. And then also another series. The incorrigible children of Ashton place is another audio book that we really enjoy. You can also listen to podcasts, there are some fun ones Wow. In the world by NPR stuff you missed in history class is a fun was for those kids who love history brains on is a great one where ask silly questions or questions that kids usually have, like, why does the sun make people sneeze and it's an opportunity for everyone to learn a little bit of science, which is really fun, or make a fun playlist on Spotify before you leave, making sure to add some music each person enjoys for those long trips, try to think about stopping at some places along the way for a break, think about different places that you could stop on the way to make it more fun and memorable. So I know as you go into some of the more country roads, you might have little jam stops or honey stops, that you can stop that little antique shops that are along the roads as well are fun for the kids to get out and look around and see what they can find. But sometimes that can create some really great memories, and look at the whole trip as the vacation rather than just the destination. Another thing that we like to do when we are going on these longer trips, is we like to find a kind of a place in between, you know, if you're going on a 14 hour road trip, stop six or seven hours into the trip, or even trying to push a little bit further that first day and find an Airbnb that you can stay at in a town that you might like to kind of adventure through for a day or so before you move on to the next spot. One of the ones that we have recently done, which was so much fun was we like to go to Georgia in North Carolina and like to stay in the Blue Ridge Mountains. So we went to Thomasville it was a little bit off the track. But we went to Thomasville and we spent a day a full day there. So we were there two days, but we spent a full day there. And you know toward the town, it's not a big enough town, I would say to spend much more than a day but it was great. For now I can say that I've been there. And it was not a place that we would probably go for a weekend vacation or something like that it's a little bit too far away. And there's not a ton to do there. So finding little places like that where you can just do an overnight and spend a day there. That might be something fun for you. And then the last thing that I'm going to recommend is a couple of things that you need to make sure that you have with you on your road trip, make sure to have wipes in the car, because accidents you know spilling something in the vehicle, hands get dirty stopping at the gas station and having a pump gas wipes are great to be able to use right after also bring a plastic bag to throw all your trash away in with all these snacks that the kids are eating. They're collecting trash along the way. So it's great to be able to just have it all in one place so that when you get off at the next dress station, you can just throw it in the trash. So I bring a few plastic bags as well. And then a tennis ball. So those mom and dad in the front seat and aches and pains are getting to them because of the way that they're sitting in the car, you've got a tennis ball, you can put that tennis ball in those tension spots and just kind of relax into it. And that'll be your myofascial release. Those are my tips for you. I hope that you go out and enjoy your summer. I would love to hear what road trips you have taken. And if anyone would love to come on and talk about a road trip that you've taken please feel free to reach out to me, I would love to be able to talk to you about your road trip experience. Hope you all have a wonderful week and I will talk to you on Thursday. I forgot to mention that I wanted to be able to offer you all a guide of different recipes that you can use for snacks on the go or on the road. They are some of the stacks that I mentioned here today and some other recipes that you might enjoy. So if you would like make sure to head to our show notes, and I will have a link there for the recipes for your snacks on the go. Also make sure to head to our form fit mom community where you can share what vacations you are taking this summer and follow us over at raising underscore humans