The Holiday Travel Episode: How To Stay Consistent Without Losing Your Mind

Holiday travel is here — and if your routine is disappearing faster than a gingerbread cookie in a kindergarten classroom…breathe. You’re not a failure. Your nervous system is just overloaded.

Inside this episode, I’m giving you a zero-shame, nervous-system-first travel plan built specifically for ambitious women who hold everyone together…and quietly fall apart when their routine gets ripped away.

No more overcorrecting when you get home.

No more punishing your body for being human.

No more “I’ll start over in January” spirals.

You’ll learn:

• Why holiday travel feels like chaos even when you’re disciplined

• The ONE travel anchor habit that keeps you grounded anywhere

• How to regulate before stress, meals, family dynamics, or workouts

• What to actually do when you get home instead of “detoxing”

• Why my clients no longer fall apart over the holidays (and how you can join them)

This episode is your permission slip to stay consistent without being perfect, support your body instead of fighting it, and walk into January already proud of yourself.

Episode Timestamps

01:46 — Why holiday travel feels chaotic

03:46 — Creating a travel routine that doesn’t fall apart

06:52 — Nervous system tools you can use anywhere

08:02 — Avoiding the “make up for it” mindset

10:24 — Client success stories

12:43 — Final reminders & next steps

Resources Mentioned

• FREE Your Body Your Way Guide: https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/free-guide-your-body-your-way

• https://musclesandmindset.ca/

• Apply to work with us inside Muscles & Mindset: https://link.annejonescoaching.ca/apply

Connect With Me

• Instagram: @annejonesfit

• Website: https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@annejones

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Connect With Me:

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Transcript

0:00

Hey friend, take a breath with me for a second because this episode is going to make your whole holiday season feel lighter. Welcome to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution Podcast. The podcast for ambitious women who want to build strength, feel confident af, and lose fat for good, without counting calories or bs quick fixes. I'm your host, Ann Jones, certified life coach, personal trainer, and mindset expert and after 15 plus years in the fitness industry, I know the real key to lasting change isn't just what you do, it's how you think. If you're ready to shift your mindset, build a lifestyle you love and feel confident, af, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution, where we are building strong bodies, calm nervous systems, and throwing diet culture into the ocean where it belongs. Today we're talking about holiday travel. I actually love this topic This used to be a really challenging topic, like people would just throw fitness out the window and then if you followed me for a long time, I used to be big on like body weight workouts and band workouts, and I used to post lots of this kind of content, particularly around this time of year because I've always. Until four years ago lived like kind of far away from my family and my husband's family, so we were always traveling to them. So we're always traveling at Christmas. Now I can confidently say that within muscles and mindset, we're at a place where our clients do not struggle over the holidays. Like it's just not, it's, they are so prepared for it, and I'm so proud of them. We have so many dope client wins over the past seven years about clients who used to binge eat their mom's lock keys or spiral, lose it on their kids, have emotional meltdowns, overdr, overeat, and they don't anymore. Like these are the tools honestly that I like to teach that we as a team like to teach all year round. It's like the, there's a training ground for summer and the holidays. I swear so many of my clients say they used to spiral every holiday and now they travel with their kids and it's feels easy'cause they know how to anchor themselves. Another one of my favorite things to talk about, as you know, is planning and prioritizing, and that's so helpful when it comes to the holidays, but probably not in the way that you think. I remember a few years ago I had, oh, such a wise client who shared something that I share with clients all the time now, and it was that. She actually asked her family and her kids like, what's the one thing or tradition or activity that you really care about this season? And then she would prioritize. She had two kids. So she would prioritize literally those two things and let everything else go. And I love that because so much of it is our expectations of ourselves and trying to do quote unquote, all the things, right? And so I think this is just another place where fitness and food. Fall into is, it becomes overwhelming because the stress bucket and the life buckets literally get more stuff in them during the holidays. So let's talk about it. Today we're talking about holiday travel. Tis the season where you're living out of a suitcase. Your kid eats five candy canes before breakfast. Every relative has an opinion about your plate. Sleep is what? Is sleep. You're trying to be chill and jolly, but your blood sugar says otherwise. Yesterday my husband was like, my blood feels thick. And I was like, have you been drinking enough water? And he was like, no. Your routine is disappearing faster than a gingerbread cookie in a kindergarten classroom, you're not alone and you're not failing. So today I'm gonna give you a zero shame, nervous system, first travel plan that works for ambitious women with real lives. And if you stay till the end, I can actually send you a tool for this. So first, let's talk about why travel breaks your routine. Like for real, most women think travel ruins their routine because they lose discipline. No. No, you have the same amount of discipline, this week as you did last week, and on the first week of January. It's your nervous system again. Travel is a full sensory assault, overstimulation in airports, delayed meals, traffic, blood sugar, crashes, driving in the dark, kids melting down. Family drama, sleep disruptions, feeling anxious about upcoming family drama. No privacy. Bathroom roulette. No control over food or less control over food, jet lag noise, and new environments. Your body's like, we are not thriving, we are surviving. And when your body is surviving, all it wants is predictability, comfort, which is abundant in your mom's baking, grounding and familiar cues. Not discipline, not macro tracking, not a 60 minute HIIT workout before brunch, unless that feels good to you. But generally, travel disregulates, even the most consistent women. Seriously. So you're not the exception, you're the rule. Here's what your travel routine is supposed to look like. your travel routine is not supposed to look like your normal one. What?! I know, all those bees are telling you keep your routine the same. I agree. But your regular routine is about building, right? It's about building strength, creating momentum, and making progress. Those things are most likely not happening during American Thanksgiving or Christmas week. So maintenance is a great goal. Okay? So in that way, your routine's not supposed to be the same. Your travel routine is about regulating your nervous system, stabilizing your body, supporting your digestion. maintaining your capacity and your results and preserving your baseline. You don't need to pack gym outfits for every single day that you're not gonna use, track your meals, avoid carbs necessarily, get 10,000 steps or do travel workouts in the hotel hallway. You do need to keep yourself regulated. Choose one. Stabilizing habit. We talked about this last week. And stop punishing yourself. That's the biggest one really. But that's Those three things. It's just a week you guys like pro. if you're gone longer term, like we can talk about that. Alright, number one. So number one, very similar to something you heard from me last week, is to choose one travel anchor habit. Just one women fail on vacation because they try to too many things in a new environment. So just choose one thing that protects your baseline. Maybe it's protein at breakfast every goddamn day, which is actually very achievable with travel, by the way. Like I have perfect days. I dare say I have perfect days of eating on travel days. It's very possible. a 10 minute walk every day. I'm not saying both. I'm choosing saying, choose one of these things might be protein at breakfast. might be a 10 minute walk every day. It might be drinking water before you have coffee. It might be doing a five minute mobility flow. It might be doing, 4, 4, 8 breath before you go to sleep. Stepping outside once a day, I know it can get a little cabin fevery eating a real meal every like four to five hours when you're hungry. This one habit keeps your body from going into chaos. Like we are just big children, right? Like we just need that one little stability anchor. So that's number one is choose one, travel anchor habit number two, regulate before everything regulation. Nervous system regulation is your secret weapon on vacation. A regulated woman can make good choices in any environment. Trust me, I have put this to the test I've been in. A lot of first world stressful travel situations. Some of my clients' favorite travel tools, regulation tools are just deep inhales through the nose, into the belly, slow exhales out the mouth, A quiet moment in the bathroom. Seriously hide in there, humming in the car right either quietly so nobody can hear you or when you're by yourself. gentle stretching. Grounding, feeling your feet on the floor. You can do that one right now. Touching something cold. I know it's weird, but it's very grounding. Closing your eyes for 20 seconds. shaking out your arms. Talked about this one last week. It's weird, but gets you into your body. And you can use any of these tools before eating. I would highly recommend using a tool before walking into a stressful or triggering house or situation trying to work out. You use it as a transition activity before managing your kids or like asking'em to do something maybe they're not gonna wanna do, before a social situation or a party or before going to bed. Regulation gives you access to choice and dysregulation, gives you autopilot chaos. So that's number two. Number three, please drop the making up for it. Mindset. This one changes everything and you actually, it's the easiest one'cause you just get to opt out. Women come home from travel and try to overcorrect. I need to detox. I need to lose the vacation weight. I need to start over on Monday or January 1st. I need to get back to being good. Can you relate to any of that? A, this is biologically not how the body works. You can't work it off or undo a week. This punishes your body also for doing exactly what it was supposed to do. when you get home, what I do want you to do is basically what you would do on any day, hydrate. Eat a normal meal, do your regular workout, go to bed earlier, maybe breathe and gently reset. That's it. You don't need to earn your way back into routine. You just step back into it. And let me tell you, this is so freeing and also it's so nice'cause you don't need a new, you don't need a plan when you get home. It's so freeing. Like when I go on vacation, it's like, so stress free in regards to my body because I just told you I can have a perfect day of eating and travel. That is no problem, and I don't stress out about falling off because I know I'm just gonna get back to the normal thing when I get home. Oh my gosh. I wanna share this with you. I remember a couple summers ago. I was at the pool at my favorite hotel, enjoying my weekend, one of my little hotel nights by myself, and there was these two women, I think in the pool. There was one woman talking about she and her friend were going on quite an elaborate vacation. This was a couple years ago, but she was just chatting up the other people in the pool. These people were all drinking day drinking, by the way, in the pool, and no judgment, but I'm just saying she was day drinking. actually first I heard her asking people if ponzu was like unhealthy or healthy, which I just wanna be like. You're right, it's probably ponzu. That's probably the reason that you're struggling. Anyways, she's asking about the ponzu and then she's telling strangers how she and her friend are going on it was like European or Africa, some like really dope vacation. Fiji, like something really amazing. And so she's like, so we're having our last hurrah. So they're like drinking everything and eating everything, and she's like, because then like. You know, when we get back from the trip. So it was so interesting'cause she wasn't even seeing the trip as a hurrah. She was like, I'm preparing to go buck wild on this vacation because then in three plus weeks after the vacation, I'm gonna get my shit together. It was fascinating. I was just like, whoa. you don't need to do that. So Here is what I do see every day inside muscles and mindset. I have clients who used to do that, right? Who and who used to fall apart every single holiday. I've had this conversation with clients who start in the summer a lot. It's like, maybe I should wait till after summer. They're always glad they didn't. Wait. They're like, oh, because summer is gonna come every year. Christmas is gonna come every year. Would you not rather figure out how to do this during the holidays than to just every year have this like period where you don't take care of yourself in the summer and during the holidays? So again, I have clients who used to fall apart every single holiday. Women with arthritis, women who beat themselves up, women who've overcorrected, women who thought travel meant losing all of their progress and starting from square one. And now those same people stayed grounded. They stayed consistent, and they stay calm during the holidays. Not because they have more discipline, more willpower, or they're working harder, but because they are regulating first, they have worked on the mindset so that they're no longer self punishing. They're working with their bodies instead of against them, and they have a program, a system that is unquittable for them, So if everything or anything I said resonated and you're tired of falling apart on every holiday or trip, black Friday is officially open if you're listening in real time between November 22nd and December 1st. Doors are open right now for my Black Friday offer And if you are wanting to work with me or to work with my team, this is your moment because this is the only time of year that I put our one-on-one coaching on sale. You are getting access to$500 off my six month coaching program, or$750 off my 12 month coaching program, which is your best value overall. Plus we have over$500 in holiday bonuses. That will make staying consistent through holiday chaos, actually doable. So if you've been sitting in that place of, I know I need this support. I know I can't keep doing this alone, and I don't want to start and quit again, this is your sign. My Black Friday offer was literally designed for this exact reason for ambitious women navigating travel, holidays, dysregulation, stress, emotional eating, inconsistency, overwhelm, or busy mom, wife, business life. You're not supposed to figure this out by yourself. You're supposed to be supported through it, so if you're feeling the pull, there's no better time. Stop waiting for a better time. It's right now, it's this week. You can head straight to the link in the show notes or DM me strong on Instagram, and I'll send everything your way right away. Don't overthink it. Your 2026 self is already thanking you. Go hydrate. Go breathe, go enjoy your humans, and I will see you next week.