Thank you for reading our post, please rate this article at the end.
Last Updated on August 22, 2024 by Paul Clayton
Table of Contents
4 Tips To Maintain Healthy Weight While Camping
If you plan to lose weight, there’s no better way than heading outdoors. Spending time in nature can improve your health by easing muscle tension, keeping your heart healthy, and boosting your immune system. Natural surroundings are also relaxing enough to relieve stress and anxiety.
- You’ll have to prioritize foods.
- Structured physical activities while camping.
- Camping can undeniably be an exhausting activity.
- Tailor your camping trip to your weight loss needs.
These benefits can encourage you to try outdoor activities like biking or swimming, which offer the additional advantage of helping you burn more calories.
However, not all these activities are created equal. In fact, camping—one of the most popular recreational pastimes Americans enjoy outdoors—might be more effective for weight loss than anything else. That’s because it can enhance all the calorie-burning benefits outdoor activities provide. Wondering how? Below, we’ll go over the methods people typically use to maintain a healthy weight—and a few ways camping can replicate and even amplify their effectiveness.
Traditional weight loss methods
Diet
What you eat can significantly affect how you maintain your weight. People often think of this in terms of calories: if you burn more than you consume, you’ll shed more pounds. However, the quality of the calories you consume also matters.
Many processed foods today contain calories but not nutrients, fueling cravings that lead to overeating.
That’s why most people lose weight by adopting healthy diet changes. They cut out things like added sugars and fats from their diets. Instead, they focus on lean meat, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and other fresh foods, which contain nutrients like fiber and protein that help them feel full faster while keeping them healthy.
More importantly, they vary their diet using these ingredients so they can enjoy good meals that naturally curb their appetite.
Exercise
Eating fewer calories isn’t enough to maintain a healthy weight. The excess food people usually consume is stored by their bodies as fat, so it’s vital to turn to physical activity to burn it off. The best part is that the body doesn’t just turn this fat into energy during a workout. As long as you get your heart pumping for an extended period, you’ll raise your metabolism and keep burning calories while resting.
The two best types of exercise recommended by the experts at Health.com are high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and strength or weight training. HIIT alternates short periods of intense exercise and rest to burn calories during a workout. At the same time, strength training builds the muscles to burn more energy even when you’re not exercising.
Medical weight loss
For some people, genetics and medical history mean a balanced diet and regular exercise aren’t enough for weight management. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS, for example, experience hormonal imbalances that raise their blood sugar levels and lower their metabolism. That makes weight easier to gain and more challenging to lose.
Research from the Obesity Medicine Association adds that others are more likely to become overweight or obese due to the presence of specific genes, with one called FTO linked with increased hunger levels and a higher tendency to store body fat.
In these cases, doctors may recommend they take prescription weight loss drugs. Most fall under the category of GLP-1 agonists and were originally designed for diabetes. Primarily, GLP-1 for weight loss works by lowering blood sugar levels.
That’s especially helpful since the body typically only burns fat when these levels are low. However, these medications can also reduce feelings of hunger and raise their resting metabolism, helping those who take them lose as much as 15% of their starting weight.
Four ways camping can help you maintain a healthy weight
It helps you eat better
When preparing for a camping trip, you have to pack strategically. Since you need space for tents, sleeping bags, clothes, toiletries, tools, and cooking equipment, you’ll have limited space for actual food. That means you can’t bring your favorite cookies and chips. Instead, you’ll have to prioritize foods that can quickly fill you up at mealtimes.
More often than not, that will involve nutritious, non-perishable foods and easy to prepare. Think bread and cheese, granola bars, hard-boiled eggs, and dehydrated foods like beef jerky. If you do want to bring food, you can cook it.
After all, what’s camping without some grilling action over the campfire?—you’ll probably bring lean meat and vegetables for the ride. They’ll be best stored in an insulated cooler like the RTIC 65 QT, which can keep food for more than a week of camping. In this way, camping encourages you to eat healthy over processed foods, which aligns with the best diet changes needed for healthy weight management—simply due to the necessity of packing mindfully for your trip.
It makes you move more
At its core, camping is a physical activity. You’ll trek to your site, set up your tent, walk around, and gather firewood before dark. So even if you don’t do structured physical activities while camping, you’re sure to get a workout in—and since it doesn’t feel like exercise, you won’t mind doing it as much.
Yet the best part about camping is that, depending on where you are, you can also partake in those structured physical activities. Take Everglades National Park in Florida. Beyond camping there, you can kayak, too!
The Thomas Canyon Campground in Nevada also boasts some great bike trails. And if you’re game to try high-altitude camping—which involves trekking to campsites thousands of feet in the air—spots like Kampgrounds of America in Colorado will let you get some hiking in and reward you with the beautiful scenery surrounding Cripple Creek.
It improves how you sleep
Though enjoyable, camping can undeniably be an exhausting activity. After all, much work goes into trekking and setting up camp. Once you’re tired, it’ll be easier to fall asleep and wake up refreshed.
Sleepopolis explains that you’ll also reset your body clock while sleeping outdoors. Natural light influences your circadian rhythm: the blue light from the sun wakes you up in the morning—and, at sunset, the lack of it helps your body naturally feel more sleepy. It helps that campsites are also located far from urban areas, where brightly-lit streets emit artificial blue light that throws off your circadian rhythm at night.
You’re unlikely to use digital devices like smartphones while camping. This limits screen time and overall blue light exposure, helping you fall asleep more easily.
So, what does that have to do with weight management? As it turns out, sleep is vital for regulating hunger hormones. If you’re sleep-deprived, you’re more likely to wake up with a bigger appetite and eat foods high in calories and carbohydrates.
A lack of shuteye also slows your metabolism, meaning your body won’t burn calories as effectively. That can negate all the physical benefits of camping mentioned earlier. In contrast, getting enough sleep can raise your metabolism.
Ultimately, camping improves sleep quality, so you can better reap the weight loss benefits of diet and exercise on your trip.
It allows for flexibility
Camping isn’t a one-size-fits-all activity. Anyone can try it, whether you usually live a sedentary lifestyle or are a fitness buff who loves heading outdoors. It’s also accessible: many countries ask campsites to accommodate persons with disabilities by making parts of their grounds smaller and easier to navigate.
Some even boast additional universal design features. Four Corners Algonquin in Canada, for example, sets up tents for those with mobility issues, provides energy sources for campers who need to sleep with CPAP machines, and has dedicated wheelchair-friendly accommodations.
That means you can tailor your camping trip to your weight loss needs. Are you on a structured diet but worried about the weight fresh fruits and vegetables might add to your pack? Many camping enthusiasts dehydrate their food for more accessible transport and lighter backpacks.
Brands like Firepot and LYOFOOD even offer complete dehydrated meal kits—with vegan options to boot—if you’re not keen on lugging a bunch of kitchen equipment. Not sure if you can fit your medical weight loss routine into your trip? Slim, insulated bags can be an excellent option for carrying your medications.
Just be sure to fill out a form at your chosen campsite to confirm you can take them. And if you want to get even more of an intense workout, some simple online research will tell you which places offer amenities for the activities you want to try. If you’ve been trying to manage your weight even before your trip, you can thus rest easy knowing that camping is flexible enough for you to continue your efforts while you’re doing it.
Maintaining a healthy weight isn’t easy, but heading outdoors can make things easier. In particular, camping offers many health benefits that can help you lose excess pounds and achieve campfire fitness—all while still having fun!
Home page
Back to the top of the page
