How to stay fit while traveling with Jennifer Watts Whitmore

How to stay fit while traveling with Jennifer Watts Whitmore

Welcome to The Determined Mom Show. Today we have a very special guest Jen Whitmore from Adventuring, the girl life podcast. And she also has an amazing business where she helps people that are traveling for work to get healthy and not lose those good habits that we have. 

We are very excited to have you and what got you started in the kind of arena that You’re in that like fitness but also like fitness for busy, busy, busy people. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I played sports in high school, got married young, and just stuck with it. When my daughter was young, I started working at the gym and stayed in it. I always stayed after playing sports and lifting weights. I joined the gym to work there. I could also lose that baby weight so that we all love. 

I then, later in years, became a personal trainer. I have taught many classes. You name it; I’ve probably taught it. And then, I became a personal trainer because I enjoyed the one-on-one aspect of getting to know people and their goals personally. So that was just a deeper type of relationship that I enjoyed a lot more than group exercise. So that’s where that started. And then I thought, it’s a great idea to start a podcast and so adventuring. Girl Life, as you mentioned, is my podcast. And we do talk about all kinds of health and fitness stuff there. 

And even though it’s called adventure in the girl’s life, it is for both sexes. But we don’t talk about much mommy stuff. We talk more about health stuff. And it could be anything from exercising and eating well to sitting up straight; I have an episode about how we sit too much and how that affects us long-term. And so there are a lot of health-related issues that we go over on the podcast, and then my new business that I just started is Road Warrior wellness concierge. 

And that is where I help busy business travelers. My husband got a new job quite a few years ago now. And I noticed him being always gone and how it affected him, just jet lag. Basically, eating the convenient food, whatever was available, and a lot of times that’s either fast food or pizza because you’re working long hours. Sometimes he works overnight.

And so obviously, in the middle of the morning, there’s no food available. And so I just noticed the toll that traveling for work takes on so many people. And I started to do a lot of research about it. And that’s where Road Warrior concierge came from. Because I want to help these people better their life quality because their families need them. 

For the most part, the people that are traveling for business, are the breadwinners of the family; their job is not going to change. It’s something that they have to do to provide for their family and they are the most unhealthy. And so I want to work on helping them change that because their family will want them around for a long time.

So That’s What we’re working on with Road Warrior, that is awesome. I love that. And it’s one of those things where people take a job, and the travel aspect of that job, if it’s like an upfront thing, they’re excited about it, like, to travel to this city in that city. And then after that kind of newness wears off, which does with every job, but after that newness wears off, you realize that traveling is actually a lot of work.

And logistically, like when you think about when you travel for vacation. It is like eating out all the time because you don’t have access to a kitchen and, all those things.  I think it’s awesome that you’re trying to help people live a better, healthier lifestyle while traveling. That’s okay.

I’m excited about it. And you mentioned vacation. That is something of a different mindset. Our society is moving forward because people still have that vacation mindset when they go on vacation. They still want to unplug. They still want to relax. They want to drink. They want to eat, and they want to enjoy the food wherever they’re going.

But at the same time, we are a lot more conscious. Now, we’re not just gorging ourselves and having a free for all. Even if we are on vacation, we’re still paying a lot more attention to the food we consume nowadays because nobody wants to come home after vacation. Ten pounds heavier, I’ve enjoyed myself. But now that I’m home, I feel awful. 

And so, even though that’s a different mindset, we are becoming more conscious. And so that’s really a lot different than the business traveler because they travel all the time. And they need to have that business mindset. And so that’s what we’re working on with them: personal exercise plans, finding the food they need for themselves personally, based on where they’re going, and then, for example, somebody who travels is going to be sitting a lot. I mentioned that earlier in the podcast episode.

As you said, you’re just exhausted from traveling all the time because it is hard work. You go to the airport and sit, then you get on your airplane and sit. And then you go to your meeting after you get off your airplane and sit, and then you’ve worked this long day doing nothing but sitting.

You go back to your hotel, model, and go to sleep because you’re trying to unwind, and you’re just exhausted from literally doing nothing but sitting, and you’re like, how does this happen? I haven’t done anything all day, but it’s very exhausting. Now curious about what your business model looks like, so what do you do with individual one-on-one coaching and development plans specifically for that business traveler? Do you already have pre, established plans? I’m curious as to how that works.

So again, this is Road Warrior wellness concierge. We are a full concierge service. Now there are different levels of packages, depending on what the person once, but it is customized to the person. And the reason that that is is that everybody’s different. And you can go anywhere on the internet and buy a one-off program. I even have one that I sell.

That is a 10-week workout program, but it’s not customized to you. What if you have dietary restrictions that you need to be paid attention to? What if you have a bad knee or weak back or previous shoulder injury, something none of those things are going to help you because you’re not going to be able to do them?

 And so when I have a client come to me, they make an appointment, they fill out like a basic questionnaire, name, email, phone number, and then once we chat on the phone, I get to know them and figure out what they need specifically, and then we work to build their itinerary.

That’s what we call them is their plans as a wellness itineraries for their travel. And we also have this accountability add-on that’s available. So it depends On, like I said what they want, we can do food and exercise. And then, we have the accountability option where we can help them along the way. For example, you might have a 30-minute lunch break.

But when you try to get into your car and go somewhere, you need more time to eat. Or if you are ordering your food at 12, and it’s going to take 20 minutes to get there. Now you have 10 minutes to eat before you go back in; that’s not a healthy option. You’re shoving food down your face as fast as possible, or you’re missing that window of time and you’re just not eating at all, which I know a lot of people do, they just completely work through lunch. And this is just one example of what can happen. 

And so with the accountability piece, what we do is we offer them like a text message. It’s 1130. This is a great time for you to pick from your preconceived list that we have made you and call them and order it now because, of course, you can always Uber Eats, post mates, or whatever it is to have it delivered. But you’re just aware.

You’re having that conscious message come through of saying, Hey, now’s the time, so you’re not missing that. And then, you need to scroll through all the meal choices. Oh, well, there are 1520 choices now. You’ve got three choices that you can choose from, that are within what your goals are, that you can choose from to pick, and now’s the time to do it. So it’s very customized to each person.

They like when they get to their hotel room. They don’t have to think about that too. And they can still focus on work. That’s a great idea. Do you find your clients mainly women, or is it men, women, or everybody? So we do have women for sure women do travel for business, but at this point, the clientele is mainly men because the majority of business travelers are men.

So one thing that I always like to ask everyone on the podcast is to tell us about your background and fitness and all of that. And how did you segue into working at home? And what was your kind of motivation and reason for doing that? I always give this backstory to everyone because everyone that listens to this podcast is a mom, and they are striving to either work from home or build their own business, or they already are doing those things.

I’ve been in fitness for a long time. I loved it. That’s why I stuck with it. It was essential to me because the bottom line is that I want to age well, which comes down to taking care of my body and illness. I’m like, I can’t predict my future but I’m going to do everything I can to be healthy in my present. That I can avoid illness as I age. And that’s one of the main reasons I stuck with something like this. And so my parents, they also have own their own business for 20-plus years. 

But that’s just the season of life we’re in. And that’s pretty But otherwise. I don’t get up and go to work when somebody tells me to, like, I don’t take a lunch break when somebody tells me to, I don’t have to pay a babysitter in the evenings, because my kids get off at three and I don’t get off work until five.

So, the benefit is not all rainbows and unicorns, because obviously, money comes into that equation. So sometimes you just got to do what you’ve got to do. But working from home, I set my hours. Usually, 230 is when I close my computer for the day. And that is now family time. And if there’s something important that I have to do later, I wait until they go to bed. Because we all understand we’re never going to get that time back. And that’s important. And you are so working for yourself. That makes a big difference.

Awesome. I really liked what you said. And I even wrote it down because I was like, Wow, I’ve never heard it put that way before, but it really resonated with me. You didn’t want someone to tell you how much money you could make. It’s like, man that is like so true. There’s no limit when you work for yourself other than what you limit yourself to. And that kind of capability thing. But that was really powerful. And that is just a mind-blower of a statement there. So that’s awesome. 

I want to thank you for being on the show. And I think you have provided some tremendous value for our audience, and I can’t wait to see what as your business grows, what is going to be happening and if you are a traveling mom or your husband travels for work, or your friend or your mom or your sister, anybody that travels for work, definitely reach out to Jen and she can help them to live their best healthy lifestyle while traveling. So awesome. Very good. Thank you so much, Amanda. Appreciate you having me. Thank you.