7 Ways Living in a Camper Keeps us Healthy

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Camper life is one type of travel that lends itself to a healthy lifestyle (and lots of fresh air)! Here are 7 ways living in a camper keeps us healthy.

1. We spend the majority of our time outside

We LOVE our Toyota Dolphin camper (in our opinion it is the best RV to live in full time), it is a micro motorhome, which means it’s quite small. Due to the limited square footage inside our camper we spend the majority of our free time outside.

The biggest barrier to exercise for many people is just the simple idea of getting out of the house. When we lived in a stationary dwelling I remember how easily I could get glued to the couch inside, even when it was a beautiful day out.

Living in a camper full time means that we are nearly always motivated to go play outside (i.e. get exercise)! Whether that looks like going for a swim (in the ocean, a river, or a lake), going for a hike, or doing yoga on our weather resistant camping mat (I try to practice yoga at least 5 days a week), we get plenty of exercise every day just by camping in beautiful natural settings.

2. We rarely have the option of eating out

Since we usually camp in remote areas far from any services we rarely have the option of eating out. We stock up on a week’s worth of food at a time, and whatever we buy on our weekly grocery trip is all we have to eat for the week. This makes healthy eating much easier, because rather than having to make lots of small healthy choices all week long we can make good choices on our grocery trip, and then we don’t have the option of eating a bunch of unhealthy food throughout the week.

3. Living in the middle of nowhere makes it easier to practice mindfulness

We are usually pretty far from civilization, and from other people. We try to find remote campsites that give us plenty of privacy, so we get a LOT of quiet time. Sometimes we’ll sit outside for long periods of time doing nothing, just observing nature.

All of this quiet time has helped us practice mindfulness in our everyday lives. It’s easy to appreciate the moment I’m in when I have so much peace and quiet surrounding me. The simple tranquility of our camper lifestyle has helped us learn to quiet our minds. (If you’d like to read more about how camper life lends itself to mindfulness check out our this post)

4. We have more access to fresh fruit and vegetables

We often find ourselves in rural areas where foraging is possible. We have foraged wild mushrooms, and a wide variety of wild berries while living in our camper.

We also regularly find ourselves close to small organic farms that sell fresh picked produce at very reasonable prices. We love to buy directly from farm stands, and we eat plenty of delicious produce while traveling.

5. We nearly always have nice weather, making outdoor activities extra appealing

One of the biggest advantages to living in a motorhome is the ability to follow good weather! If there’s a storm front coming in we just relocate to an area with better weather. As a result, Tom and I experience sunny weather with warm temperatures nearly 365 days a year.

We also try to sleep with our windows and curtains open as often as possible. When you wake up to a beautiful sunrise it makes you want to get outside right away! We usually drink our coffee outside while we decide how we want to spend our day- should we go hiking? go for a bike ride? go for a swim? all of the above? Beautiful weather motivates us to spend active time outside!

6. We often walk, bicycle, or kayak to get supplies rather than driving

Once we’ve found a beautiful campsite we have to get our camper leveled, set up our solar panel, and unpack several items (check out our top 10 essential motorhome accessories). Occasionally we’ll realize we need to buy something we forgot on our grocery trip (or we’ll decide we really DO need that chocolate bar…)

Once we’ve set up our camp it’s a pain to pack everything up just so we can drive to a store so if we are within walking or bicycling distance we prefer to use human power to get to the store. We often find ourselves taking a long walk or a long bicycle ride to pick up supplies.

In Mexico we occasionally paddle our inflatable kayak to the nearest tienda (a small Mexican general store), which is a really fun way to go shopping!

(Looking for an inflatable kayak? Read our review of the BEST inflatable kayak!)

7. We have time to handle difficult emotions in a healthy way

When we began our camper life I never imagined how healthy it would be for me emotionally. That was likely because I didn’t realize how stifled my emotions really were in my stationary life. In the first 6 months of our travels I worked through many difficult emotions that I’d harbored for years before we began our travels (to read more about the difficult experiences that motivated my travel click here). The RV lifestyle provides us with so much free time and so much tranquility that I can allow myself to fully face my negative emotions as well as my positive ones.

Tom and I have also learned how to work through relationship conflicts in a healthy way thanks, again, to the abundance of time and tranquility our RV lifestyle provides us. If you’re looking for advice on camper travel as a couple check out our article on staying happy with your partner in a small space. 

Considering your own camper adventure? Check out this post, where we answer our most commonly asked camper life questions!

If you’d like more information on how we find beautiful, affordable (even free!) campsites, head over to the sidebar and leave us your information, we will send you a FREE guide to finding awesome, cheap campsites!

If you’re considering camper life for yourself check out our ebook Nomads in Campers: A Step by Step Guide to Living your Nomadic Adventure!

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