Canter Bridge

Kurt Gutierrez believes you can apply the same planning, discipline, and anticipated outcomes to saying healthy on the road as you do in the rest of your professional and personal life. ‘Just get it out there on an Excel spreadsheet’, I can almost hear the author say.

I like that.

My own ongoing struggle to get fit again and then stay fit at a half-time travel pace owes a lot to the subjectivity of it all. Self-disclosure: I’m twenty pounds overweight at a time in life where that kind of thing has to stop, ‘cuz the slopes get more slippery from here on out. Gutierrez wants me to get the situation and the plan down on paper and stick to it like I do with the rest of my life. He’s talking my language.

Eight short chapters and an appendix make the case: ‘You’re off!’, ‘Finding your personal why–your fitness mission and goals’, ‘Sleep’, ‘Jet lag’, ‘Stress’, ‘Eating and drinking’, ‘Exercise while traveling’, ‘Returning to the home front: putting it all together’ and the appendix: ‘Discussion on Heart Rate’.

In the vocabulary of time and life management, the former military man Gutierrez’ approach is top-down. That is, he actually wants his reader to sit down (chapter two) and write out his or her mission and goals. For guys like me who need to know why we do the things we do, this is what the doctor ordered. I have the discipline to implement the idea. I just need the idea. Mr. Gutierrez shows me how to get it out of my head—where it doesn’t have the authority it requires—and on to paper, where I’m prone to obey.

Parts of this book will be old hat to any seasoned traveler. What the potential buyer has before him is the choice to by the book for the helpful portions that I have attempted to sketch above, knowing that other sections will deal with matters (a trip checklist, staying hydrated on a plane, etc.) for which he needs little additional instruction. On the other hand, the book is slim and lightweight and—calorie charts and all—could prove handy as a one-volume tagalong reference while you get our travel ducks in a row.

The author provides concrete exercises you can use today, with a healthy emphasis on ramping up to a sustainable exercise habit rather than binging on well-intentioned but short-lived get-fit rampages. I especially appreciate his final pages on ‘common misconceptions’ and ‘returning to the home front’.

Numerous misspellings mar the book but won’t keep you from making good use of the contents.