The Basics of Vehicle Life: Your Body Has to Catch Up

One thing I completely underestimated when I first started living in my car was how physically hard it would be to do something as simple as getting into bed.

My setup has my bed behind the passenger seat, taking up about half the back of my SUV, and in the beginning it felt like climbing into a tight, awkward cave every single night. I didn’t have the strength or flexibility in the right places, and getting comfortable took way more effort than I expected.

It took several months, but eventually my body adapted. The muscles I needed finally caught up to what I was asking them to do, and something that once felt frustrating became second nature.

Looking back now, that adjustment period actually changed my body in a good way. Living in a car forced me to move differently, use my body more, and over time I became more nimble, had less pain, and ended up losing 60 pounds over the last two years without really setting out to do that.

There were mental adjustments too. After living in a sparsely populated area for 20 years, I thought navigating cities was going to be overwhelming. I dreaded it. But the first time I drove into a bigger city again, (Albany, New York), it was like riding a bicycle, just like when I did it on a regular basis for decades before I moved to Vermont. Instead of stress, I actually enjoyed it. That was a moment where I realized that a lot of what I was afraid of wasn’t reality, it was just unfamiliar.

Car living has a way of doing that. The things you think will be easy can catch you off guard, and the things you’re worried about often turn out to be manageable. But one thing is certain: your body and your mindset both have to adapt, and that doesn’t happen overnight.

Have you had a moment like this where something you expected to be easy turned out to be harder -

or the opposite? If you're thinking about car living, what part of it do you feel unsure about right now?