Eating well while traveling can be difficult.
Hours on the roads, quick stops at restaurants, and bad hotel food served to captive audiences can easily lend itself to a “not quite right” feeling in your gut even a week after you get home and back to your normal diet.
There are a few tactics you can follow to improve matters, though.
First, bring a canteen with you and refill it with water regularly. If you have to, even bottled water beats drinking nothing but soda or coffee, but the more water you can drink the better off you will be no matter where you are.
Second, bring some fresh fruit with you or stop and buy some when you get where you are going. Apples and bananas can travel well, especially if you are driving.
Third, have plenty of healthy snacks to get you through your day.
I was at a seminar last week that had the usual bland and not particularly healthy food easily available at the hotel. There were a few restaurants around the hotel, but none within quick walking distance so the hotel had it made.
Thankfully, I had a barrel of pretzels, a few different types of dried fruit and nut mixes, and my trusty canteen to get me through most of the days so that I wasn’t starving come meal times and could take the time to find some better options for at least a few of the meals.
Normally I’d have made some beef jerky or apple leathers to bring with me as well but I hadn’t had time before the conference so I had to make do.
What are your strategies for when you are eating on the go?
(Photo Credit: Nemo’s Great Uncle)
Traveling and eating well can be a real challenge, especially when you’re tired from travel or the conference. It’s so easy just to “reward” yourself with tempting foods.
To keep it healthy, I always pack nuts and dried fruit mixes, low fat cheese sticks, granola bars and keep to water or herbal tea to drink. When faced with served meals at conferences, I start with a salad if possible. If nothing green is around, I select the least processed foods and choose a protein and a complex carb. I keep the portions smaller, knowing I can have fruit, cheese, granola later to get in the healthy calories I need. And if I’m tempted by a dessert, I have a few bites just to sate the tastebuds. To help me push it away – because desserts are too yummy – I usually descretely cover it with my napkin. For a buffet offering, I always look through the offerings before I get in line. This prevents me from taking a little bit here, a little bit there and getting a whole lot of calories for no nutrition. I can plan what I want on my plate instead of sampling my way through the buffet.
I also find that keeping a food log daily (I used the iPhone app LoseIt!) also keeps me on track since I have to log in everything I eat.
Next time inquire about staying with one of your friends or relatives. There are annoyances with staying in someone’s home but you can cook your own food.
I generally try to stay with folks I know, but in this case I’d have an hour commute (plus rush hour traffic so probably 75-90 minutes) each way rather than having everything in one place, which is way more convenient.
Plus, the night we did stay with somebody, they’d already ordered pizza before we got there even though we told them we’d be willing to stop and get groceries and cook for them.
I think that it is best to have your food packed if you plan on eating better while you are traveling on the road.
What I have learned is that if you are traveling with a bunch of people it’s always going to be someone in the group that want’s to stop off to get some junk food. This is almost a given.