Anticipating your upcoming vacation or work trip, yet anxious about adhering to your health goals? Maintaining a healthy lifestyle while traveling can pose its challenges, but with some proactive planning, you can indulge in your time away without feeling like you’ve undone all your hard work upon return. Here are my top 5 healthy travel tips to consider when preparing for your next trip.
1. Pack Your Own Snacks
When traveling, our meal choices are often dictated by the offerings at gas stations or airport establishments, which typically only offer short-term satisfaction. Without proper planning, especially on travel days, our meal and snack selections often lean towards highly processed options packed with added sugars.
When selecting snacks to pack, it’s beneficial to opt for those that provide satiety and deter excessive consumption of unplanned foods. Think nutrient dense snacks such as fresh fruit, cut vegetables, nuts, seeds, home-made energy bars, or healthier pre-prepared snacks. Some of my favorite bars on the go include RX and Aloha Bars or for a home-made protein bar, try Ambitious Kitchen’s Coconut and Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bars.
2. Don’t Skip Meals
When traveling, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement or stress of your itinerary and inadvertently skip a meal, particularly breakfast. However, delaying meals can often lead to poor choices, hurried eating, and overindulging in something you did not intend to eat. This not only results in excess calorie intake but may also cause irritability, fatigue, or headaches, detracting from enjoyment of your trip. Starting your day with a breakfast rich in protein and fiber provides the necessary fuel to kickstart your day.
If you’re facing an early morning and don’t have time for a sit-down breakfast, it’s wise to pack a few nutrient-dense snacks or protein bars in your purse or backpack before setting out. This ensures you have convenient options to stave off hunger until your next meal.
3. Stock Your Fridge or Pantry
One of the best steps to maintaining a healthy lifestyle when traveling is stocking your refrigerator or pantry with wholesome foods. Even a small hotel fridge can hold quick, high protein snacks such as Greek yogurt and cottage cheese cups along with fresh cut fruit and vegetables. Whether you are on a work trip or vacationing with family, exploring local food markets can be a great way to experience different cultural foods. Access to wholesome ingredients for meal or snack preparation significantly boosts the likelihood of selecting healthier options.
4. Hydrate!
Dehydration while traveling can be very common. Whether it’s forgetting to hydrate, dry air on airplanes, or traveling to a warmer destination, dehydration can happen. Thankfully, most airports these days have filtered water stations so be sure to bring your BPA free water along for the ride.
Without proper hydration, we may find ourselves mistaking hunger for thirst. Always start your day with a tall glass or bottle of water and continue to hydrate consistently throughout the day. Alcohol can also lead to dehydration and additional empty calories, hence it’s best to minimize as much as possible.
5. Maintain Joyful Movement
Don’t feel like going to the hotel gym on your vacation? No problem! Maintaining an active lifestyle doesn’t mean you have to hop on the elliptical or treadmill. Sightseeing on foot is a great way to explore your surroundings which may often lead to hidden gems you may not find sightseeing by car or bus. Many destinations also offer rental bikes, kayaks, paddleboards, or other equipment that offers a fun activity to get the heart pumping. Utilize breaks between work meetings to spend some time outdoors and keep your body active. An active trip not only improves our physical health but also enriches our mental well-being through the exploration of new surroundings.
Hopefully these tips help keep you accountable throughout your vacation or work trip. However, there is no shame in indulging a little and letting loose. If choosing a more indulgent meal, just remember to practice mindful eating. This includes, taking your time, enjoying company, chewing slowly, taking pauses/breaks between bites, and eating until satisfied not full. The Okinawan’s have saying, “Hara Hachi Biu,” which originates from one of the 5 Blue Zones, Okinawa, Japan.1 This cultural practice is a reminder to stop eating when stomachs are 80% full. Rather than feeling restricted by dietary concerns during vacation, we can savor delicious cuisine by embracing mindful eating habits.
Resources:
- Buttener, Dan. Blue Zones. “Hara Hachi Bu: Enjoy Food and Lose Weight with This Simple Japanese Phrase”. https://www.bluezones.com/2017/12/hara-hachi-bu-enjoy-food-and-lose-weight-with-this-simple-phrase/
