Eating on the road can often be challenging, especially when you are trying to stay healthy the whole time. Whether you are on a business trip or just trying to have your little getaway or vacation from the office, you’ll need an elaborate plan that keeps your eating habits in check during your trip. If you are trying to live consciously and you care about a healthy stomach, dining on the road will be a challenge. But don’t worry, eating healthy, affordable on the road is possible!

 

 

Do Your Research Ahead Of Time

There are many resources online that will help you study healthy food options where you’re traveling. Google the area you’re staying at and you can find travel blogs and lists of nearby healthy markets and restaurants. 

Another useful suggestion is to verify that your hotel room or rental place has any type of refrigerator. If it has, you will be able to shop at a local market for healthy breakfast foods and snacks, such as whole-grain bread, nuts, veggies and fruit to munch on, as well as any plant-based milk,  to drink with your coffee.

Also, consider a rental with a kitchen instead of a hotel. Not only will you have healthier eating options, but you can save a lot of time and money by not eating every meal in a restaurant. 

Plan Your Snacks

Before you hit the road, pack as many healthy foods and travel snacks as you are able. This doesn’t mean that you should take your whole fridge in your luggage in an attempt to get all that you’ll need for the trip.

 Keep it simple and pack only the foods and snacks that will keep you from raiding every fast-food store you come across. You can grab snacks like granola bars, protein bars, kale chips, rice cakes, nuts, carrots, celery sticks, and fruits like apples and all at a moderate amount.

 

Arrive Prepared With Healthful Options

If you’re on a special diet or want to eat smart on your trip, you need to pack a few extra items. This will save you from straying too far from your typical healthy diet while traveling. Here are a few must-packs you don’t want to board a plane without:

• Instant oatmeal: It’s lightweight and super easy to prepare, all you need is a cup or a bowl and hot water. You can purchase some tasty low-sugar options, or if you want to make your own, try mixing quick-cook oats, unsweetened dried fruit, some shredded coconut, cinnamon, and a little stevia powder. Divide it into individual Ziploc baggies for each day of your trip.
• Protein powder and a mini hand blender: Bring your favorite protein powder to make yourself breakfast shakes. You can always find a bandana around your hotel and use the ice from the machine to make a little milkshake-like concoction. 
• Chia seeds and vitamins/supplements: When you’re on the road, it’s hard to get all your vitamins and omegas in, so packing green supplements and lightweight bags of chia seeds or flax meal to sprinkle on your oatmeal or in your protein shake will give you those extra necessary nutrients that will help keep your immune system functioning properly while you travel.

Central Coast Weight Loss Surgery specialists said that the best diet to avoid stress on your stomach consists of:

• A nutritious liquid diet (water, pressed juices, decaf coffee, and teas, milk…)
• Soft, mashed and pureed foods (yogurt, puree fish or chicken, smoothies, soft soups…)
• Tender cooked foods (soft, lean proteins, noodles, mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs…)

 

Pack Non-perishable Food

With non-perishable food, the options increase more rapidly, as you can dehydrate almost anything. With this type of food, you still need to carry utensils, but the requirements are much simpler because you don’t need to refrigerate them. Another advantage dehydrated food has is the small volume it takes, allowing you to carry more of it.

Here’s a list of some options for non-perishable foods:

• Nuts and seeds 
• Fresh fruit
• Dried fruit 
• Nut butter 
• Coconut Meat
• Food bars 
• Oils and spices for dressings
• Any kind of bread to eat with your dips
• Teabags

What You Need To Take With You On The Road

It doesn’t matter if you’re country hopping by train, bus, plane, or car. In all of these cases, you need to equip yourself with the right tools for the trip. Part of being on the road is trying to keep your spending at a minimum. 

You can cut down on travel costs by packing these health-conscious and trash-reduced travel things:

• For your beverages, carry a travel mug or a reusable glass water bottle
• Glass storage containers with snap-on lids to make it easier to carry healthy snacks around
• Reusable food and sandwich wraps, also good for your daily healthy snacks

Drink A Lot Of Water

One of the healthiest ways to train your body to follow your time-conscious diet and avoid unnecessary eating is by drinking water whenever you feel hungry. Thirst is often mistaken for hunger.

Increase your chances of eating a salad instead of a cheesy burger by drinking some water.

Buy Groceries At Your Hotel

Most hotel rooms have a mini-fridge and cabinets where you can store various foods. It is undeniable that hotel food is yummy, and sometimes you can’t help but call up room service to bring you comfort foods and drinks.

You can avoid an unhealthy meal plan by buying groceries as soon as you arrive at the hotel and putting them in the mini-fridge and cabinets. You can grab a box of healthy cereal, milk, yogurt, or fresh fruits…

Eat Vegetables

Eating raw vegetables may sound strange for a lot of people, but you could eat almost all veggies without cooking them. There is even a name for this type of diet, the Raw Food Diet. Although we eat a lot of raw food, it is not all that we eat. There are the best tasting raw vegetables:

● Carrots 

● Celery sticks are great for dipping in hummus

● Radishes 

● Broccoli and cauliflower florets

● Cucumber

There are many more, and sometimes you just need a small trick to make them more enjoyable, like to mildly pickle them. Another tasty recipe that is loved is cutting the broccoli florets into very thin slices and adding some olive oil and salt and them raw, it couldn’t be more simple. 

Experiment with the vegetables you see in the local markets, you may have a nice surprise with something you did not know you could eat raw and still enjoyed.

Eat Fruits

Fruits are always crowd-pleasers, especially the sugary and juicy ones, which makes eating them addictive. Despite being healthy in general, it’s best not to use them as your main source of carbs, because in some cases, they may even have more sugar than candies, especially tropical fruits. For example, a mango tastes heavenly but 14% of it is pure sugar so, in excess, it can cause more harm than good if you eat too much of it.

Having this in mind, it is recommended to eat fruits with higher in fiber and lower in sugar. Don’t remove any from your list, though. Instead, eat the most sugary ones in moderation, like bananas, mangoes or papayas. But fruits, like berries, you can eat plenty, because they have high nutritional value and are low in calories. And finally, you have a superstar fruit, one that most people think it’s not a fruit, avocado. It is real fruit and one with a special characteristic that is not easy to find, its amazing healthy fat profile.

Having all this information into consideration, this the order of preference in eating fruits:

● Avocado 

● Berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries…)

● Peaches

● Citrus fruits (pineapple, orange, lemon, grapefruit…)

● Apples and pears

● Bananas

● Grapes

● Kiwi

● Mango

● Papaya

Treat Yourself To Some Fast Food

When you are away from home, it’s fair that you treat yourself for all the work you’ve done. What if all it takes is making the right choice, even if it’s at McDonald’s, Olive Garden, or Burger King? A delicious plate of anything else other than a salad that is within your daily calorie count won’t distort your healthy curves, diet, flat tummy, or your overall health. 

The trick is to understand your calorie intake before eating the food. You can eat at Subway, KFC, Starbucks, or anywhere you’d like to as long as you stick to your diet plan. 

Keep Up With Your Protein Intake

When you are traveling, anywhere in the world, carbs are always the easiest to find. Sodas, chips, bread, chocolate, all of them may have some fat but the majority of the calories are carbs. The problem with carbs is that even though they are enjoyable and they may satisfy you for a while, but it isn’t a long-lasting effect. Worse than that, binging on carbs won’t make it for a well-balanced diet while on the road, or anywhere else. Proteins, on the other hand, provides you with long-lasting satiety but it’s harder to find healthy options when traveling.

If you are considering long hikes or any activity that requires a high amount of energy, then you should focus even more on good protein. Not carbs, they are useful too, but not the most important when it comes to high caloric demands.

Here are some good choices of proteins, in no particular order:

● Legumes (like chickpeas, beans, etc.)

● Protein-rich nuts or nut butter (peanuts and almonds)

● Protein-rich veggies (kale and spinach)

● Quinoa (amazing superfood, has a good balance of proteins and carbs)

● Hemp seeds (amazing protein)

● Vegetable milk (or others, if you eat dairy)

● Tofu (the best is organic)

● Tempeh (cheese alternative)

● Sprouted grain bread (protein bread)

● Hard-boiled eggs

● Dairy products (cheese or yogurt)

Eat More Frequently

This habit correlates directly with the water one because doing this will prevent you from feeling too hungry at a certain point in the day, making it easier to eat small portions of food. The idea is to feed your body all the time by doing smart snacking. Some nuts here and there, fruit and you won’t feel so anxious for food in the bad moments.

It should be easy to carry small amounts of food that will help you with this new habit. There are health benefits for your body, although not as many as once believed.

Avoid Alcohol

We are talking about being healthy here, so too much alcohol can always make a problem. Unless it is a small glass of red wine with your meal now and then, most of the alcohol you drink is not beneficial at all for your body. 

There is no need to talk about the damaging consequences of drinking alcohol, in general, but for traveling in particular:

● Travelling is about meeting new people, too much alcohol will certainly not help on that

● It will increase calorie intake, disturb your daily diet

● You don’t want to feel sick and uncomfortable when outside of your comfort zone

● It will make you eat more unhealthy food

Get A New Mindset

When at home, the frequency that people usually eat out is not as high as when traveling, so you will tend to make the best of it and you might want to indulge in overeating because this is a rare occasion. 

But, when you are outside of your comfort zone, eating out can become the norm and not an exception. So, be mindful of your decision to eat out and remember not to make it a daily habit. Being able to cook your meals at home is the best way to ensure you will have a healthy meal.

It is important to plan ahead. It will certainly be difficult for a frequent traveler to keep up her dietary routines while on a work or vacation trip. The good news is when you get the hang of healthy on-the-road habits you are most likely to stick to them when you get back home and on upcoming trips.