Tips for Eating Well During Travel

Traveling always makes it tougher to stick to a balanced diet.  Here are a few tips I used to lose weight and maintain “on the road” as a world traveler in my previous business leader role.

 

• Stop at a grocery store if you are driving and pick up healthy snacks, even put a cooler or insulated lunch bag in the car with ice to keep refrigerated items on hand.

• Healthy snacks with no prep are baby carrots, apples, grapes, cherry tomatoes.
• Dry snacks include almonds/peanuts/other nuts, whole wheat crackers or rice crackers or Kind bars (any ones that are not drizzled with chocolate).
• Cold snacks are individual yogurt cups (Oikos Triple Zero vanilla or fruit flavors are ok), hard boiled eggs and hummus (Sabra sells individual sized containers that are about the same size as a blue serving).
• Measure out Shakeology scoops (if you bought a bag) or carry packets and shaker bottle to have the shake on the go.
• Carry lots of water, seltzer or a flavored seltzer like La Croix.
• Eat snacks between meals to make sure you don’t get too hungry and overeat at the next big meal!
• When traveling through airports, shop for healthy choices, give away or throw away any items that are not Fix approved (like pretzels with the Sabra hummus and pretzel combo or ranch dressing in a veggie pack).  Then you have a clean and healthy snack!

• At restaurants, focus on choosing entrees that are a protein (chicken breast, fish fillet, steak, etc) and choose grilled or broiled preparation (not fried), if you have eaten all your carbs for the day then substitute the rice/potato side for a side of vegetables. Start with a green salad and oil and vinegar salad so you are getting 2-3 veggie servings. Avoid the bread and if you are ordering a carb/yellow as a side then make sure it is approved like sweet potato, brown rice or potatoes.
• Before heading to a restaurant, check out the menu online and decide what you will order so you are prepared and not hijacked off plan by the smells and what others order. I also try to help plan the work dinners so I can pick a couple restaurants whose menus I have prescreened online of healthy choices.
• Restaurant breakfasts – avoid pastries, bagels (sorry!), etc and go for eggs or egg whites, omelets with mushrooms/onion/peppers and a little cheese, english muffin, plain or low sugar oatmeal, fruit. Coffee – avoid all creamers since they are filled with chemicals, I use unsweetened almond milk and stevia but on the road that’s usually not available so I either do tea and honey or coffee and a splash of milk and stevia or honey.
• Also, here is a video from Autumn Calabrese about how to make healthier room service orders.
  

• Alcohol is allowed but in moderation so limit it as much as possible and if drinking, skip alcoholic beverages with sugary mixers.  Best choices are liquor and soda water with lime or wine.  Count each drink as 1 yellow.
• Download the 21 Day Fix Fit Tracker app to your phone. It is a great app for the 21 Day Fix and helps you click off the color containers you have eaten and see what containers are left. This is a good on-the-go tracker.