How to eat healthy and maintain weight while travelling / being on vacation?

Question

My situation is I am really trying to get very fit and loose weight. When I am home, I am doing really well. I follow a pretty extreme diet, which basically has become a lifestyle. All is well, and that works really well, and I can maintain the weight I want.

Now, problem is I travel a lot. This year it is more than 2.5 months, distributed over multiple times a year. And you can do a lot of damage in 3-4 days (trust me, I am an expert).

When I travel I will consistently eat unhealthy. Extremely unhealthy. Yes, we are talking donuts, sandwiches, ice cream, burgers, pasta and even orange juice!

The problem arises in the following ways:

• I find it extremely difficult to find low-carb / slow-carb food in most cities (sitting in New York airport right now - one **** of a sandwich town!)
• I find it extremely difficult to eat healthy in airports, especially because I hate being hungry. This is also a problem when travelling 16-20 hours+
• I enjoy the plane food quite a lot
• The second I enter a plane, my brain suddenly goes: ahh, you are away from home, let's go buy a donut! make it two!
• Conferences and similar: breakfast buffet full of bread, danishes and cake.. simply to tempting

This is both a problem when visiting a city for some days for a conference, but also when I am sitting 3 weeks on a beach in the Philippines.

I know this is a difficult question, but:

• Is there any best practice, on how to maintain a healthy diet and even loose weight on a vacation?
• Any best practice to stop the brain from thinking "Yay, vacation!", every time I enter an airplane?

Answer 1

I would suggest the answer is goal setting. If you have a goal of losing 8 pound by the end of a month, and at the time agreed that it was realistic. You will be focused on your goal, and will think a little more before reaching for the donuts.

There are things you can do to help yourself. When you know that healthy food isn't readily available, take yourself some health food, snacks. Look at menus before you are ready to eat, to see if there is a healthy option, if not try somewhere else.

I personally wouldn't try to lose weight on holiday, but if you eat healthily whilst you're away, and have the occasional ice-cream and a couple of glasses of wine each night, you shouldn't put yourself back too far.

So I think my message is this. Set a goal, to keep your focus. Plan what you will eat, when and where, and limit the alcohol on business trips, as it's full of empty caloies. I'm not saying it's easy when you are training, but it does come down to you, and how much you want to achieve your goal

Answer 2

Lars, while I have the opposite problem see here, I think you could do what I (try) to do when travelling. Try to stay in hotels that can prepare dinner according to your specification. At breakfast pack your food for lunch. You can also buy food from local shops and prepare your food. I am forced to do this everytime I travel, otherwise I would get problems with my energy levels.

Answer 3

I used to have the same problem and have unfortunately never been able to control on my diet while travelling, But i have a nice fix for that, you must workout during your travel. You could use stuff around you in a room to do body-weight exercises. A few examples are: planks, dips using the sides of the bed, squats, lunges, and deadlifts using your bag. You could also carry a very portable set of resistance bands/tubes with you. If you seriously practice on these workouts(three sets of each ), you can at least ensure no extra gains from vacation indulgence. so workout hard and of course, enjoy your vacation!

Answer 4

well, probably the best thing you can do and i do it is to keep in mind your goal i visit every weekend my mom and she likes to to cook things that aren't exactly healthy, what i do is basically i limit myself and try to take the healthier part of what she cook (chicken, broccoli, etc).

when i can't apply my diet for vacation or different circunstancies i apply this to myself:

" if it grows or you can kill it, you can burn it "

Answer 5

My simple tips are:-

1. Invest in nutribullet, carry while you are away and make a healthy juice consisting Kale, Celery, Pear, banana, nuts and vegan protein powder.
2. Eats lots of boiled egg
3. Drink 10-15 cups of Green tea, this will force you stay on course and do not think about chips, snacks.
4. Do 15-20 minutes HIIT everyday or whenever possible. Most HIIT exercises do not require even much space.
5. Have a light dinner with fish and salad.
6. Have dinner 3 hours before dinner and have 8 hours of sleep/