Your Vacation: Eating Healthy and Keeping Fit

The following article is written and sent to me by Cole Millen. It provides useful tips for frequent travelers to continue eating healthy while being away from home. Please enjoy reading the article and feel free to share with us the dietary tips you implement at your trips. Thank you!

Your Vacation: Eating Healthy and Keeping Fit  

You’ve worked hard these past few months, working out and eating right. You’ve lost lots of weight and you feel great, too. But now you have the opportunity to travel—perhaps for a vacation or a family reunion. Is it possible to maintain a healthy lifestyle while on the road? With the right knowledge under your belt and a little advanced planning, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

If you are traveling by air, there are many ways you can manage your trip to include your diet and fitness goals.  Before leaving for the airport, eat a good meal so you won’t be tempted by snack foods at the airport. Be sure to pack some healthy snacks, such as dried fruit or nuts, in case hunger strikes while you are on a long flight. If you eat a meal during a layover, stick with healthy fare such as baked chicken and salad.  To counter the sedentary nature of air travel, use the stairs instead of the escalator. While waiting for your flight, tour the airport rather than sitting down to wait for your plane to begin boarding. 

Finding a hotel with the appropriate amenities and services like a gym and an in-house restaurant will make keeping your diet and fitness goals much easier. Doing a little research into this part of your trip prior to your departure can really pay off. I was recently researching reviews for hotels and found a great site that listed hotels in Las Vegas regarding not only their amenities but also the restaurants in the area. This was extremely helpful in not only finding a hotel but also figuring out which of the restaurants in the area would have healthy options for me. Well-known hotel chains located in metropolitan areas are more likely to have restaurants and gyms, so target these areas first. These facilities often feature rooms with kitchenettes or at least a small refrigerator, making keeping healthy foods in your room a cinch. Hotels in large, metropolitan cities are also likely to have another important resource nearby—a well-stocked health food store where you can easily acquire healthy foods and snacks during your stay.

Once you arrive at your hotel, hop on over to the local health food store and stock up on goodies to make your vacation spot feel like home. Having familiar healthy foods on hand will help you avoid giving in to cravings for foods that are high in fat and calories.  You can throw together a simple breakfast consisting of instant oatmeal (easily prepared using hot water from the coffee maker located in your room), fruit, and yogurt. If you carry a small crock-pot with you on your trip, you can prepare simple meals right in the comfort of your hotel room. Chicken, rice, and vegetables are perfect foods for crock pot cooking.  

Choose your restaurant with care. Avoid all-you-can-eat restaurants, as well as restaurants with mascots. If appetizer items tempt you, consider staving off your hunger with a small snack in your hotel room before venturing out. When scanning the menu, search for the following watchwords as cues for healthy foods: baked, broiled, fat-free, grilled, steamed, and stir-fried.  Avoid menu items designated as basted, battered, bottomless, country style, creamy, or smothered. Be sure to add vegetables as a side dish, emphasizing those with the brightest coloring for enhanced nutritional benefit.

By following these suggestions, your vacation can be fun without sacrificing fitness!

Author: Cole Millen 

Healthy Eating Tips for Travelers

Recently I have been travelling and staying away from home often.  I should admit that eating healthy while away from home is not easy. Here are few tips I learned from experience. Hopefully you will find them useful during your trips.

1) Drink more water than the usual on flights. Circulated air in airplanes, especially during longer flights, gets drier.

2) Also on flights, drinking too much coffee and tea causes more dehydration. Packaged juice products include too much simple sugars, therefore sticking with water would be the healthiest.

3) Try to find hotel rooms with kitchenettes. Even a small kitchen would help you prepare snacks and sandwiches yourself, which can be healthier than those you buy from supermarkets. Plus the more home-made foods you consume, the less you dine out, which is good not only for your health but for your pocket too!

4) Some residences rent out their condo units on nightly basis. These units come with fully-equipped kitchens where you can cook comfortably. These residences offer fully-equipped gyms which most hotels do not (or offer at lower quality). Extended Stay hotels are also available for travels in the U.S. and Canada.

5) Keep healthy snacks like granola bars in your bag. When hunger attacks while visiting an unknown area, you would not have to eat at the first restaurant you come across.

6) The first day you arrive in your hotel room, get bottled water and healthy snacks from a grocer and store them in your room. Some hotel rooms provide them as extras, however they overcharge.

7) Choosing a hotel that offers full breakfast (rather than continental breakfast) can help you find healthy foods early in the day when we usually are the hungriest. Speaking of breakfasts, if you eat a big breakfast, you can skip lunch unless the breakfast is very early. I tend to feel healthier when I eat big breakfast, small afternoon snack and then decent (not big enough to make me sleepy) amount of dinner.

8) Investigate not only the travelled area`s cuisine but also the restaurants nearby the area you will stay before travelling. Sites like Travel Advisor, Yelp and Zagat are very helpful. I personally use their mobile apps more as I tend to do more search while travelling instead of before.

9) Take your stomach and digestion medicines with you.

10) Avoid tap water at all times.

11) Order your meat cooked at least one grade higher than the usual.

12) Get smoothies and vitamin juices at every opportunity (from a clean store!). I tend to consume less vitamins and vegetables while I am travelling and unfortunately most restaurant meals are meat (rather than vegetable) based especially in English and Spanish speaking countries.

13) At the first day of your trip, avoid eating too much or adventuring into new tastes. New spices and condiments may upset your stomach. Try to get yourself accustomed to foreign cuisines slowly.

Please feel free to add other useful tips you know in the comments section. Let`s help fellow travelers eat healthier :-)

Thank you,

Umit