Healthy travel IS possible, whether you are traveling for work and want to keep your routine or you are looking to bring some balance to a fun vacation. Not knowing the lay of the land shouldn’t make the difference in having the experience you want! Here are 6 tips to guide you through your travels:
Prepare Yourself
Healthy travel preparation begins before you leave. Spend a few minutes searching on the internet for the healthy restaurants and farmer’s markets in the area. Try searching for “gluten-free” on Yelp to find health conscious restaurants and cafes.
Eating out can be expensive, so make sure to also look for supermarkets. Even small towns often have good-sized supermarkets that carry lots of clean foods like fresh fruit, avocados, nuts and seeds, and almond milk.
Knowing about healthy eating and shopping options can ease stress and provide amazing opportunities to try something new.
Bring Your Healthy Travel Tools
Every adventure requires the right tools and it’s no different for clean eating. The world is currently not built to provide you the best food for your health, so a little creativity is needed.
Here are a few items that can help you feel prepared in almost any situation:
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Shaker Bottle: A shaker bottle is a must have for the wellness enthusiast. Perfect for creating quick snacks, meals, and pre- and post-workout shakes. A shaker bottle comes in especially handy for hotel room stays and ensures you can keep up your shake-a-day habit.
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Daily Shake: Carry our vegan Daily protein powder or vegan shake packets with you in your bag and fix a quick snack with your shaker bottle.
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To-Go Utensils: These beautiful bamboo travel utensils are a favorite of ours because they are compact and versatile. After eating with these, you will never want to use disposable plastic cutlery again.
Healthy Travel Snack Reserves
Arming yourself with some smart snacks and supplements can create a sense of comfort and regularity while venturing out.
Whole or ground chia seeds can be added to almost anything to provide extra protein and fiber. A good greens powder and Daily Shakes (made with clean protein powder) can be measured out in ziploc bags and stored in a shaker bottle to provide boosts of energy, protein, and phytonutrients that might not be easily available otherwise.
Don’t skimp on the snacks. When you find a good place to purchase them, stock up on more than you think you will need. You will be happy you did when you’re exploring a museum or walking a new city with no good food choices in sight.
Protein shake, nuts, dried fruit, seaweed snacks, protein bars, dark chocolate, and whole fruits that travel easily like apples and pears are some of our favorites. Almond and Coconut Butter squeeze packets travel well just about anywhere and are perfect for an energy boosting snack.
A Few Supplements
It can be annoying to carry a lot of supplements when you travel. Here are our favorites:
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Digestive Enzymes: a high-quality digestive enzyme is useful to make sure your bases are covered because you may not be eating as well as you do when you’re home.
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Activated Charcoal: Add activated charcoal as a staple to your travel bag. Often we can get upset stomachs from travel, eating new foods, and being in new locations. Activated charcoal helps with indigestion, food poisoning, or diarrhea.
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Probiotics: These go hand-in-hand with the activated charcoal. A few hours after you take the charcoal, take probiotics to help balance the gut.
Stay Healthy and Take Care
Self-care is a must when attempting to travel healthy. It’s very easy to get out of our routine and our health can quickly suffer. If you’re changing time zones, your internal clock will need a little help to get you back on track.
Give yourself the best chance to get good sleep by wearing a sleep mask and reducing your exposure to bright light at nighttime.
To help with jetlag, when you arrive at your destination, do some light cardio or weights. Or bring a jump rope, the perfect ultra light Activity tool.
Do Your Best
Sometimes we may try to skimp on meals while traveling and then we end up not eating enough. The added stressors of travel can result in hangry binge episodes. To keep this from happening, make sure to eat enough healthy snacks and food each day.
Even in areas that have never heard of or seen a shake or chia seeds, you can find good enough food to keep you going.
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Fast Food Joints: If you’re stuck in a place containing only fast food restaurants, most have oatmeal for breakfast, and something like a chicken salad (that means chicken and a salad, not chicken salad). You can even get a burger without a bun and load on the veggies.
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Gas Stations: At gas stations, you can often find fruit, nuts and seeds, protein bars, hard-boiled eggs, tea, and juice.
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Airports: It’s a new age for airports. Many have decent healthy items like salads, fish and veggies, baked potatoes, tacos, fruit cups, and dark chocolate.
If you want healthy travel to be something you can actually accomplish, simply continue the good habits we have instilled for ourselves already. Use this time not only to explore the world around you but to also discover and dive into your self-care practice. A little prep and planning can turn the challenge of traveling while clean into a great adventure.
P.S. Returning from your trip is the perfect time to consider doing the 21-Day Clean Program. It has all the tools to help you feel great.