Travel with No Extra Weight

Originally posted on Your Bella Life

As summer continues to chug along, I am sure you are doing a lot of weekend traveling.  And if you’re anything like me, sometimes your health can take a back seat when you are on one of your many adventures.

There’s something about being at the beach that makes you feel like you can drink endless beer, gorge yourself on various bbq delicacies, and treat yourself to a few cold ice cream cones over the course of a hot weekend.

And when you are flying to visit friends in a faraway city it’s suddenly ok to snack on all sorts of processed chips, pretzels and candy for hours as you make your way to your destination, and once you are there every, street corner seems to have a new and exciting food that you MUST try.

When you return home on Sunday night, you feel slightly hung over, bloated and your jeans are just a smidgen too tight.  Suddenly you realize how tired you are, and your weekend doesn’t feel like much of a vacation at all.

So why does this happen?

For one thing, a lot of us work so hard during the week (at our job and on our health) and when we go away we just want to cut loose, have fun and forget about the week.  But being hung over and bloated isn’t that fun at all.

Even though we not be completely aware of this, being away from home can be unsettling.   And there is a good chance that you are consuming more food than normal to comfort yourself and feel grounded.  But a few extra cookies will do nothing in the long run to make you feel more comfortable.

When we are away, food suddenly feels exotic and rare.  If we passed a fresh pretzel stand on our own street corner, we wouldn’t think twice about it, but pass a pretzel shop in an unfamiliar city, we are convinced that if we don’t eat that pretzel right now than we would missing out on this AMAZING eating opportunity that we might never get again, EVER!

Sound familiar?

So what can you do about it?

Here are 9 tips to keeping your health a priority when you are away from home:

1) To feel grounded, on a plane, bring your own blanket.  The familiarity and comforts of home will be much more effective at making you feel at ease than a bag of peanuts

2) Bring food with you that you enjoy and you know is healthy.  It is very easy to travel with raw almonds, a few apples, carrot sticks and dark chocolate

3) Start each day with a super healthy breakfast.  This will set the intention for the rest of the day and give you energy to enjoy your activities.  Try oatmeal and fruit, organic plain yogurt with homemade granola, or organic eggs with Ezekiel bread.   Most grocery stores will have these foods, and most restaurants as well.

4) Find some ways to move your body.  Go for a walk, dance at a club or play volley ball

5) Skip the snacks.  Instead focus on having 3 planned meals.  It is a lot easier to make healthy choices and you won’t spend the whole day eating unconsciously

6) If you like to drink, stick to beer and wine over mixed drinks.  The sugar in those things will set you up for major cravings, give you awful hang overs and cause some weight gain

7) I know the weekends are a great time to be with your friends, but try to get to bed at a reasonable hour.  Going to bed at 3am will make you so tired the next day (even if you sleep noon) and you will be eating just to stay awake all day

8 ) Cook some of your meals.  Just getting into the kitchen, using your own fresh ingredients completely changes the amount of junk you consume.

9) Shift your mind-set.  Sometimes enjoying yourself doesn’t mean eating whatever you want, because you end up spending a lot of time just feeling crappy.  It is actually more enjoyable to eat delicious, healthy meals and finish up the weekend feeling rejuvenated.

So instead of stuffing your face with chips and salsa and drinking one too many margaritas causing you to feel strung-out, pudgy and depleted, remember that you want your weekends to be relaxing, fun, nurturing and restorative.  And the best way to accomplish that is to put your health back in the drivers seat.