Welcome back to Blasphemous Nutrition! I am your host, Aimee, and I’ve just returned from 35 days of travel in the USA to visit friends and family. This trip utilized trains, planes, and automobiles, involved three different states, 4 different lodgings, a wedding, a reunion, 4-6 family dinners, 12 dinners out with friends, and zero meals prepared by yours truly. Remember that string cheese craving I told you about a couple episodes ago? I had 130 sticks of string cheese in total, for those of you dying to know. While I am no longer craving those rubbery, salty sticks of creamy goodness, I did not get sick of them by time I finished the last few sticks in the Dublin airport.
On this lengthy trip I avoided digestive distress and weight gain despite a significant decrease in activity and so many meals out. There were a couple instances where my guts ran into something they did not care for (likely soy oil), but these instances were 3 in total and very short lived, which I consider a massive success given how often I was in areas where food quality was not as high as I generally prefer it to be.
In today’s episode I’m going to give you my best tips for navigating travel with minimal setbacks. The information will by its nature be rather general, so if you have specific challenges that are not addressed in this episode you are welcome to reach out to me for a strategy session to create a customized plan that takes your unique situation into consideration!
When it comes to safe and healthy travels, the magic is in the mindset. What is true at home is true when traveling: you cannot expect health to magically appear on your plate.
I was somewhere online a few weeks ago and someone posted about how terrible it was that they ordered a gluten-free meal for a flight and it wasn’t available when they got there. The post ended with an question akin to ‘do you think that its ok to be upset by this?” which then prompted a litany of self-righteous, entitled responses about how horrible airlines were because they did not have GF all the time, extra meals available on short notice, never paired GF and dairy-free without it also being vegan, and so on, as though they expect airline carriers to also be excellent full service restaurants. I’m sorry, people, but the airline industry can barely get people from one area to another on time, fully-staffed, and with all pieces of the plane intact if you happen to be on a boeing aircraft, yet you expect them to take better care of your health than you do?
Those who are most entitled in life are doomed to be the most disappointed, it seems.
Here’s the thing – your health is YOURS. It belongs to you. While you do not have 100% control over it, you do have a great influence on the trajectory it takes. If you relinquish full responsibility to anyone else you are at their mercy. You are at the mercy of whatever knowledge they acquire, whatever beliefs they have, and whatever their priorities are, and whatever information they choose to tell you or withhold from you. If you are in excellent health you might not ever think about this, but when your health comes into question, you need to be thinking about this!
Hands down, every one of my clients who does well while traveling takes responsibility for their health. They understand and integrate the idea that taking care of yourself is not something you want a vacation from. Even if managing your health is a pain in the ass, the consequences of neglecting it, for them, have become non-negotiable. They understand that how they eat impacts how they feel, and they don’t want to feel bloated, tired, achy, stopped up, or afraid they’ll shit their pants while traveling. They don’t want to come home to clothes that fit too tightly due to meals they can scarcely remember. In this mindset is where the magic lies.
When you realize that feeling better feels better than the fun foods and culinary opportunities that appear when traveling, it becomes much easier to strategize as well as choose foods that are delicious but won’t make you sick or cause you to gain weight.
Let’s talk about some pro strategies if you are flying by air:
Firstly, let go of the expectation that any airport or airline is going to have what you need. You need to bring emergency rations with you that are compatible with your body thriving. With new technology being beta-tested in select airports in the USA and Europe, TSA is going to be loosening restrictions over the next couple years so I have high hopes hummus will no longer be deemed an existential threat to national security. However, until that day comes, snacks like nuts, jerky, dehydrated fruits and veggies (think kale chips), fresh veg like carrots, celery and cucumbers, protein bars and string cheese are highly portable and not likely to get you pulled over in security.
I did hear from a colleague that freezing items like hummus, soup, and yogurt will allow you to get them through security. This may be a tactic to try if you are taking a longer flight and really like to have hummus with your carrots.
If you are traveling to an airport you are familiar with you probably already know what meals or snacks you can get while there. If you are at an airport with options, count your blessings! Not all airports have them. It’s best to have some back-up items regardless. I have my go-to restaurants in the airports I most often frequent and make note of choices available to me. I also make note when I travel through an airport that is a healthy food desert (Houston, I’m looking at you).
By road/rail: Traveling by rail is similar enough to airline travel, with the exception that one can bring such scandalous items like yogurt and hummus through security. If you get to travel by rail, enjoy this opportunity to pair your veggies with hummus. You can also wrap leftovers in a ziploc bag with a stay chill pack and toss it into your backpack.
Road Trips, especially in the USA, often feel like the death knell of any progress you’ve made with your health goals. But I’m willing to bet that is because you are not thinking about all your food options!
Having extensively traveled by car throughout the states, from the north to the south, the west coast to the east coast, and throughout the Rockies, not only do I fully realize how crummy and random the options for food are in many areas of the US, but I also have a very reliable back up plan no matter where I happen to be!
Firstly, if you are planning a multi-day trip you likely already know roughly where you will stop for the night. Using Yelp or Google, look for restaurants in the area that have menus with options that can work for your specific needs. Don’t forget that you can usually edit a meal to leave out the cheese or sub rice for veggies if you have food restrictions. Pull up the menu to a restaurant and ask yourself the two questions: Where is my Protein? Where is my Produce? and let that guide your decision-making.
An additional benefit to this foresight and planning is that when you decide what you will eat before you get there, you are less likely to be seduced by what looks good in the moment because you’ve made an agreement with yourself about what is best for your health before you even stepped through the door.
Now, it may be that you are not in an area where there is much available. In these situations, there is always a back-up option that most people do not even consider.
Every town has a grocery store, and every grocery store has veggies and pre-cooked protein. If you are lucky, the grocery store will also have a fueling station to fill up the tank while you fill up yours. In my interstate travels, I intentionally stop at grocery stores with gas stations whenever possible and use the opportunity to run in and get veggies and dip, hard-boiled eggs or deli slices, a pre-made salad, soup, or sushi from the deli, and so on. People often suffer with drive-thru meals while on a road trip and zoom past dozens of grocery stores without a thought!
It is always worthwhile to bring a small cooler with chilled snacks as well to keep you satisfied on the road so you do not reach emergency levels of hunger.
Now, these strategies will help you ensure that you have access to the healthy foods your body needs, but it does not address the number 1 saboteur of every vacation: FOMO.
FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a pervasive and prevalent experience. Modern marketing is all about activating FOMO. This keeps the pump primed and also leads to subconscious beliefs that we should be able to have whatever we fancy when we stumble upon it. Living in a culture of instant gratification has horrific outcomes for our health and well-being, but it is what it is so we all have to work around that beast.
Each person’s FOMO is rooted in a unique way and shows up in different ways. Working with your FOMO is something that may take time, repeated lessons, some regrets, and lots of tenacity. But it can be tamed and kept on a leash with lots of attention and intention.
Some general tips for dealing with FOMO that have worked well for my clients is: accessing your inner Frenchman, putting it into perspective, remembering the consequences, and keeping the payoff in mind.
Accessing Your Inner Frenchman: This is often a client favorite, and a trick I’ve used with them for well over a decade. I’m a big fan of archetypes and utilizing archetypes as inner guides to better knowing ourselves and learning new behaviors. Once, in a session, I was speaking to a client about her chocolate habit and encouraged her to focus on quality over quantity. At the time, all chocolate was chocolate she could not say no to easily, so I encouraged her to raise the bar and set some standards instead of abstain completely. For her, this was a more sustainable option over time. I related it to behaving like a French person, who would not dare to eat the Kroger’s Chocolate Easter Bunny that was mostly wax, because it is simply unacceptable. The French would forego this, but perhaps take an opportunity for a small square of imported artesian dark chocolate offered by a friend. The Inner Frenchman, or Inner Food Snob, is an archetype you can adopt to live in your brain and basically act as the part of you with high standards that will not simply eat something because it is there. The Inner Frenchman easily passes over the Hershey’s chocolate on the coworker’s desk because it is of low quality and not worth sullying his precious body with such nonsense. An small-batch Belgian chocolate truffle, however? Zis is mahvelous! And at such high quality, one or two truffles is typically enough.
Put It Into Perspective: In the moment, treats are highly appealing. If you are hungry, it’s even more so! Cues to eat, regardless of hunger, abound. From the obligatory wedding cake to the ice cream shop you always go to en route to the summer cabin, fun, celebratory foods attached to customs can be painful to let go of. Whether or not you need to is entirely up to you, of course. Often times, on vacation, our culinary indescretions are predominately opportunistic. Lets’ say you’ve been swimming in the ocean all morning or driving all day and you finally get to a restaurant and you are famished. Even if you’ve planned ahead, your eyes spot a deep-fried appetizer that sounds like it would really hit the spot. This is a moment of high vulnerability, and one where it’s easy to just cave in. Or worse, someone else at the table orders an app for the table, and it sounds fantastic but is not aligned with what is best for you. What do you do?
Firstly: if you have emergency rations on hand, take some. Grab a string cheese or protein bar to take the edge off so you can think clearly before you get to the restaurant.
At the table, there are some key things to consider:
- Have you had it before?
I love jalepeño poppers as much as the next Mexican, but I’ve had them before and they are not aligned with what I need to do to feel my best. Sometimes I’m sad to say no, but remembering that for the most part, once you’ve had one popper you’ve had them all allows me to keep the opportunity in proper perspective. While I never regret saying no to a plate of poppers after the fact, caving in has led to some regrets.
The same is true for wedding cake. It can feel almost sacrilegious to say no to the cake at a wedding. By and large, most wedding cake tastes like, well, cake, and is easily forgettable. Plus, no one notices if you pass up a slice. Just keep a beverage in your hand and pass the plate passed to you onto the next person. I can’t remember anything about the cakes I passed up, but I still remember the very first time I said no to cake at a wedding because I was so damn proud of myself.
- what are the consequences?
If you have food intolerances, allergies, or GI issues, the consequences can make it easier to pass up once loved foods. Being gluten-free in the continent of some of the best pastries in the world has not been an easy transition, let me tell you! I’ve relived some of the initial grief I had 20 years ago when I first knew I had an intolerance. The consequences of ignoring what my body needs is what keeps me on the straight and narrow.
Now, that said, when there is an especially gorgeous French pastry or my husband is enjoying a particularly fine piece of pizza, I may ask him if it is worth it. Or sometimes he’ll catch me looking longingly at whatever he is eating and let me know if it is worth it. Since I am not severely intolerant, I can get away with a couple bites of pizza or pastry every now and then. There are times when I feel the indiscretion is worth it, but most of the time it isn’t. My threshold of tolerance has been honed over many years and it has changed as I’ve entered my 40s, so know that the consequences you may suffer, and how much you can get away with, if any, make take time to discern and may need to be revisited after a big life event like childbirth, surgery, intense emotional stress, or perimenopause.
If you are working with weight and not disease, it may be even harder to discern when it is worth it and when it isn’t. The consequences of weight gain tend not to be sudden and extreme, so we can easily fool ourselves into having ‘a little bit’ ‘just this once’ because ‘it won’t matter’. On vacation, ‘just this once’ once a day or more can add to several pounds quite quickly!
What are the consequences? Decide if it is worth it to work that much harder when you get home to lose regained weight. Decide if that temptation is going to be worth the extra work later, and bring in your inner Frenchman to help you decide. It is also worth considering whether a specific temptation becomes a trigger for cravings. In this case, it may be best not to be go there at all.
One of my clients, who I will refer to as Sally, recently went to Europe for 3 weeks. It included travel with friends and a guided multi-day tour without any say in what was served. Her mindset was in the right place, she named her Inner Frenchman Jean-Pierre, and she planned out her back-up snacks for travel, even bringing extra emergency rations for the guided-tour portion of her trip in case what was served was a no-go. I had her go to a grocery store upon arrival and get food she could keep in her hotel room to ensure she had enough protein at breakfast. Sandwich filling was consumed without the added bread, extra vegetables were had at every opportunity, and she abstained from alcohol save for 2-3 times when it was decidedly worth it to her. She came back without any weight gain nor did she feel deprived!
- Decide before you go – how often, how much, what’s the payoff?
With Sally, we had conversations prior to her trip where she decided how often she would indulge, what was worth indulging in and what wasn’t, and how to work around the situation where she did not have much food choices at her disposal. She decided before going and had a plan in place that offered guardrails but was not excessively restrictive. The payoff for her was to be able to come back to the states and not feel she had backslid. The payoff for some of my clients in doing that hard thing of minding their food intolerances while traveling is to be able to travel without pain and discomfort. Some people really do struggle at first to ask for what they need, especially in a foreign language, but find that with practice it gets easier and both they and their families are better off for them investing the effort, despite inconvenience, to prioritize their health.
How can I let loose if I can’t eat what I want?
The holiday mindset of letting loose results from living a daily life which is too restrictive. In the long-term, finding ways to release stress, increase joy and laughter, and find meaning and satisfaction in the day-to-day is key to preventing every vacation being a rehash of “Middle-aged Moms Gone Wild”. You don’t need to have an instagram-worthy life to have more peace within the life you do have. Even 5 minutes of meditation, locked in a workplace toilet stall, can make a difference when done consistently. I spoke with a client this week who is working on reducing stress-related cravings by taking a brief walk directly after work to release stress from his body. He parks the car, steps out, and immediately walks the neighborhood for 15-30 minutes to let go of the day before transitioning into the house for family time. Little gifts like these can go a long way to keeping us in better balance as we navigate all the responsibilities we are tasked with.
If you find yourself stepping into every vacation with an ‘all bets are off’ attitude, you will likely have some regrets coming out of the trip. Sometimes we can get away with that while we are young, but as we all age we have less and less wiggle room to through caution to the wind. Part of preserving our health comes from proactively preventing situations where extreme solutions feel like the only solution.
As you work on adding in layers of calm and joy into your life so you no longer need to go hog-wild on vacation, you can look for other indulgences during vacation that feel a bit extra. Maybe instead of food-related indulgences, you indulge on a special tour or add-on to your trip to make it feel extra special. Ask yourself – if food did nothing for me or was taken off the table, how else could I make this trip special? Do you pay for a spa day to relax instead of cocktails and a fancy meal? Do you release stress by going parasailing, jet-skiing, or taking strenuous hikes in the area you are staying? Brainstorm other ways to get what you need from your vacation time so you come back to your real life refreshed and recovered!
Folks, I do hope that my treasure trove of self-preservation tactics has been helpful for you today. If you like what you’ve heard, you can be a good Samaritan and rate and review this podcast in your app so that others can find this episode and this podcast! Reviews are the number 1 way to be discovered on these apps. Additionally, you can share this episode with your travel buddies and family members and use it to support one another this summer as you traverse the planet looking for fun!
Until next time, my dearest of listeners, stay sassy, stay skeptical, and stay strategic!
