5 Tips to Eat Healthy While on Vacation

Many of us struggle to eat well when we’re on vacation. The convenience of fast food is alluring when running from place to place, while the relatives we’re visiting are more than happy to treat us to “traditional” meals that are high in sodium, sugar, fat, and calories. And then, since we’re on vacation after all, we’re eager to treat ourselves to fancy meals in expensive restaurants we’ve been wanting to try – delicious, rich, high-calorie meals for which we will pay when we get home.

Eat Healthy When on Vacation

While all of these things are understandable, choosing convenience and indulgence over healthy eating can wreak havoc on your diet – and your body. If you’ve been working to put a healthy nutrition plan in place for yourself and your family, you really can’t afford to let a week or two of travel destroy what you’ve done.

Here are 5 tips to eat healthy while on vacation, or any time you’re traveling:

• Stay focused – Keep your healthy eating goals in mind, even when you’re on vacation. Bad habits are hard to break and, now that you’ve inspired your family to eat and enjoy a healthy diet, you can’t afford to let them (or yourself) fall back into those old, unhealthy eating habits.

• Drink plenty of water – Staying hydrated is important, especially when travelling to different time zones or countries. Travelling by air in particular increases the risk of dehydration. Since the water supply in some locations may be iffy, make sure you always carry plenty of bottled water for the entire family.

• Eat colorful meals – Visiting new places is exciting. However, if you’re not paying close attention, the food in those exotic new places may not be particularly healthy. Eating fruits and veggies in a variety of colors, red, dark green, yellow, blue, purple, white, and orange provides a broad range of nutrients, wherever you may be at the time. Keep this in mind when travelling, especially if the kids are with you. They need their vitamins and minerals as much, or more, than the folks do.

• Bring your supplements – Travelling can take a toll on your body. To stay healthy when travelling, make sure you bring along your favorite supplements. The most important supplements for people on the go are: Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and medicinal mushrooms, which help protect your immune system (it’s my version of the flu shot) – one product I love is Host Defense by Fungi Perfecti.

• Get grounded – When changing time zones, I recommend getting grounded as soon as possible and adjusting to the time zone change by first eating healthy food that has no sugar, no fat, and no carbs. Indulge later, after you’ve adapted.

There is plenty of research that shows our habits can be changed within about 21 days – whether good habits or bad. If you’re travelling on vacation for two weeks, and you resume some of your bad old eating habits, you’re two-thirds of the way toward making them permanent again.

Don’t let an enjoyable vacation be ruined by forgetting that you CAN eat healthy while on vacation.

Have you learned how to eat healthy when travelling or on vacation? Are there other vacation healthy eating tips you’d like to share? Please let us know in the comments section below.