We all travel, and we all worry about what food we might find to eat when we travel and whether we will be able to maintain our diet during the holidays. Some people eat a lot of rich food and gain all the weight they lost before going on holidays, while others remain aware and maintain the quality and quantity of the foods they consume.
For many people, being on vacation means a change in environment, getting out of the daily grind of routine and relaxing. Getting out of the routine can be hard on plans to maintain a diet, or a healthy way of eating, in addition to the difficulties involved in sticking to regular food timings.
But by following some of the tips below, you can make eating while on holidays less taxing on your stomach.
- Engage in touristic activities that involve walking, which helps burn calories as well as being a fun activity.
- Drink plenty of water and reduce the intake of other beverages such as soft drinks and juices that contain lots of added sugars and calories. Restrict yourself to having only one glass of fresh juice a day.
- Use sweeteners instead of white sugar for your coffees and teas, if you aim to lose calories. One teaspoon of white sugar has 20 calories while 1 teaspoon of sweetener has less than 1 calorie.
- Select a variety of vegetable salads, focus on mustard and lemon dressings, instead of mayonnaise and Italian dressings.
- Reduce the intake of junk foods and sweets that contain high amounts of fat, sodium, butter and sugar. But you can still indulge yourself once in a while.
- Replace fast foods with healthier meals such as mushroom steak with baked potato, grilled chicken breast with steamed rice, tomato sauce pastas, sorbets, fruit salads, jelly, frozen yogurt ice creams.
- Do not skip any of the three main meals. It is difficult to follow an intermittent fasting when traveling, so do not starve yourself otherwise you will find yourself choosing wrong big fatty portion foods.
- Be wary of having a very late dinner, if you have to do so, opt for a zero carbs dinner.
- Avoid adding salt to your dishes. Taste the food first. If it needs more salt, you can add a little, but you have to taste it first. While salt does not have calories, it retains water in the body and will increase your weight and make you feel bloated; and we certainly do not need that during our holidays..
- For your breakfast, all hotels and even restaurants have a variety of diet food items.
- Always choose skim milk, white cheeses, boiled eggs, (an omelet without bread can work but not every day), low fat yogurt, muesli or bran flakes for cereals. If you need something sweet after your breakfast, go for fresh fruit salads.
- Controlling what you eat during your vacation does not mean you cannot taste the traditional food of the country you are visiting. But do it in moderation, especially if it is a rich calorie-dense variety.
