Tuesday Tips: 5 Tricks To Keep a Road Trip From Ruining Your Healthy Eating Plan

If you are trying to eat healthy and lose weight, road trips are just plain frightening: gas stations, McDonald’s, staying with friends who want to serve you something gooey and delicious.

I certainly haven’t perfected my technique, but I’ve learned a few tricks that have helped me survive three road trips this spring without losing my cool.

1. Plan ahead. Time-consuming, but absolutely essential. Sketch out where you think you will be eating and when and write them in your calendar if you don’t have a weight loss app. Are you going to be a guest at someone else’s table? Super hard to control the menu in that case. But, if you are going out to eat, you have options. Even McDonald’s has some decent choices, but if you get to choose the venue, even better. Noodles & Company salads and zoodles! Chick-Fil-A grilled chicken nuggets and Diet Lemonade! If you are going to an elegant restaurant, hurray–they tend to have delicious grilled fish and chicken and delightful vegetables. Buffets and potlucks sound easy, but they aren’t. It’s so easy to end up with a lot of food on your plate.
2. Decide what FOODS really matter to you. If you are absolutely not negotiable about missing Uncle Levi’s fried catfish, for instance, write that down as a definite splurge. But if you barely like your friend Gretchen’s arid cinnamon rolls, just decline, or take a tiny corner and apologize that you’re on a diet. Which leads me to the next point…
3. Advocate for yourself, even if it feels like you’re being rude. No one else will suffer if you overeat and have a splitting headache the next morning, or if you get home and the scales shocks you. They shouldn’t be offended if you decline a dessert. I’ve had people decline dessert that I offered them, and honestly, I usually go away respecting them a lot, because I know how hard it is. Of course, I’m lucky enough to have had some awesome hostesses recently (Laura, Nancy, Kerra) who were top-notch above and beyond at serving healthy food.
4. Decide which MEALS really matter to you and go light on the others. If you have a big old potluck coming up on Friday evening, what about nonfat Greek yogurt and kiwi for breakfast and hard boiled eggs and a turkey wrap for lunch? I don’t usually skip meals, although I know that lots of people do that, and that could be an option. Where, you ask, would you get the yogurt and hard-boiled eggs? This brings me to my most favorite trick:
5. Take a portable refrigerator with you! Okay, I don’t actually mean a real refrigerator, just a nice medium sized cooler stuffed with strawberries and cauliflower and ice packs and smoked turkey breast and nonfat Greek yogurt. THIS IS A LOT OF WORK, YES. But it is the only really effective way I know of making sure that I am never stranded without options in a world of Culver’s shakes and loaded fries and subtle pitfalls like chocolate milk. Or, if I eat somewhere that has only shakes and fries, I can eat light and reassure myself that there is food waiting for me out in the car that I can fill up on later.

Of course, my biggest potential road trip disaster is still ahead, a few weeks away: 22 hours one way to Pickle Lake Ontario where we will be teaching VBS. But, I am pretty determined to get to my free weight*. I might have to appeal to our dear hostess Carolyn to see if she is making rhubarb dessert again, because that is non-negotiable. I’ll plan my whole week around that if I have to! Hmm… I wonder if I can smuggle my refrigerator across the border.

Happy staying slender while traveling!

P.S.–Don’t weigh yourself until you’ve been back from your trip for a few days–sitting in a vehicle for hours makes your body hold onto fluid, in my experience, which will disappear after a few days.

*If you get to your goal weight at WW, you are free in that you don’t have to pay monthly fees. Hurray! 🙂 Join here!