Nutrition Tips for Road Trips

Happy Friday!

I’m writing this post at a breakfast nook Airbnb in Washington, D.C., at the tail end of what has been an awesome week of baseball, beaches, and microbreweries with my good friend Heather. We’ve taken the Johnny Cash song “I’ve Been Everywhere” and turned it into “I’ve been to as many ballparks and cities as I could cram into seven days.”  

Make sure you ask me about camping in a little tent on a beach during a thunderstorm though. While it was 97 degrees. 

This was awesome. Until the thunderstorms rolled in and I thought I was going to suffocate in a tent. But up until then it was great. 

And tomorrow we're  going to top it off with a workshop from meditation teacher Tara Brach. 

Road trips come with their own unique challenge in terms of nutrition. You’ve got the boredom of being in the car for hours on end (no Heather, you weren’t boring. I heard everything you said. Honest). And you also have the constant temptation to graze on gas station food like Swedish Fish and Pringles.

I’m a big proponent of enjoying yourself while on vacation, within reason, but I did some preparing in advance to help me stay within my nutrition goals for this trip.

1. Prepare

We packed a cooler with non-perishables like nuts, jerky, and bars. Aside from saving money, it also helped me make better decisions in terms of nutrition. I much more likely to make better choices when I’m not so hangry.  

Avoiding hangri-ness also saves marriages and friendships.

2. Pack some protein

I loaded up on beef jerky, which my vegetarian friend Heather really enjoyed, especially in the closed space of a car. We also loaded up on nuts, bars, and protein shakes.

One of the benefits of protein is that it’s very satiating. A protein shake around lunch time, along with some sugar snap peas and blueberries were more than enough to keep me from raiding the salty aisle every time we stopped for gas. 

3. Take your green supplement along

Most of my servings of veggies have come when we stop for dinner, so to help fill that gap in my nutrition, I’m traveling with Super Food. We picked up the vegetables we thought would last the best in a cooler, but there’s no way I was going to get enough servings through whole foods during this trip. So I added in a scoop of Super Food once a day to help fill that gap.

4. Enjoy

I planned for my evening meals. We've found some tremendous restaurants on this trip and I've enjoyed some great food. And I can enjoy that food even more, knowing that I've made good decisions leading up to that meal.