Maintaining exercise regularity and balanced low-carb meals in a strange place is a challenging task.
Independent if you’re on vacation or business trip, a major question on keto dieters’ mind when thinking of the vacation destination is: how am I supposed to stay on keto while traveling?
If you rather stop keto during your vacation, this probably won’t result in weight gain. It’s up to you to stop it or not, but if you’d like to maintain the diet, here we bring the best keto tips to help you on your journey.
Mark’s 13 Tips to Stay on Keto While Traveling
The health and well-being specialist Mark Sisson brought tips to stay keto while traveling.
- Start with a good foundation
Before starting your trip, be sure to be well prepared: have a well-slept night, be sure to eat a nutritious meal before going, and take your supplements to guarantee good immunity.
- Flexible mindset
Travel is not meant to be a stiff time; it naturally breaks your routine.
Work on your mindset; understand that you won’t be able to maintain every single aspect of your regular daily life. Prepare yourself to adapt to a different meal and workout to the current scenario.
- Bring your own food
If on a road trip, you can bring a cooler with plenty of options for your diet. Before you hit the road, plan and prepare yourself with some portions that might serve you as keto-friendly snacks or complete meals.
You can rely on raw fruits and vegetables; but you can also add some burgers, boiled eggs, roast primal, or lean cuts.
- Non-perishables
A friendly call is to create a food storage for non-perishables. They have a decent lifespan out of the fridge, further, they won’t occupy the same space as a cooler would.
Canned food, jerky, mayo, dried fruits, macadamia nuts, and even pemmican; are great examples of keto foods for your trip.
- Roadside produce
When doing road trips, most of the time you come across many independent producers. Buying fresh and local food not only helps the economy but also avoids processed consumption.
- Fasting
Each body is different, although Mark Sisson uses intermittent fasting when traveling alone. To avoid eating carbs, he often skips meals. Since he’s used to this method, it is not a problem for him to do so.
However, when traveling alongside family, friends or colleagues, he enjoys each meal with them. This avoids not only awkward situations but also to have a pleasant momentum with everyone.
- Find healthy food at restaurants
Finding low-carb foods in a new place requires a little planning over your route. However, not everyone plans ahead for places to eat a healthy meal.
Sisson suggests some bold practices such as asking for a different preparation — changing oil to butter. You can also bring your own salad, or ask for no oil on burger patties’ fry process.
- Hydrate
No matter the short or long air travel, there are high chances of you feeling tired and depleted due to the lack of humidity inside the cabins.
Once past the security gate, drink as much water as you can before entering the plane. Keeping your hydration up will reduce the flight disadvantages over your body.
- Exercising
Keeping a regularity on your schedule helps to keep up the self-discipline. Realistically, when traveling, there is no certain time to work on yourself. Save part of your day to exercise for a few minutes, after all: little progress is better than none.
- On self-care
The self-pressure is overwhelming; the pleasure of a trip can easily turn into guilt. But forcing yourself into a self-care routine instead of entirely enjoying the trip is the wrong way to go.
Allow yourself to rest, to live the experiences of a new place by being present. Push yourself to live the most of your trip, and make every cent worth it.
- Yoga Routine
Practice some yoga when possible, either for 5 minutes. Keeping your body active will make you feel great; no matter the flexibility you have, go for it!
- Traveling sleeping kit
Sleeping is fundamental for the human being, so it is for the ketosis process. So, grant yourself a great time with a pillow, sleeping mask, essential oils, and soft songs.
Sleeping aligned with fasting can normalize your body’s clock when traveling for different time zones.
- Skip hotel breakfasts
Just like the restaurants, hotels are filled with food options. But it doesn’t mean that every choice is a good choice, since it may easily surpass the 20-50 grams carb limit settled by the ketogenic diet.
Going for the eggs and bacon is an okay choice, but not eating it is a better one. You never know how much oil they spent on doing these dishes and it may affect your carb account.
Homemade keto travel snacks
When traveling, we want to take a break from all the routine sickness. However, if you break your diet, it will surely take you out of ketosis. To avoid that, we prepared some easy way-to-go snack ideas to assist in your process during the trip.
- Pudding
Easy and quick, this snack — almost dessert — takes only yogurt, milk, chia seeds, and raspberries as topping. Mixing all those ingredients together results in a refreshing pudding for snack time.
- Muffins
To add some sweet protein to your day, you must try making these muffins. All you have to do is mix into a bowl vanilla protein powder, baking powder, almond flour, peanut butter, unsweetened applesauce, and chocolate chips.
Bake them for 10-12 minutes and you’ll have a delicious and nutritious snack for your trip.
- Fudge
On low heat, mix dark chocolate, peanut butter, and stevia — or any other sweetener. Let it cool and cut it into squares; this snack will enlighten your day.
- Crackers
Who would imagine that almond flour, shredded cheese, and water would result in a practical and fruitful snack? You just need to make the dough and bake thin layers of it for 12 minutes.
- Cheese chips
Probably the easiest snack of your life. The only thing you need to do is spread shredded parmesan cheese on a baking sheet and bake it for 7-10 minutes. I personally would recommend seasoning with a bit of oregano on top to an extra flavor.
- Zucchini chips
For this one, just thinly slice the zucchini and dry them with paper towels. Mix the vegetables with olive oil and salt; afterward, bake them for 90 minutes or until golden brown.
Tips for Staying Keto on Vacation
We know that following the keto diet while traveling is not an effortless task. Most delicious culinary adventures do not suit the ketogenic lifestyle.
It is up to you, of course, to take a break from your eating plan. Some people choose to take 2 days off and it is reasonable, but nothing more than that.
Gladly, there are some tips that will help you find ways to stay keto on vacation.
Focus on Keto Meals and Snacks
It needs planning, but thinking about restaurants or places that fit into your eating plan will spare your future energy.
You can also buy some snacks or pack keto foods from home; this will ensure your low-carb options for some time. But if you decide to eat in the area, try to look after some keto-friendly options like steakhouses, grills, buffets, and seafood places.
Verify Carb Counts of Local Foods
Gladly, keto has been exponentially growing in popularity. Since it has become so well-known, many restaurants will understand if you politely ask if the meal is suitable for your way of eating.
Don’t be afraid to announce you’re on a keto diet.; it is important to know information about the food you consume. This will help you stay on track on a night out and eat with no guilt.
Stay Hydrated and Pack Keto Electrolytes
Also known as sodium, potassium, magnesium, chloride, calcium, phosphate, and bicarbonate; electrolytes are minerals essential for our bodies.
These elements are fundamental to athletic performance; they allow muscles to function normally. According to diet doctors, keeping high levels of it avoids keto flu symptoms.
The fluid loss caused by the physical activity and ketones leads to dehydration — consequently, the keto flu. To avoid it, keep in mind to stay hydrated and take with you all the electrolytes you need.
Customize Low-Carb Meal Orders
If you are lucky enough, your hotel room will have basic kitchen supplies — such as a microwave and a stove.
But if you’re not able to cook, at least you have the chance to try for delivery services. Some restaurants and applications allow you to customize your order, adding or taking out what you wish.
The possibility of customizing your orders brings variety for meals. It prevents the boringness of having always been the same and works on your creativity and the chances to explore new flavors.
Grocery Shop for Keto Foods on Vacation
Many local foods break the carb diet and lead to regression. Although grocery shopping is a great way to store some healthy fats, not every hotel room has a kitchen to work on.
Keeping ketosis while traveling sometimes requires much more effort than it seems. So let’s understand what we can do to stay in Keto on vacation.
Bring Your Own Keto Snacks and Treats
It’s not impossible to find healthy food stores, but sometimes it is cheaper to bring food from home — mainly if you’re going to a tourist destination.
In the previous sections, we suggested some keto travel snacks that you can make at home that are low in carbohydrates. If you rather something already done, consider pumpkin seeds, nuts, dark chocolate, cacao nibs, or even cereal and granola.
Politely Refuse Non-Keto Foods
That’s the time to be consistent: tell people you don’t eat every food and explain your low-carb ketogenic diet.
Even though some people might not understand this way of eating, you need to be as polite as possible. So, if someone offers you something that is out of your menu, just say “No, thank you”.
If you feel bold and comfortable enough to do so, invite people to join you in ketogenic culinary.
Suggest Low-Carb Options to Friends/Family
You surely can try to offer keto options to whoever is traveling with you. Look forward to dining out guides that have menus that fit in your diet plan.
Including your dear ones in your culinary adventure makes it easier to stay in ketosis while traveling.
Stay in Ketosis With Keto Meals & Snacks
Among all the top tips given so far, I’d like to highlight two of them that are related to a fundamental aspect of the ketosis process: exercise.
Explore Destinations on Foot
If you’re not willing to separate a time of your day to exercise, it’s comprehensible. Instead, consider walking as an alternative to keep your body active.
Exploring local attractions on foot is a great way to exercise and have fun at the same time. The best strategy for this modality is just freely exploring the places; but if you feel unsure about it, you can plan ahead for a route.
But whatever your destination is, adventure yourself: explore it on foot.
Pack Portable Exercise Tools
If you insist on separating a time of your day to exercise, consider packing up some exercise tools to use.
Resistance bands, portable Pilates bar, push-up board, mini stepper stair… which one makes you comfortable, there are endless gym portable tools that fit into luggage and can be used anywhere with no impediments.
Get Back Into Ketosis Quickly After Cheats
If you can choose, it is better not to cheat on your diet. But if you wish to take a break from it, make sure to not eat your weight in food.
Breaking your diet for some days is not a problem. Surely, it will get you off ketosis, but if you maintain a healthy basis during the trip, you shouldn’t gain weight.
However, beware of the cheat days. They can impede your body from going into the ketosis state — since they will lead you to surpass the low-carb goals —, so go easy on free days.
Use Travel Days for Low-Carb Eating
To stay on keto while traveling, it’s necessary to pay attention to what you’re eating. Instead of taking a day — or more — off the diet and compromising the keto lifestyle, focus on your high-fat and low-carb meals.
As said, you can either choose to cook by yourself or look forward to finding restaurants that fit the keto way of eating.
Recover With Keto Foods & Exercise
But if you go on vacation without staying on the ketogenic diet, the best way to recover from it — during the trip or when you get back home — is strictly following the right diet: a high-fat diet, committing to exercising regularly, and hydrating.
Conclusion-KETO Takeaway
How to Eat Low-Carb or Keto While Traveling
After extensive research for the best keto travel, we’ve concluded that these are the best tips to stay in ketosis while traveling:
- Pack a stock
To avoid struggling during the trip, bring from home the food you need. No matter homemade snacks or non-perishables, having them with you will keep you on track with your diet.
Besides, if you make it, you know exactly how much nutrients and carbs are in the food.
- Rely on grocery stores
If you don’t feel like cooking, you can also buy some snacks for yourself. Shopping for already-done snacks won’t make you unhealthy if you know how to choose the best ones.
My way-to-go tip for you is: beware of the ingredients, some contain much more carbs and fats than you need.
- Keep it low-carb
You don’t necessarily need to maintain a keto lifestyle. Sometimes, retreating to low-carb only is a better way out for you.
Rely on restaurants that you know will have options for you. As said, any grill or buffet will ensure you lunch/dinner.
- Exercising
Don’t expect to sustain your regular exercise routine, because you won’t.
Rely on touristic walking, and explore the destination by foot as much as you can. If you rather, you can pack up some exercise gear, such as resistance bands.
Is important to be active in your day, even for 10 minutes.
- Enjoy
But the most fundamental thing is to have fun.
Don’t martyrize over not following properly your diet. Focus on enjoying every single moment of the trip and the people that surround you.
Vacation is meant to be a great time, so don’t waste it feeling guilty about the things you’re not doing.
