I was asked by a reader:
Hey Katie,
It would be great if you could do a post on eating healthy on vacation, especially how you deal with when you first arrive and haven’t had time to go grocery shopping yet. I always struggle with that! And working out too. Love your blog by the way!
I’m really lucky because the beach house where we’re staying is equipped with a full kitchen (oven, microwave, fridge and freezer). And—as I mentioned in my previous post—my parents drove down a week before me, taking dangerous “Katie things” I couldn’t bring on an airplane. They also bought a few staples, during the week, to save me from having to go grocery shopping first thing.
Breakfast was an old favorite: Blended Oatmeal Pudding.
I cooked the oatmeal in Texas and took it on the airplane in a small Magic Bullet cup. Thankfully, no one tried to stop me.
The above was my breakfast backdrop.
For lunch, on the first day, I utilized some of the items my parents bought. My meal was close to the ugly meal from yesterday’s post—with the monster salad, Artisana coconut butter, and Chee-fu. The only difference was that I had a bowl of corn instead of the zucchini fries. And now that I have had time to go grocery shopping, I’m eating very similarly to the way I always eat.
There’s just one exception: Since I’m on vacation, I want to enjoy the scenery, the town, the beach, etc. I don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen all day. So I’m keeping things simple—less cooking, more “thrown together” meals, with lotsa salads and fresh fruits and veggies (taking advantage of those side-of-the-road farmers’ markets we don’t have in Texas). Plus, being out shopping or hanging in the town requires portable snacks, so I’ll often exchange my beloved blended pudding or Vita-Mix ice cream snacks for Jocalat bars, fudge baby bars, raw nuts, or especially fresh farmer’s-market fruits. Yesterday afternoon, for example, I feasted on this:
Juiciest box of raspberries ever. In the words of Usher: OMG! These berries hail from the cutest little farmer’s-market stand. Honestly, I want to box up the entire stand and transport it with me back to Texas. Why don’t we have places like this? Almost everything is organic, everything is local, and the stand boasts the ripest and juiciest fruit/veg. Berries, peppers, asparagus, salad greens, apples, peaches, tomatoes…
Question of the Day:
How do you eat healthily on vacation? And in the summertime, do you tend to stick to the same type of routine, or do you completely deviate from how you live during the rest of the year?
Personally, I love the freedom of not having to be at a specific place at a specific time (unlike in college– *blah*). However, as far as eating is concerned, I still pretty much eat around the same times because that’s when my body is conditioned to feel hungry. Same thing with sleeping: For the most part, I still fall asleep around 11ish and wake up naturally around 6:30 or so. If I mess with my sleep routine too much, my body feels it the next day. (All rules go out the window on dancing nights, though. Sometimes, feeling icky later is soooo worth it!) But the rest of my family—and some of my friends—follow a completely different lifestyle during the summer months, eating dinner at 10PM, sleeping til noon, and having pizza for breakfast.
Thanks, Gisela, for the question. I’ll try to get to the second part of your question (about working out) later this week.
I can *not* understand the people who have the ability to sleep until the late afternoon. I just can’t do it! Nor do I want to.
I used to have a very wacky sleep schedule, but for the past year or so I have been sleeping at around 11 and waking at around 7 or 7:30 and it seems to work for me. I feel much more in balance when I do so.
As for eating. Well, it depends on where I am, of course… If I’m in California, I do most of the cooking for myself and eat a lot of fresh meals like salads, summer pastas, etc. If I’m traveling a lot (ie. staying in hotels), it’s a bit harder to find good food. I at least try to carry some dry foods like granolas (I like the Go Raw apple cinnamon variety) for when I feel hungry and there isn’t much else to eat.
I love having a fully equiped kitchen when on vacation. Now we try to get hotels with them every chance we get. If not, I hit up the hotel breakfast bar and search for oatmeal and fruit. If no luck there, then it’s off the the grocery store for whatever I can find! It’s awesome when you’re in a beachy town because they generally eat pretty healthy there (everybody needs to stay bikini ready! haha) so finding fresh produce is always easy!
I don’t change much as far as routine but when I go on vacation, I try to make sure that I still get exercise and I try to stick with ‘my’ foods, but we all know how that can go when there are tempting treats that one just can’t get back home. Especially things like nocochi 🙂
I love to travel abroad and I don’t let my vegetarianism and recent veganism stop me. Eating abroad can be surprisingly easy, providing you know a little bit about the local cuisine. I’ve recently been traveling to Costa Rica and Belize, and it wasn’t very hard to eat veg*n. South and Central America have awesome fruit (fresh pineapple, papaya, mango!) and people frequently eat beans and rice, which makes it easy. The trick is to avoid the “American tourist” places, since they tend to be geared towards lots of meat and dairy. The capital of CR even had a vegetarian restaurant!
It also helps if you can locate a place to stay that has a kitchenette. The place we stayed at in CR had at mini kitchen and we brought along fudge babies-like treats, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and dry, mixed oatmeal (quick oats, raisins, cinnamon, just add hot water). Anytime I travel to new places I always bring a filling item or two, like Larabars or easy sandwiches, etc. just in case I can’t find anything or I’m just too tired to figure anything out.
More strange places can still be accommodating to vegans. I’ve traveled to China for a month and was able to eat as a vegetarian pretty successfully. The trick is to do some preliminary research on potential restaurants you can eat at and the nearest grocery/market.
hey katie! im glad you brought up this topic. i went to japan a few weeks ago for a vacation with my mom and i ran into this dilemma a lot. i tried to eat fruits/veggies whenever possible but fresh produce is REALLY expensive in japan (im sure you know because you lived there right?) i definitely indulged a lot and tried to expand my taste horizons and just be flexible, but i do like eating by my own schedule and eating the foods that i like to eat so im glad im at home now! i’m also leaving for south africa in a few weeks and actually staying at the university of pretoria, so i am a bit anxious/worried because i have nooo idea at all what food im gonna be given. so far my thought is to bring lots of food/granola bars.. just in case.. and some almond butter!!!! i also have limited packing space (1 suitcase for 1 month!).. any tips for faraway non-vacation travel? haha
Natalie,
Ugh, I do remember that! (Not so much from when I was little, but when we went back to visit… lots of stuff is expensivo there!)
Faraway travel tips… hmmm, definitely pack foods from home, be adventurous, and–above all–learn some good foodie expressions (such as “vegetarian” or “healthy”) in the local language. And if worse comes to worse, at least you can be comforted knowing that it’s not forever and you can go back to your normal diet when you get home! 🙂
yay!
Haha, in vacation I never eat healthy :p
I’m too scared to have problems with the security to bring my food, lol. Yeah, I’m a chicken…
I blogged about your coffee ice cream…so good!! Thanks a bunch!
xoxo
I don’t really go on vacations, but I go to a TON of tennis tournaments! Almost every weekend in the summer, our family packs up and drives. Because I play a lot of matches throughout the tournament, I have to constantly be refueling, and eating! We bring lots of snacks like pretzels, nuts, fruit, Peanut butter:), and a cooler to put it in. We have to eat most of our meals out, though, because we usually don’t have a kitchen at the hotel. We have found which restaurants are quick and healthy to grab a quick meal before our next tennis match. For breakfast, panera has egg sandwiches and both starbucks and jamba juice sell oatmeal. Lunch=panera, subway, pita place, health store, or whatever. I usually grab a quick salad or sandwich. For dinner, we usually go to a sit down restaurant to relax, and fuel for the next day. I stick to unfried foods, lots of veggies, no dairy, and stuff that shouldn’t have white flour in it.
This is my first summer ever when I exercise and try to think a bit what I put in my mouth, it’s not so hard after all. The hardest part will be abroad when I don’t have a kitchen and eat out all the time- not that I mind eating out 😉 it just makes it a bit more difficult to control what you eat. Also, I’m big on indulging while on vacation so I’m not very worried about my foods, life is about enjoyment and if I eat what I want for 10 days I won’t be the end of my world 😀
I don’t do “healthy” on vacation. I figure if I’m on vacation, so are my normally healthy eating habits. I typically seek out vegan restaurants and order as much fried food as possible. 🙂