Nutrition · 4 min read ·
Three days away for work, between the airport, the hotel breakfast and the conference lunch: what to choose and what to pack.
If you have 30 seconds
- 1On the road, a short night and arriving hungry are what catch you out.
- 2At the airport and at hotel breakfast, find the protein first.
- 3In your bag: nuts, a piece of fruit and an empty bottle.
Alarm at five, taxi, and by half six you're at the gate with a flat white and a croissant. Eating healthy when travelling feels like a lost cause at that hour. Lunch is a meal deal on the train, dinner is with clients.
Three days of that and you come home bloated and tired. I hear it all the time: there's nothing you can do on the road. Yet it only takes a handful of choices, the same ones every trip, made before you zip up the case.
Where it goes wrong
A work trip has four danger points.
- At the gate. No breakfast, little sleep, and all around you pastries and snacks.
- On the plane. You barely drink, to avoid getting up, and land with a hunger that's often thirst.
- At the hotel buffet. Juice, a pastry, cereal. It looks light, and by eleven you're running on empty.
- At the conference lunch. On your feet, plate in hand: sandwich platters, crisps, mini pastries. Not a vegetable in sight.
Why you eat worse away from home
It has little to do with willpower. Three things pile up when you travel.
The short night. After a short night, the hormone that drives appetite rises and the one that says you're full drops. Next day your body wants carbs. That sweet craving at the gate is chemistry.
The empty stomach. The hunger hormone is made in your stomach, and it climbs while the stomach stays empty. Skip breakfast because 'it's a travel day anyway' and hunger does the choosing at the first counter. Two eggs at home, even at five, beat anything at the gate.
The setting. Airports and stations mostly sell food that combines sugar, fat and salt, the mix that's hardest to resist. And a tired brain takes whatever is easiest.
The people who eat well on the road decided before they were hungry.
What should you eat at the airport?
Something with real protein in it: an egg, chicken or tuna sandwich, a chicken salad, plain yoghurt with nuts. Leave the pastries, juices and snacks. They're just sugar, and within a couple of hours the hunger is back.
The hotel breakfast. Morning is the worst time for sugar and starch, because on an empty stomach they reach your blood fast. In a comparison of two groups, people who had a sweet breakfast were hungry within two hours; with a savoury one, after five. At the buffet, go for eggs, Greek yoghurt and nuts. And take the whole fruit: juice is liquid sugar.
The conference lunch. One plate, sitting down if you can. Vegetables and protein first, then the rest. Fibre slows down whatever follows. And eat slowly. The signal that you're full takes about twenty minutes from the first mouthful, and at a buffet a lot goes down in that time.
In your bag. A handful of almonds or walnuts, a piece of fruit, and an empty bottle to refill after security. Eat the fruit with the nuts. On its own, the sugar hits faster. When the trolley comes round, you've already chosen.
On the plane, water. Flying dries you out. Sip all the way, and if hunger turns up, have a glass of water first.
Try this
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Test yourself
Half six at the gate, short on sleep, no breakfast. What do you get?
Plan the food for your next trip the way you pack your case: the night before, in five minutes. Then see how you feel on Monday.
