Can You Maintain a Healthy Diet While Traveling? Top Tips and Strategies

I recently returned from a trip to the Philippines. It was a tough trip travel and diet. It was for business but with many conferences and parties. That means a lot of food, drinks, sugar and bad carbs. Plus it was a 17-hour flight so my sleep patterns were off. Then, when I arrived, I discovered the hotel had no gym! This looked like a disaster.

How do you maintain a healthy diet while travling? Here are some of my top tips.

When traveling, I have adapted the U.S. Marines motto: Improvise, Adapt and Overcome. This was one of those situations.

Some great Schnitzel near Arnold's Museum in Thal, Austria.

First, the diet. The Philippines love to offer a tremendous amount of food including lots of sweets, bread and rice. I was prepared for this. No breakfast buffet. That was my rule. I brought Athletic Greens shake plus RX bars. That was my breakfast for 5 days. I went to the buffet once on my last day as a reward. Knowing dinner was going to be big, I made sure lunch was small. Beef soup, some chicken, nothing special. Then dinner, which was, as expected huge. Lots of beef, chicken and rice. I’m a breakfast guy, so I love eating a big breakfast. Here, I had to adapt to the culture and change my diet to make dinner the biggest meal. The first night, my sleep was affected because I was not used to sleeping on a full stomach. I eventually overcame this problem as I adapted to the schedule. The key with the diet was keeping it the same. Not changing. This allowed me to adjust my sleeping patterns quickly and avoid overeating.

The gym was a different story. I found a colleague who also wanted to exercise. We tracked down a gym online. We got up early, before all the events, and hit the gym to do our Pump Club routines. The gym was incredibly hot. No air conditioning. It was like working out outside. I have never sweated so much! By the end of the week, we went from two people going to the gym to six people going to the gym.

One thing Arnold has taught me is that you have to lead by example. It is easy for people to give up when traveling. It is tough. Preparation is the key. I was prepared to make my own breakfast which saved me lots of time and headaches in the morning so I could workout. All I had to give up was the breakfast buffet. Giving up the buffet, meant eating healthier, getting a workout in and adjusting my sleeping patterns quickly- it is a no brainer.