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7 Ways to Keep it Paleo While Travelling on the road healthy diet flying plane flights airport-min

7 Ways to Keep it Paleo While Travelling

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Whether it’s a holiday, a business trip, or just visiting friends and family, sometimes it can be difficult staying on track with your Paleo lifestyle when you’re travelling. We've all been in a situation at one time or another where we've been faced with food, sleep, or exercise difficulties when away from home – the important thing, however, is how you deal with them. Thankfully, with some proper planning, it’s easier than you may think to stay true to how you want to live when travelling.

1.    Get an Esky/ cool box

If you’re going on a road trip, or even if you just travel for long hours in your work days, investing in a good quality Esky (cool box) is a no brainer. Fill it with ice, and it becomes a great place to store pre prepared salads, meats, hard boiled eggs, fruits and veggies when on the go. Plan your meals in advance so you’re not caught hungry, and stash them all in your cooler to stay fresh.

2.    Bring travel safe snacks

If you don’t have access to a cool box or refrigerator, bring food that travels well. Packets of nuts, seeds, jerky, cans of tuna and whole fresh fruits are good options. Even home made fruit and nut bars are good if you’re hungry. If in doubt, bring extra – you can always share or simply take them home again. Make sure to bring plenty of water to stay hydrated.

7 Ways to Keep it Paleo While Travelling on the road healthy diet flying plane flights airport-min

3.    Cooking Facilities

Whenever I travel now, I always aim to stay somewhere with cooking facilities – even if the standard isn't brilliant, a small fridge, a hob and a couple of pans can be life savers when you’re on holiday. Aim to stay with friends, relatives, or go self catering. Even some hotels have mini kitchens in the rooms these days, so try and book a room where you have the facilities to cook for yourself. Don’t forget to bring along your coconut oil!

4.    Stock up on food whenever possible

When you’re in a new place, you never know when you might run out of options to get your hands on some good quality, fresh food. That’s why, when the chance comes along, its important you take advantage and stock up on as much as you can carry. If you come across a small butchers or farmers market, and you have the time available, fill your boots!

5.    Research the area

If you are planning on eating out a lot when you’re away, it would be a good idea to do some research on the area before you leave. Check out the local restaurants and see if they have any choices on the menu that are suitable. If needs be, call them in advance and let them know your requirements – the chances are, they’ll be more than happy to help.

6.    Intermittent Fasting

If it’s just a short trip, why not take it as an opportunity to experiment with intermittent fasting? You could do a 12, 24, or even 48 hour fast. This is an especially good technique when you’re on a long haul flight and don’t want to face the prospect of reheated aeroplane food.

7.    Spontaneous Exercise

You’ll struggle to follow your usual training plan when you’re away, but that’s ok. When the opportunity presents itself, engage in some spontaneous exercise. Throw a few sprints into your day, go for long walks, swim in the sea – any little bit of activity you can squeeze in while you’re away will make you feel much better.

I’d love to know how you keep Paleo when travelling! Do you have any tips or tricks that I may have missed?

making flight food paleo primal gluten free qantas emirates options low carb-min

Making Flight Food Paleo

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I’ve just booked my flights back to the UK for a long awaited Christmas visiting my family.  Australia couldn’t be much further from the UK, which means almost 24 hours of flying each way.  One of the things I hate the most about flying is the very limited Paleo food options.  Often airports limit what you can take through security and onto the plane – which makes it very hard to guarantee good Paleo options. Why can't they make Flight Food Paleo?

I usually fly with Qantas, which offers the following meal options:

  • Diabetic: High in complex carbohydrate and dietary fibre; low in fat; no added sugar; low salt.
  • Fruit Platter: Consists of fresh, tinned and dried fruits.
  • Gluten Intolerance: Do not contain wheat, rye, oats, barley or malt or any milk or milk products.
  • Hindu: Do not contain beef, beef derivatives, veal or pork. Meals may contain fish or lamb.
  • Kosher Meal: Prepared to comply with Jewish dietary laws.
  • Moslem (Halal): Do not contain pork, or pork by-products. All meats come from ritually slaughtered animals.
  • Vegetarian (Asian Indian Style): Contain egg and diary products and are suitable for Hindu vegetarians.
  • Vegetarian (Lacto Ovo): Do not contain meat, fish or seafood but may contain dairy products such as milk, butter, cheese and eggs or foods containing these.
  • Vegetarian (Oriental): Contain vegetables, fruit, rice noodles and can contain nuts.
  • Vegetarian (Strict Indian): Do not contain any eggs, dairy or bulbous vegetables and are suitable for Hindu vegetarians.
  • Vegan: Contain fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and pulses and do not contain any animal products such as meat, poultry, seafood, eggs milk or honey.

On my last two international flights (to PrimalCon and the AHS), I’ve tried different approaches, in the hope that I could stumble upon the best Paleo friendly meal option.

In my option, Diabetic people should follow a Paleo approach, to stabilise their blood sugar levels, so when I went to PrimalCon in April, I ordered a Diabetic meal.  I don’t understand why this is a low-fat, but hoped it would come with some good meat and some alternatives to the processed, sugar filled snacks that often go alongside plane meals.  Some of the actual meals weren’t too bad, for instance a breakfast of eggs, tomatoes mushrooms and spinach and a main meal of chicken, broccoli, carrots and white rice.  Some of the food however, left a lot to be desired.  Rice crackers served with a soy based spread (whilst everyone else on the plane got proper butter) and a breakfast of cereal and soy milk (remember, this is aimed at diabetics).

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In August when I went to the Ancestral Health Symposium, I thought I’d try my luck with a gluten free meal.  My Paleo diet is completely gluten free, so somewhat optimistically I’d hoped for a good equivalent here.  I actually found the gluten free option considerably worse than the Diabetic option.  As I noticed at the gluten free expo, gluten free seems to be a huge industry of franken-foods.  Gluten is omitted – but replaced with lots of processed ingredients I don’t want to consume.  They still serve biscuits, deserts and other junk food, it’s just had the gluten removed.  Not Paleo.

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On the way back, I therefore changed my meal preference and went with the standard option, which was actually much better.  Yes, there was a lot I wouldn’t eat, but most of the food was closer to “whole” food.  Butter was butter and I was lucky to have an option of a “meat and veg” style meal, instead of a pasta based meal.

So for this trip, I think I’m also going to try my luck with the standard option.  It appears I can bring small amounts of packaged food onto the flight, so I plan to try my luck and bring some jerky, raw nuts and avocados.  These foods, along with any reasonable looking meat and vegetables I can salvage from the plane food should be plenty to keep me going.  There’s also the very Paleo option of a coinciding intermittent fasting, should my food get confiscated at security!

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Paleo meal option of organic, grass fed meat and not a processed product in sight?  Perhaps one day…

I’d love to hear your plane food hacks.  How do you keep it Paleo during a long flight?

making flight food paleo primal gluten free qantas emirates options low carb-min