hi I'm a truck driver and I'm looking for ideas on what food to buy

Michelletrk

Do you have a place to plug in a crock pot? I had a friend that would throw stuff in there and it would be ready when he stopped.

Michelletrk

Also portion everything out ( chips, fruit, nuts) that way you know each bag has X calories, and you can be aware of what your eating instead of just grazing. I do this at work, I have snack box raisins, dried fruit, nuts, all portioned and then if I get hungry I just grab a baggie and I can eat with out having to calculate out right then and there the work is done, also bags of veggies

spiralated

The steamfresh bags of pasta and veggies in sauce are really good. I eat those at work a lot. My cousin who's a truck driver swears by peanut butter and bananas or apples when he's in a trouble spot and doesn't know what to eat.

If you can store them - the bags of steam-in-bag veggies are good because they're usually on sale at any big-box store/supermarket and you can add things like some hard cheese, hard boiled eggs and/or beans to them to add protein. Most hard cheeses (in my experience) doesn't have to be keep ice-box cold if you eat it in a few days and its not in the sun.

If you buy snack size ziplocks - you can use these to portion out nuts, granola, pretzels etc and eat them in combo with other things or if you need to go another 40 miles before dinner.

Best of Luck!

T1DCarnivoreRunner

Just a few thoughts, most of which are probably obvious but I'll say it anyway:

Take a food scale so you can measure more precisely if you buy stuff on the road. Bring along premixed salads (chicken/turkey/ham, lettuce, spinach, tomato, cucumber), but leave the pre-cut meat separate so it can be heated in the microwave before mixing in with your salad. Just go easy on the dressing or use low calorie dressing. Also, watermelon does not have a lot of calories for the volume. Cut some up and keep in a container in your cooler.

I'm not sure how often and for how long you stop, but I'm guessing you go for a long time between stops. So for those in-between times you don't have the ability to actually pull over and cook something but you are hungry, get some dill pickles and keep them handy.

Of course, don't forget to drink plenty of water. If you need soda for energy, get diet soda. Regardless of what you might hear, your body DOES use the water from soda (i.e. it does not dehydrate you), and since diet pop/soda has no calories, it is the better option. I'm guessing you drink quite a bit of coffee also, just be careful what you put in it and keep in mind that coffee does have some calories.

When you are resting and are done sleeping but have time before you can start up again, use the time to walk around. It will help wake you up and help burn calories.

7lenny7

Though not a truck driver, I do take lots of road trips and recently my eating habits on these trips have undergone some self scrutiny. I used to have bags of various items in reach so I could graze along the route. No more! Figure out what you want to eat between stops, take out the appropriate amount, and pack everything else out of reach. If you can get to it, you can't eat it!

Healthier options I now eat on the road:

apples
bananas
clementines
baby carrots (with hummus if I need a dip)
caramel rice cakes - pretty much just filler, but only 50 cals. They're messy, so I break them into bite-size pieces while they're in the bag
Greek yogurt
Kashi bars
sliced meat

One thing my wife started making for us on road trips is Thai chicken wraps. They're filling and low calorie (and damn good!):
FlatOut flatbread wrap
1.5 oz of Tyson pre-grilled chicken strips
1/2 cup coleslaw mix (cabbage & shredded carrots) (or Asian salad mix without the dressing)
dry chow mein noodles (or the won ton strips from the Asian salad mix)
2 tsp of Thai Peanut Sauce

That is only 260 calories. You can use tortillas instead of the wraps, but that adds another 50 calories or more. With a bit of creativity you could come up with other wraps.

Another thought...at home we use a Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker. I thought they were rather gimmicky, but I ended up using them quite a bit. They only use 600 watts so if you can use a microwave, you can use this. With a multi-grain english muffin, 3 or 4 slices of lunch meat (or canadian bacon), a slice of cheese, and 1 egg, a breakfast sandwich totals 290 calories. The eggs and cheese don't need refrigerating if they're used within a week and not left in the hot sun. Get one of those plastic carriers for the eggs...they're in the camping section of sporting good stores and are usually yellow. Check out the Hamilton Beach website for several sandwich ideas. You can use muffins, bagels, bread, croissants, any sliced pre-cooked meat or sausage patties, tuna, different cheeses, etc.

7lenny7

Regarding the weighing of food on the road...let's say you buy a bag of something to snack on, like pretzels. The bag tells you that there are 10 servings and each serving is 140 calories (pulling numbers out of the air). You split up the big bag into portions you're likely to eat and come up with 8 ziplock bags. Now just take the overall calories of the package...1400 calories...and divide by the number of portions you come up with, which is 8. End result is 175 calories. Alternately, if you're scanning bar codes, use the portion size it comes up with, but edit it to indicate you're eating 1.25 servings (10 divided by 8). Each bag may not be exactly that size, but on average they are. This way you avoid having to weigh the servings out.

I use this method for things like frozen yogurt. I just eat maybe a spoonful at a time. I don't log each spoonful, but when when I eat 25% of the pint, I'll log that much. Then another 25% of it when I reach the halfway point, and so on. No tedious weighing, but when I'm done, I'll have accounted for every calorie.

T1DCarnivoreRunner

7lenny7 wrote: »

Regarding the weighing of food on the road...let's say you buy a bag of something to snack on, like pretzels. The bag tells you that there are 10 servings and each serving is 140 calories (pulling numbers out of the air). You split up the big bag into portions you're likely to eat and come up with 8 ziplock bags. Now just take the overall calories of the package...1400 calories...and divide by the number of portions you come up with, which is 8. End result is 175 calories. Alternately, if you're scanning bar codes, use the portion size it comes up with, but edit it to indicate you're eating 1.25 servings (10 divided by 8). Each bag may not be exactly that size, but on average they are. This way you avoid having to weigh the servings out.

I use this method for things like frozen yogurt. I just eat maybe a spoonful at a time. I don't log each spoonful, but when when I eat 25% of the pint, I'll log that much. Then another 25% of it when I reach the halfway point, and so on. No tedious weighing, but when I'm done, I'll have accounted for every calorie.

That makes sense with packaged food, but when I do road trips, I'll buy fruits at gas stations and convenience stores. Also, you have some variations of how much is in some of the self-serve foods. For example, the Pilot / Flying J scrambled eggs... how much you put in a cup makes a difference (of course, then you need to make sure you tare out the scale too) as would the weight of bananas, oranges, or apples you pick up. If you eat such foods very often, it can make a difference over time.

Honestly, my 10 day / 5K mile road trip is not going to make a huge difference for specific measurements on food compared to the other 355 days of the year and if I gain during a trip, I have time to make it up (I usually do a lot of hiking on my travels, so I'll have deficits anyway). But if you are on the road 240 days (just estimating based on 20 days/month) per year, a 10%-20% variance on every piece of fruit can certainly add up.

Still, if it is too much burden to use a scale, it is better to estimate than to leave it out of your log completely.

7lenny7

midwesterner85 wrote: »

That makes sense with packaged food, but when I do road trips, I'll buy fruits at gas stations and convenience stores. Also, you have some variations of how much is in some of the self-serve foods. For example, the Pilot / Flying J scrambled eggs... how much you put in a cup makes a difference (of course, then you need to make sure you tare out the scale too) as would the weight of bananas, oranges, or apples you pick up. If you eat such foods very often, it can make a difference over time.

I'm not familiar with the Flying J eggs, but for fruit, I just use the typical values that come up in MFP. I had a large orange last night and it came up as 86 calories. 10% either way isn't going to make a practical difference, particularly considering in the long run, some oranges I eat will be more, and some will be less. Same holds true for bananas, plums, grapes, carrots, etc.

If I had a low calorie budget of 1200 to 1500 I might feel differently.

Luv2Munch

Hi as a suggestion - when you at your home base i would make either: stir-frys, chili, beef stew, shepherd' pie, bake chicken breasts which you would then freeze in individual portions. Take as many servings out of the freezer that you would need for road trips and supplement with either baby carrots, celery sticks, bagged salads [bring your own dressing]. For snacks, suggest almonds, rice cakes [you can get them in many flavours, no fat cold cuts [eat sparingly as the sodium content can be high depending on the brand]and boiled eggs. Buying canned anything isn't great for weight loss as the contents generally have a lot of sodium. Good luck and let us know how you do. Regards, barbyk

wkwebby

Definitely look into your filler foods and snacks so that you watch out on your sodium. The Tyson precooked chicken is great, both convenient and tastes good, but packs a mega whopping number of sodium in one serving. If you eat three meals with these chicken strips, you're bound to retain water. As a trucker, I'm sure you don't get to drink as much water as you'd like, and this additional sodium will only make you retain even more (you retain water if your body doesn't get enough on a normal basis).

wkwebby

Oh, forgot to mention, the cooler will help with those healthy filler foods. The egg whites (or whole eggs are even better unless you can't get the calorie count in with the yolks), greek yogurts, and raw veggies with hummus are great healthy options.