225lb Road Warrior in the PNW

Yep, I travel about 50% of the time for work - used to be 100% travel. Been doing so for almost 20 years. I've learned a lot of tricks over the years to staying healthy on the road. It all comes down to planning ahead. I have a selection of workout videos on my iPad that I can do in a hotel room with no equipment. I always carry food with me, instead of eating at restaurants. I have a cooler-type lunch bag with freezer packs, always call ahead to the hotel to make sure they have a fridge in the room, prepare stuff ahead of time, even map out my food for each day ahead of time, including snacks.

Easy travel food includes single-serve protein shakes, also my "famous flaxseed milkshake" as a co-worker once named it. That's a scoop of vanilla protein powder with a scoop of Garden of Life Super Seed in a snack sized ziplock bag, mixed with water in a blender bottle. I make up a bunch of the little ziplock bag mixes to go, carry 4 or 5 of them in a blender bottle in my go-bag. Easy snack, no worries about refrigeration. Other easy snacks include low fat string cheese sticks, and (of course) protein bars. I can fit a large handful of protein bars into a tupperware-type container that I throw into my go-bag, right next to the blender bottle with the flaxseed milkshake mixes. Real food takes a little more planning and prep, but real food also makes the lifestyle livable. The protein shakes and snack bars get old, if that's all I'm eating. But still, I always have plenty of those with me, in case I get stuck somewhere, or a flight gets canceled, or whatever. Nearly 2 decades on the road, I've seen it all. You never know, so it'll all about being prepared for anything.

As far as the real food... I have a freezer full of pre-cooked chicken - either diced or seasoned grilled breast - from the freezer section in the store. Big time saver. A grilled chicken breast with some frozen veggies in a plastic container travels great. That goes into the lunchbox cooler (along with plastic knife and fork), along with the string cheese, some single-serve cottage cheese snacks, etc. I just log everything into MFP before I go. If I'm a few days in a given location, I locate a grocery store, utilize the fridge in the hotel room. I've learned what brands of pre-packaged frozen stuff works for me, so that helps. Also, most grocery stores now have single-serve pre-packaged salads in the produce section. There are several brands, and they all have nutrition info on them.

If I absolutely positively have to eat at a restaurant, I shoot for a chain restaurant that MFP has calorie listings for. Some restaurants list calories on their menus.

Basically, if I'm on the road, I eat only what I know the calories of, and log it all, or I stick to my travel snacks.

I learned the hard way how important it is for me to do this. In my first few years of this job, I packed on 80 lbs, living on restaurant food and denial. Then I saw a picture of myself on vacation and had a "holy crap I'm fat!" reaction. That was my wake-up call. Now I know. I'm not someone who can just eat anything and not worry about it. I have to be active every day - jog, workout video, long walk, something - and I have to watch what I eat. The alternative is to be unhealthy and probably shortening up my life expectancy.

Anyhow. Whew! Didn't mean to write so much. But yeah - road warriors wanting to be healthy - that's a definite niche! And it's challenging until you get into the swing of it, then it just becomes a lifestyle habit, just like any other.