Travel Day Eating

Jthanmyfitnesspal · June 2022

Doing a road trip on the east coast to move a kid into his apartment. An all-day affair, rent a truck, pick up a bunch of stuff, 2 hour drive and stops around town to pick up various items, carry stuff to a 2nd floor walk-up, drop truck and take a train back home. A fast-paced and hectic day, eating all meals quickly on the fly.

How do people handle this type of situation? Add your strategies below. I didn't add everything up until this morning! I was afraid I was way off the mark!

Here's how I actually did:

- Normal oatmeal breakfast (550kcals)
- Lunch at Panerra. Citrus Asian Chicken Crunch salad with a few bites of the bread (640 + 50kcals). I didn't like it very much and it was pretty expensive!
- Dinner at Sbarro, the only choice at the train station. 1 slice of sausage pizza is supposed to be 520kcals. I was starving after moving stuff all day and I loved it! Really economical.
- 16oz microbrew when I got home (240kcals). I needed that!

Total eaten was 1838kcals. Nutrition breakdown wasn't far off my goals. Sodium was a little high. Not reported was that I had a lot of caffeine from tea and diet soda and not enough water. My Garmin watch reported ~10k steps and 35 floors, but only added 250kcals for the day. I think that's a low estimate! I was probably in normal deficit (~500kcals) for the day, I think (I'm cutting). But, I would have eaten more fresh foods, if they were available, and I had too much caffeine. The beer, despite tasting awesome, probably didn't help much. And, today, I'm wiped out!

Lietchi · June 2022

Hm, honestly, I would probably have prepacked some easy food:
- at the very least some raw veggies: cherry tomatoes are one of my favorites, no work at all, or if I were more ambitious I'd cut some cucumber, endives, radishes, bell peppers... (or buy them pre-cut); as well as some easy fruit;
- one or two protein bars in case I got really hungry and a meal wasn't possible/planned in the nearby future
- if feeling really ambitious, I'd prepare a full salad (adding something easy like boiled eggs and/or canned tuna and/or chickpeas and some oil to the veggies mentioned above) or perhaps simply some bread and various toppings.

With that kind of day, I'd probably stick to my prepared lunch and veggies/fruit/snacks and then eat out in the evening for convenience. With 35 floors and 10k steps, I certainly wouldn't have stuck to 1838 calories

Especially for a one off thing. My strategy would be different if it was a recurring thing to be out and about that much.

Jthanmyfitnesspal · June 2022

@Lietchi : You are so right! The best would have been to bring some well-chosen food and snacks. As it happens, we were thin on supplies at home, so ended up throwing ourselves to whatever we could find. We were supposed to be able to get a good dinner before the train, for example, but ran out of time. Sometimes, you just have to adapt, and I was glad it worked out, calorie-wise.

AnnPT77 · June 2022

I know I'm usually a bad influence, but honestly, I see nothing wrong with what you did: Practical adaptation to unusual circumstances.

I'm registering that you felt pretty trashed after . . . but honestly, I'd expect to feel pretty trashed after an unusual and effortful day like that, even with nutritionally perfect eating.

Knowing my own body, in my case, "not enough water" is in itself one way to have the fatigue and muscle-soreness freight train run me over, regardless of nutrition. (I used to take backwoods canoe camping vacations, with multi-mile portages with heavy packs, 8+ hours of paddling, when I'd totally undertrained for anything like that. An observation was that when I was wiped out, a few hours in to full-effort day on those trips, a water or gatorade break made a noticeable difference, and quite quickly. YMMV, because I know my body seems to be especially hydration sensitive.)

No matter what's going on, I think one rare day of eating "badly" is no big deal. (I put "badly" in quotes because close to nutritional goals and calories seems good enough, to me. I see that part about more fresh foods, but that's likely more about micros, and most of those don't deplete dangerously in 24 hours!)

Just my opinion, though.

lynn_glenmont · June 2022

Seconding Ann. I'm guessing the unaccustomed activity (even if you work out regularly, I'm guessing it doesn't include carrying an apartment's worth of stuff up a flight of stairs) plus dehydration and possibly even undereating (because I agree that 250 calories doesn't seem like much of an allowance -- maybe I'm picturing a lot more stuff being schlepped than in reality?) is plenty enough to account for not feeling great the next day. The food consumed seems fine, especially if it was hitting your macros.

Jthanmyfitnesspal · June 2022

I appreciate everyone's comments. Now that I've had a day to recover, I hope for the future that I bring healthy snacks and minimize the caffeine drinks. They really did a number on my GI system the next day. But, I'm all better now!

lightenup2016 · June 2022

I agree that it seems like you didn’t do too bad, but I will say that one thing we’ve started doing on our long road trips across the country is to actually just stop at grocery stores instead of fast food joints. We might pick up sushi, some small bags of produce, either pre-cut or already bite-size (carrots, cherry tomatoes, apples, clementines, grapes, blueberries, etc.), The little mini hummus or guacamole cups, or even some of the healthier versions of lunchables, or a pre made sub sandwich. The great thing about grocery stores is the wide variety of healthy options. We just take a look ahead on Google maps to find a convenient grocery store on our route. And a bonus is that many of them have a Starbucks inside, and the restrooms are usually not too bad.

Travel Day Eating

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