“Do you ever find yourself gobbling down fast food just so you can make your meeting or the next guided tour. Eating on the run when you are away from home presents many challenges. If you’re traveling on business, fast food may seem your only recourse when you’re scheduled for back-to-back meetings for hours on end. You know it’s not the most nutritious food, but you’ve got to eat something, right?  Here are 5 tips from NutriTalk™ to help you eat well on the road.”

5 Healthy Dine and Dash Solutions On The Road

Time –starved Americans love to eat on the run. We have five nutritious dine and dash solutions to consider when you are on vacation or a business trip.

Let’s face it. Healthy eating can be more challenging than usual when you’re on the road. After all, half the fun of traveling to new place is to explore the delicious and exciting new taste treats. Consider how many times you have asked friends or colleagues if they enjoyed their trip or cruise only to hear, “The food was wonderful”.

Taste temptations abound when you travel and it’s easy to be lured from nutritious food choices when you’re traveling. But unless you want to return home heavier than when you left, you need to remember that extra calories can snowball into additional pounds rather quickly. However, when you eat right on the road, you’ll feel more energetic, which will keep you in tip top shape for all your exploring endeavors.

Here are 5 ways to eat well on the road.

5 Healthy Eating Tips When You Travel

1.    Monitor Portion Sizes
Portion distortion can lead to unwanted weight gain. Most restaurants today serve huge portion sizes of food, in fact, many restaurants serve you enough for another whole meal! To defend your health and waistline you need to recognize true portion sizes. Some quick and easy tricks for watching how much you eat at restaurants are to order half-sized entrée or light appetizers, share your entrée with your dinner date, or box up half of the meal and take it home, which is also very economical. Also, remember that you do not have to eat everything you’re served. Another suggestion to to consider sharing a meal with a companion since you may lack the refrigeration necessary to store a left-over scrumptious meal.

2.    Pay Attention to Details
Ask questions to learn how your food will be prepared. Is your fish or chicken going to be fried or grilled? Will your vegetables  be sautéed in butter or steamed? Paying close attention to these seemingly small details can save you from overeating fat, sugar, and calories. We suggest that you look for menu items labeled as healthy, light, heart-healthy, or low-fat, that are often in many restaurants. Also, look for words like steamed, grilled, broiled, roasted, or stir fried for a lower-fat, lower-calorie meal that will still taste great. You’re the customer, so ask for the food prepared the way you like it. You can also ask for smaller portions.

3.    Health-Size Your Meal
Take any meal from a high-calorie rating to a low-calorie success by making some modifications. For example at breakfast, you request an vegetable omelet make with just egg whites and replace the hashbrowns  that often come with the meal with fresh tomato slices. If you want steak, consider having a petite filet mignon and instead of ordering French fries with your steak, get a double side of steamed veggies. Wash down your meals with water, tea or unsweetened iced tea, and limit your alcohol. You will be more satisfied if you to chew your calories instead of drinking them in juices, colas and sweetened tea.

4.    Be Sauce Savvy
Sauces are to be savored. If you pick a salad for your meal filled with healthy, fresh, and delicious ingredients, ask for the dressing on the side. Then, once you have the salad dressing, resist the urge to pour the dressing over the entire salad! The salad dressing can turn a low calorie meal into a high fat calorie laden nightmare. Sauces on main entrees and side dishes, like the creamy stuff such as Alfredo sauce, mayonnaise, sour cream, butter, cream-based soups, ranch or French dressings, etc., need to be limited or avoided.  We suggest that you choose marinara over creamy pasta sauces, mustard instead of mayonnaise, salsa in place of sour cream, olive oil instead of butter, broth-based soups rather than cream-based, and oil and vinegar or light dressings in place of creamy salad dressings. If you simply cannot fight the urge for one of these sauces, ask for the sauce on the side so that you can control how much goes on the food.

5.    Be Picky at Salad Bars
Waist watchers have learned that eating a salad before a meal can fill them up. However, salad bars can really be a healthy eaters nightmare. Although many choices on the salad bar are healthy, there are also many high-calorie foods, such as mayonnaise-laden potato salad, macaroni salad and coleslaw, high-fat pasta salads, and shredded full-fat cheeses that can add unwanted calories to healthy salad greens and vegetables.

Enjoy Eating Healthy!
Although these tips are vital for helping you cut unwanted calories from your meals on the run, you can still treat yourself to something you really want every once in awhile. Don’t deprive yourself if you really want something – just eat a smaller portion size or share with your dinner companion. It’s not a sin to have scalloped potatoes or a brownie, as long as you keep in mind that you can’t eat like that every day when you’re trying to lose or maintain your weight.

By establishing a framework of balanced eating before you leave home, you can try a small portion of tempting foods if you remember moderation, You can always have the food again on future travels, or opt to have specialty shops ship you your favorite must have food that reminds you of your trip.  Here are our tips for healthy dining on the road.

5 Healthy Dine and Dash Solutions On The Road

1. Monitor Portion Sizes
2. Pay Attention to Details
3. Health-Size Your  Meal
4. Be Sauce Savvy
5. Be Picky at Salad Bars