How do you not gain weight while traveling?
 

Curious on some of you road warriors and what do you do while traveling to not end up gaining a bunch of weight?

I started to travel for work a little over a year ago and even with this being a “slow” travel year; I am at 130 nights YTD in hotels. I find myself at least once a day eating out. I do what I can to run fo wal mart and make sandwich when I can. But still find myself eating out a bunch.

So I am curious if anyone has any tips on what they do or pointers because I do not see my schedule getting much slower for the next year.

I ate out everyday when I worked in my office. Some travel with generous per-diem. Calorie intake is the key. I tended to order kids meals, al la cart, or appetizers as the main depending on the restaurant. I never felt obligated to eat a full meal each day in a restaurant. I had coworkers that spit entries into two meals. Good luck.

I know it was a typo but it actually seems that it might work. :cool:

If given per diem & able to cash it , will help to manage how much for ( to spend on ) meals , calorie intake ..

Factor in some walks or some light activities , perhaps more if you have the time .

I run in the mornings to explore new cities and keep fit. I also avoid the hotel bar and walk whenever I can instead of an uber or taxi to meetings and restaurants.

- Minimal or no breakfast
- Light lunch
- No soda or juice
- Low-calorie alcohol
- Walk instead of drive/taxi/public transport
- Intense exercise on weekends

With these 5 things, I managed to lose a good amount of weight despite consuming basically whatever I wanted after 5pm every day.

fly w/ US legacy carriers

Hahaha it is tough to be honest. If I travel alone and don't have many colleagues where I go then I can stay fit no problem as I can have a schedule. After work, eat then relax a bit then workout before bed.
BUT when I go and there's a bunch of colleagues especially from the same product team and home office location and a bunch from other teams. Then I can tell you it is IMPOSSIBLE! Because its a bigger group and we ALWAYS (97%) go to a restaurant together then after go to a bar together. One of my travels I was in Hungary for almost 2 months, after the first 3 weeks it was getting difficult to find motivation. I love Hungarian food! Yes I did gain weight, note that I am that time was very athletic and fit but I just couldn't keep up!

My company pays for actual expenses (up to GSA per diem values, but not a real per diem),and excludes alcohol from being a covered expense. As a result, my challenge is getting over the "I should get my money's worth" mentality. I remember times thinking "I should have an appetizer, entree and dessert because this restaurant is pretty inexpensive". My brother gets direct deposit of the daily rate so to him, eating a smaller meal is money in his pocket so his problem becomes the same as BRAISKI, the socializing with colleagues.

Edit to add: An uncle that is was a road warrior for years, but hates the gym, said he found himself eating a lot of salads and skipping alcohol (diet sodas and water for him).

It's not the 'eating out' that makes you fat. It what and how much you eat. You could never work out and still lose weight if you consume fewer calories than you take in. You could eat out 100% of the time and lose weight if you are more vigilant about what you are consuming.

That's really all there is to it. We, as a society, simply consume too much food. We eat way more than we need to live and thrive.

Cheers,
:)

Change your sandwiches to salads and get daily exercise and you'll be in much better shape, pun intended. And wine instead of beer, if you partake.

1. Limit the booze consumption
2. Walk as much as you can, where and whenever possible skip the train/trams and walk. Walk briskly. DFW is a perfect airport for this.
3. Limit fatty/high calorie food consumption
4. Get sleep
5. Post COVID 19 find a service like Gympass that will enable you to use gyms when you travel

If I was near a good grocery store I'd pick up something from there- one place I used a lot was near a Whole Foods store and I would use their hot foods/salad bar for dinner if I had no plans. I'm sure the salad and hot foods bars are closed but many places have packaged and prepared foods, sandwiches, salads, etc. that aren't bad. Whole Foods even includes calorie content. I even travel with a metal knife and fork so I don't need to find plastic tableware. The fork, unfortunately, got confiscated by the "security" people at the Santa Cruz, Bolivia airport last March. :-(

Large, lavish restaurant dinners: a thing of the past since I'm retired, I typically ordered 2 appetizers instead of an entree, one "green" so virtually no calories and one with some protein content but not fried or fatty. If the rest had dessert I enjoyed the last of the wine instead. I worked out first thing in the AM- hated that timing but KNEW that it was the only time I'd be able to do it unless I wanted to do it at the very end of the day after dinner and that was even worse.

I also take long walks through the airport if I have the time.

Where are you traveling to with all the restrictions in place? 130 nights so far??? Wow, that's nearly half the year so far.

For me, I always block off between work and dinner to work out. I usually skip lunch and avoid sugar and alcohol. I go all out usually the last night before I fly out though to celebrate end of week/project.