Healthy Travel Tips: How to Eat Well on Road Trips

TL;DR: Plan your gas station stops ahead of time. Look for bigger stations with deli sections that have fresh food, wraps, and salads. If you're stuck with packaged food, grab a protein bar that's low in sugar (since you'll be sitting and won't burn it off). Don't just snack the whole trip. Still plan for actual meals. And don't skip meals to "save room" for your destination.

For the next few months, many of us are going to be traveling for one reason or another, whether that's road trips or flying. I wanted to talk about a few different ways that you can manage your nutritional habits while you're on those trips.

For many people, the trip itself is where we start to backslide in terms of our ideal nutritional habits, because we end up depending on road trip snacks and munchies.

There are ways you can work around that, still snack on the road trip, and enjoy the trip without feeling uncomfortable or sick or like you've fallen back on your habits by the time you actually arrive at your destination.

Plan your gas station stops

One of the first things, and probably one of the easier things to do, is planning your gas station options.

The biggest thing here is planning ahead before you go. Look at your route and try to find gas stations along the way that are more like big-style gas stations, the kinds that have a little deli section with fresh food and wraps and things like that.

That's just going to give you a few more options in terms of fresh fruit, vegetables, maybe some salads if you're lucky.

What if you're stuck with a standard gas station?

If those types of gas stations are not an option and the only thing on your trip is your standard gas station with packaged food, most of those will still have some kind of protein bar or energy bar.

When you're in there, look through that section really quickly and try to find options that are on the lower end in terms of sugar.

The reason: you're going to be traveling and sitting. Your body isn't going to use that sugar as efficiently as it would if you're going into a workout.

Your only purpose here is finding snacks that will hold you over and still help you meet your nutritional goals.

Gas Station TypeBest OptionsLarge travel center (Buc-ee's, Pilot, etc.)Fresh wraps, salads, fruit, deli itemsStandard stationLow-sugar protein bars, nuts, jerkyConvenience store onlyWater, nuts, cheese sticks

Don't forget actual meals

We want to still make sure we're thinking about full-size meals on our trip, especially if it's more than a few hours.

Another issue a lot of people run into: if you're just snacking the whole time, you end up never really eating a proper meal. That can throw off your hunger signals and energy levels for the rest of the day.

Don't "save" your appetite

And don't skip meals to "save room" for the big meal at your destination. That's a recipe for overeating when you get there.