The Obesity Guide with Matthea Rentea MD

Your Friday Five: The No-Stress Travel Survival Guide

Matthea Rentea

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Welcome back to another, your Friday. Five. This week. I've been talking a lot with patients and coaching clients about travel and trips and conferences and how to. Be prepared so that everything doesn't fall off the rails. When you're on these trips, and I'll tell you the biggest complaint that I hear, it's that people are frustrated that on the tail end of these trips, that month, they make no progress. So it sounds a little something like this, okay? Over the past few months, again, it's all amazing, right? To be going to conferences and vacations and all these things. It's such a blessing if we're able to do all these things, but then the feeling of, but then 3, 4, 5 months into it you're just at a stalemate versus when you were making progress when you're only home and you can control all the factors. So today I just wanna talk through a few strategies that I think are helpful, whether you're going on a vacation or going somewhere new. And the reality is that. We do need to do a little bit of prep normally. Unless you are really far along in your relationship with food, most of us, it's not gonna be entirely possible to just a hundred percent freestyle. And it works out now, depending on where you're going. Sometimes if you're going through big international airports, they have great options, whenever I go through O'Hare International, I'm like, I get the, the exact protein drink I want. I get the little veggie trays. With hummus. Now you might pay 40,$50, but if you follow me on social, I love when I go through O'Hare. Now, the little indie airport by me here again, it's still considered a big airport, but. No, there's not a lot of options. Things aren't open that early in the morning. They'll close early. I mean, you know the drill, right? And so I find that I need to be a little bit prepped on my end to make it work. What I'm wondering for you is, are there any things that you can bring with you that either can travel well, whether you're in a car. Or that can get through TSA, where it a little bit gives you a fighting chance. Let's go through a few examples here. Let's say that, you know, okay, I'm gonna be at the airport a few hours ahead of time, and then the flight's a few hours. And so basically by the time you're gonna get to the other side, it's, I don't know, 6, 7, 8 hours. Yes, you can buy food there and most of you will in the airport or things like that, but could you also bring with you a bag of veggies, just raw veggies, just so that you make sure that you still get some fiber in. Could you bring with you, they sell individual packets of protein powder where you can literally just put a little bit of water in there stirred up, and it's like a protein consistency. You hear me talk all day long about devotion, nutrition. I think their sampler packs are phenomenal for this. I always travel with them, you can literally sit there, you pack your plastic spoon, you have that little packet, you put in a few drops of water. They have the water refill stations, right? When you get through TSA and you have a hundred calories, 20 grams of protein. And then you, let's say the meal that you have isn't super protein packed or doesn't have a bunch of fiber, you still have a fighting chance because you got your little bag of veggies, you got your protein, and then you literally can't go wrong. Everything else is bonus. But you gave yourself that fighting chance, or you look like, let's say you're going to go to a place you look is, are there some groceries that can get delivered to me? Whether it be Instacart, right? Can I make an order? We know, let's say you're gonna do a house rental and you say, alright, so 2, 2, 3 hours after we're gonna get there.'cause you wanna make sure to get there, right? Like you don't want the food to just be sitting there. Although this has happened to me before, but I will literally, the day before. Put in an order that gets delivered. And it is so nice because it is such a gift to my future self.'cause I remember when I went to Portland with a friend one year we were staying at her cousin's house. It was super nice of them. And of course my flight was delayed, her flight was delayed. It's 1230 at night, we're going to this house and guess what? Right in front of the door were the bags and we just got to put it in the fridge. And I had the drink that I wanted. I love the. Some of the minute made zero, the ones that are in the fridge section. It was like, yes, I got the zero calorie lemonade. I had my LaCroix LaCroix. I dunno how you say it, but all I had all there, it was phenomenal. Right? The next morning I'm on track. The next morning I'm doing a walk. I'm having the protein coffee that I want. Why?'cause I prepped. So I had the groceries delivered there. I carried some stuff on me. A lot of the time I will bring those same darn things back home. It doesn't matter. Okay, cool. But you have a fighting chance, right? And then also if you're going somewhere, can you look at the menus ahead of time? Now here's the deal. It's not to look at the menu and decide, here are all the ways I'm gonna sacrifice and order the thing that is healthy. But I know I secretly really don't want, no, the only reason you're gonna scope out the menu, hear me out. It's to see can I carry through on what my baseline minimum goal is? So for some of you it might be start the meal with some fiber. So can I order a salad to start? Can I order a side of broccoli? Can I do that or is there a protein appetizer so that if you're someone like me where you take a really long time to get the signaling that you've had food. A protein appetizer. For example, like for me, my family was recently in town and I got some edamame to start the meal, and because I did that, I had so little of the rest of the meal because edamame has an incredible amount of fiber and protein in it. And so I sat there. I had the whole portion of that, and then. I didn't want as much of, I got a tempura, which is like breaded veggies, and I had two of the broccoli and it wasn't the whole serving, we had all this food, but it was totally not an overeating situation because I knew, I'm gonna start with that protein appetizer. You might look at the menu. Just to spot things like that, because then you already know when you go there, I'll still find some other yummy things, some different things, you know, whatever. But I've got a fighting chance. So I think prepping ahead of time is the name of the game. And then you've got to keep trying different things when you travel, because I have to tell you, over the years, it has really changed what I do. In the beginning. I'm sitting there, didn't do a bunch of stuff, was like failure all the time. Then I went through this period of massively over prepping to the point of insanity, and now I'm somewhere in the middle and I decide in my mind I would rather have this stuff and not use it than be in a scenario where, oh, I actually really want that and I don't have it. You can bring it back. I mean, there's just no harm, no foul. Some protein bars, right? Things like that. I think that decisions ahead of time can be massively helpful. Remember, we're not planning on realistic. This is not a mission in how do I make this diet, culture and hate all the things I'm doing? No. In fact, it's really how can I make this amazing but still reach my goals? Because that's the whole thing that we started with is it's not actually the distress of the vacation, it's that you don't make progress in those months. It's like it takes you a week or two to kind of. Get back to baseline, which in a traditional maintenance scenario is no big deal. But when you've been working for months and months and months on your health and things aren't moving along, you get frustrated. And so these type of things need to be worked through, so I'm really talking to someone that's in the active phase of fat loss. Alright, I hope this episode was helpful that you. Heard a tip or trick, but again, you're gonna have to experiment for yourself. All of us are traveling to different places or have different resources. Also, I'm a fan if you're driving to just bring the stuff with you. I will bring a cooler all the time. Like every time we, we drive about an hour away to get to a lake, and when we go in the summer on a Saturday, we bring everything with us. I'll bring all the things and it's glorious that day, right? I'm not relying on fast food there and back. And we can, and we sometimes do go to Dairy Queen and stuff like that, but it's a situation where I have a few bites because I'm already satisfied and I'm good. It's not. And then get me the fries and all the other things, you know, like I think you all know what I'm talking about, if this is something that you struggle with. To make that not happen. I need to bring all these things, and that's okay. Nothing wrong with that. I used to judge myself for this because I thought, oh my gosh, like I'm, I'm prepping so many of these things, right? And I judged myself and my friend said, well, do you judge the fact that when you go on a trip, you have this little backup medicine bag? I kind of call it like my to-go bag, where I'll have. You know, backup, nausea, medicine, Zofran, things like that, like heartburn, Pepcid, we should go through that one time, by the way, what I think is your GLP one backup kit. And, I said, no, I think that's totally smart. And people often turn to me because they know that I'm the responsible one in the group that has this stuff. And she's like, yeah, so why is it any different? You bringing. A protein pack you bringing, you know these things that you pack and I just had a light bulb moment instead of judging myself for it.'cause I used to think it was a food scarcity thing. I thought, no, this is the most loving way that I'm taking care of myself.'cause I've got my back in all scenarios. So ultimately everything is mindset. But if you're struggling with the logistics, I do think that some decisions ahead of time can be really helpful. Alright, I hope you have an amazing weekend and we'll talk soon.