We just had a week's vacation in the mountains. When we were out doing fun stuff I wasn't thinking about blogging. I still haven't forgotten how to unplug when necessary. But I had to stop and eat from time to time, and the habit of analyzing my appetites dies pretty hard.
Vacation food presents a sort of paradox.
On the one hand, you cannot — cannot — eat precisely the same way you eat normally. Too much is out of your control: if you are a guest in a home or a restaurant, someone else may be doing the cooking; if you have access to a kitchen, the pantry is probably limited; picnicking food must be chosen to avoid spoilage; food on the road is, well, road food. If you try too hard to exercise strict control over your food, you're sure to be frustrated and unhappy and resentful, and your companions will tire quickly of your pickiness. Much better to be able to go with the flow and accept the limitations before you.
The opposite problem is a sort of giddy reveling in the differentness of the fare. Ooh goody, we're on the road: cheeseburgers and Mexican and hash browns and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, and it's not our fault because we're on the road! Don't be a wet blanket; I'm on vacation and the rules don't apply. Dessert every night! I'm on vacation!
The problem is, of course, that the rules do apply. There is nothing magic about vacation time that changes how your body uses a calorie. Balanced eating and activity is a longish-term balance, of course, and the body can absorb an indulgence here or there; but a whole week or even just a weekend can seriously throw you off, and it's much better to face reality with the knowledge that a string of indulgences will have a consequence. This is a good time to practice emotional detachment from the idea of eating "as much as you want" because it's your vacation, your "me time," whatever. Every day can be "me time" if you use your time to take care of the "me" you have. Learn to take pleasure in eating well and in making the trade-offs that are necessary to balance the extras that come along with travel. Have less indigestion and less guilt, and enjoy your food more.
Some thoughts and strategies for traveling.
Keep the total quantity of food close to your normal level. This is the most important one to remember, because you can use it under almost any circumstances. The kinds of food available will probably be quite different, and there may be special things you would like to enjoy that you don't normally get. You can still ingest close to the same energy by consciously limiting quantities, either across the board or only certain strategically chosen categories of food. Keep your breakfasts no larger than normal, your lunches no larger than normal; if you are going to have desserts, SAVE ROOM by eating smaller dinners or forgoing a snack somewhere. Chances are that everything you see will have more calories than it would at home, so for goodness sake, don't eat any MORE of it than you would at home.
Choose whole grains and legumes whenever you can. Out in the wide world, most hamburger buns and dinner rolls are white as the driven snow. So when you get the chance to have whole grain instead of white flour or white rice, take it. Prefer oatmeal to toast; prefer shredded wheat to corn flakes; prefer beans to rice; prefer nuts to pretzels; prefer Triscuits to Ritz. If the best you can do is "wheat" bread instead of "white," choose it; even though it's mostly white flour, you'll at least reinforce the habit of eating something with brown flecks in it. The idea is to balance these opportunities against the many, many times when refined white stuff is the only choice.
Stick with very simple breakfasts in restaurants. If you can't resist restaurant pancakes, learn how to make better ones at home, and make them often enough to develop a distaste for the ones at Perkins. I know, it's fun to tuck into the Lumberjack Special, but it doesn't feel good afterwards (although if you're too stuffed to eat lunch it may balance out). Believe me, I love a good hearty restaurant breakfast, but not as part of a string of on-the-road food. Instead, I generally order oatmeal. Yes, even at the all-you-can-eat buffet. It is a satisfying, high-protein whole grain. If there are berries or raisins or nuts or nut butters, cream, and brown sugar to stir in, so much the better.
Don't eat while you're driving. It's terribly unsafe to begin with, and it's messy, and you can't really enjoy your food while doing it, and it makes many healthful choices impossible because of the fork factor. "I don't need to pay attention to this food while I eat it" is a poor reason to choose a snack.
Pack snacks for the road — or don't. Lots of people will tell you that you ought to pack snacks for the car instead of stopping to buy them along the way, but I don't think it's necessary. In our family, the ritual of Stopping For A Granola Bar From a Gas Station is a major attraction along any route. And truth is, there are good choices in convenience stores: cereal, nuts, whole grain crackers, cheese sticks, vegetable juices, milk. We usually mix it up a bit, bringing a mini-cooler with string cheese and fruit, and picking up a few things as we go for their entertainment value. Favor small items. Don't bring trigger foods. And snack no more than you would at home.
Expect a spike on the scale in the day or so after the road trip. I suspect excess sodium. I find that a couple of days of "clean eating" after the driving day — lots of water and fresh food, as little processed stuff as possible — makes it go away.
Match your physical activity. Is the vacation busy and active, or lazy and restful? Some of each? Consider eating lightly on lounging days or driving days, and eating more heartily (or in response to hunger, if you can) on days with lots of moving around. A lot of that cruddy feeling that comes from a day behind the wheel, I'm convinced, is alleviated by eating lightly. On the other hand, a day hiking in the mountains gives me an enormous appetite and makes food taste wonderful, so that a heartier-than-usual breakfast is really satisfying and pleasurable. I love to indulge on vacation, and I love it even more when I've really earned it (and my growling stomach confirms I've earned it).
Consider a two-meal-a-day schedule. On our mountain hiking days, despite being strenuously active and about 7500 feet higher, Mark and I don't eat lunch. We just have a little bit of high-calorie stuff we munch on the trail: at minimum, some peanut M&Ms and pretzels. A longer day may call for cheese, whole grain crackers, a Snickers bar or two, and an apple. (Protein/energy bars are emergency food at the bottom of the pack — and I don't mean "in case I get hungry," I mean "in case I fall down a ravine and have to spend the night outside waiting for the search party.") The same no-lunch principle could work for a busy day visiting museums or zoos, or vigorous urban shopping. And wouldn't your kids, too, rather nibble trail mix than stop for lunch? If you're worried about mindlessly eating too much, carry only a small amount – but if you don't stop moving (much), you're unlikely to overdo it.
Plan for something homemade when you return. We can't always control the timing, but if we can swing it on a road trip, I like to stop for milk and fruit before we get back to our house, then throw together something homemade for us to have for dinner. Here is where having some bacon in the fridge, or some ground beef previously cooked with onion in the freezer, really helps – add some pantry and freezer staples, and we can be eating whole grain pasta with sauce all'amatriciana or our favorite beef and bean chili, thirty minutes after we walk in the door.
Bonus: if you're busy cooking, someone else will have to clean out the minivan.
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