The Nutrisystem Guide To Eating Right During Traveling

When we head on a holiday, we know it’s time to cut loose — to spend time away from the stresses of home and work life and enjoy with the people we love most in an amazing new place. And the best part of a vacation? Food, of course! Whether it’s eating at amazing restaurants, beach shacks, or food carts, we love sampling food from anywhere and everywhere. However, we’re always faced with the eternal question: how do we enjoy food while also eating right? Luckily, we had the Nutrisystem vacation guide right at hand. Since we were on the Nutrisystem meal plan, we had a lot of questions about what we could eat while traveling, while also staying healthy.

The best part is that Nutrisystem had an entire plan in place for us to not only indulge in our favorites and delicious foods and enjoy our holiday, but also ensure that we stayed on our weight loss plan. Since trying to stay healthy while traveling is a tall order, Nutrisystem figured out the best hacks to help us lose weight (or at least not gain extra!) while we were on a long European vacation. Here’s a complete guide to staying healthy with Nutrisystem while on a holiday.

Eating At The Airport

The hunger pangs begin right at the airport, and even the resolve is tested right at the airport. After all, we could easily forget to plan, prepare, and pack the right foods with all the pre-trip hustle and bustle. However, if you carve out a little time before leaving, you can easily eat right at the airport while keeping hunger pangs at bay.

What we did was pack portable Nutrisystem snacks, nuts, or even sliced veggies and fruit. When we’d be flying right during mealtimes, we’d pack low-maintenance Nutrisystem lunch meals, such as egg-white wraps and lean-meat, whole-grain sandwiches.

However, there are times when we’d find ourselves out of time and caught in airport terminals without healthy snack packs. Even then, there were lots of options for us to munch on healthy foods. First, we’d stock up on lots of water for the flight, along with seltzer water, tea, and coffee. Plus, we’d snack smart at airport kiosks with low- or no-fat yogurt, trail mix, unsalted nuts, whole wheat peanut butter crackers, and dried fruit. Want to hit the food court? Choose fresh fruit, sushi, salads, and thin-crust veggie pizza. And, most importantly, skip sugary energy drinks, junk food, and chips and pretzels.

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Room Service

Nothing says “holiday” quite like room service. After all, nothing tops spending a lazy day in our room, which could very well be the ultimate antidote to stressful months of home and work life routine. While room service is convenient and fast, choosing what to eat is also a potential issue, especially when you want to eat healthy, and the food might not be up to the mark. Here are a few Nutrisystem-approved tips to elevate room service — both in nutrition and flavor.

• Choose cold sandwiches, not hot: The buns on room service burgers are usually a soggy mess. So, it’s better to stick to cold options and then ask for the mayonnaise on the side instead. Not only does it keep the bread fresher, but it also allows you to choose a healthy serving that’s in line with your Nutrisystem meal guidelines.
• Choose fresh veggies and fruits instead of fries: Fries are best had hot and crisp; they’re never good when they’re soggy and cold. So, when they arrive, sitting under a steaming platter from the hotel kitchens to your room, those perfect potato pieces will likely be arriving in very sorry conditions. And this is true of practically every fried option on room-service menus. So, why don’t you save yourself some fry-eating, especially when you can have them hot and crisp later on, and munch on still-crunchy veggies and fruits instead?
• Avoid pasta with sauce: One of the most popular items to eat during vacations is, undoubtedly, sauce-based pastas. This is even more so when you’re ordering food in the room. However, like all takeout pastas, room service pasta is also likely to be slightly rubbery when it arrives, with the steam of the covered container also making the sauce go watery. So give it a skip.

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The Big Breakfast

When we’re on vacation, breakfast is the most important meal of the day for us. After all, it’s a proven fact that breakfast eaters form a majority of the weight loss/weight-maintaining population! And, of course, we need to grab something good before beginning an entire day of adventure. That being said, there are some Nutrisystem-approved things you need to remember when you’re grabbing breakfast, whether it’s a continental spread at your hotel, a wonderful one in the cafe near your Airbnb, or a quick grab-and-go one.

Do’s

• Are you traveling early in the morning for a tour or maybe to your next city? If you don’t want to eat that early, and neither do you want a meal replacement bar, try to keep some of Nutrisystem’s amazing muffins with you. They come in a gamut of flavors, including banana nut, chocolate chip, and blueberry!
• Try your favorite type of morning coffee with one less pump of flavor or sugar. For instance, even reducing a three-to-four-pump drink to just one or two pumps of flavor. This could end up reducing your drink calories by as much as 20-60 calories per pump, while not limiting flavor.
• Try “other” milks like oat and almond milk. While it might be a little difficult for traditional, regular milk drinkers, switching to these might just do your waistline a favor. According to research, a whole cup of skimmed milk has 86 calories, as compared to the meager 30 calories in unsweetened almond milk! So, it’s all the creaminess, but in a healthier way.
• Try to include omelets in your breakfast. Eating this filling and muscle-building protein at breakfast means far fewer cravings for high-sugar and high-fat snacks in the evening. What’s even better is loading your omelets with vegetables, making for a fantastic fiber-rich and non-starchy start to the day.

Don’ts

• Avoid sugar-filled indulgences and foods such as breakfast muffins, especially at continental breakfast or even at a coffee house, as they’re calorie-dense. Also, avoid cream cheese on your bagel; rather, ask the staff to put it on the side so you can regulate the quantity. Did we mention that instead of regular English muffins and bagels, which are calorie-dense, you could try Nutrisystem’s delicious Honey Wheat Bagel? Yes!
• Are you eating pancakes? While nothing might beat pouring maple syrup over pancakes, it’s nothing but a whole lot of sugar and calories. Stick to just a tablespoon of sugar-free maple syrup or top them with fruit, which has fiber, nutrients, and natural sugar.
• One of the biggest culprits at most sit-down breakfast spots is combo foods, which combine two or more breakfast favorites as a single dish. So, avoid eggs with breakfast potatoes, French toast with bacon, or omelets with pancakes.

Lunches And Dinners: Smart Changes

Just because you’re traveling, or just because your travel companions are doing so, you don’t need to order supersized meals. One of the best things Nutrisystem told us to do on vacation, which we did, was to make changes to our order, such as getting a burrito without the rice, the burger without the bread, or eating the salad and soup as a meal instead of an appetizer. What’s more, you could also split meals between partners, or maybe even ask for a kid’s portion. It might sound funny now, but it won’t be so funny when you end up eating extra unnecessarily on vacation. Additionally, powder vegetables on the side and look for whole grain options.

Whenever we are traveling, we always make sure that we drink a little extra water when we are on the road. That’s because water makes one feel full and could also go a long way in helping suppress appetite. A great way to make sure you stay hydrated is to bring along your favorite reusable bottle, which you could fill up at every stop. If that wasn’t enough, staying hydrated also helps when you end up indulging in salty snacks or fast food.

Road Trip Essentials

In the Car

• Pack snack portions: Packing pre-portioned snacks such as plain popcorn, whole grain crackers, dried fruit, and unsalted nuts is a great idea. Pre-portioning them into single-serving baggies, you don’t munch through the entire bag in one stretch.
• Stock a cooler: Invest in a cooler and pack it with flavored, fizzy, or plain water, guacamole, hummus, Greek yogurt, and reduced-fat cheese slices or sticks to keep yourself hydrated. Here’s a list of amazing road trip snacks you can stock up on!

At Drive-Throughs

• Eat simple salads and skip fries: Skip croutons, bacon bits, and deep-fried shells, and choose minimal dressing and lean, grilled protein instead. In the same way, skip fries (or get the kid’s serving) and eat yogurt or fruit.
• Eat single-serving sandwiches: Burgers with two/three patties pack in nearly 1,000 calories. And when you add special sauces, bacon, and cheese, it ups the fat. Instead, use ketchup, mustard, onions, and pickles for flavor. If you’re adding fish or chicken, choose grilled or broiled, not fried.

Important To-Dos

• Try to keep mealtimes regular by scheduling pit-stops around meals and eating around the same time every day, if you can. If not, then why not keep some Nutrisystem foods at hand for when the hunger pangs come calling?
• Are you headed out on a long drive? Then make sure that you plan stops for stretching, walking, etc. If you’re flying, then it’s best to get physical by walking through the airport before the flight.
• Bringing along a deck of cards, a magazine, or a book is a great way to avoid snacking due to boredom. Along the same lines, make sure that you catch up on sleep during travel as much as you can. It allows you to rest and, again, not snack!
• Last but not least, make sure that a majority of your meals are protein-packed, as they’re the perfect way to keep hunger at bay.

What are the rules for the Nutrisystem diet?

The brand recommends eating 5-6 times a day, depending on one’s gender and calorie goals.

What fruits are allowed on Nutrisystem?

You can eat all fresh fruits on the Nutrisystem diet, as they add a bit of everything in the right quantity.

What snacks are allowed on Nutrisystem?

Some of the snacks you can eat on the Nutrisystem diet, even while traveling, include hummus, devilled eggs, turkey jerky, brussels sprouts, etc.

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