Over the years I have done a lot of traveling for work, ranging from as much as 80-100% travel for a full year to going on sporadic trips 1-2 times per quarter and everything in between. A good portion of this travel was well before I started to take my health and fitness seriously, so I have seen both how destructive travel can be for your nutrition and/or fitness goals – but this also means that I have found that the negative impacts of travel can be largely mitigated by taking a handful of actions while you are on the road.
Over the years, the actual travel that I’ve done has varied to a significant degree during different phases of my career and life. In general, here are the main variables that I focus my energy and planning towards controlling whenever possible:
- Travel itinerary – length and timing of trip
- Hotel location/amenities – including local amenities
- Workout planning
- Food choices – specifically snacking and alcohol
Over time, you can become automatic at controlling a lot of these variables (especially if you are traveling to consistent destinations), though up front it might seem like a ton of work to get it right. There is no doubt that some of this takes considerable time to plan when you are traveling to a new destination or are unfamiliar with some of your options within each category. In order to help ease some of that burden, I am going to walk through each category and detail what I am looking for, how I plan ahead, or what rules I follow in the moment to try to stick as closely as possible to my workout regimen and diet. While it can be difficult to get it 100% right (and sometimes impossible), that doesn’t mean that getting it 70-80% right isn’t a huge victory for a work trip. This will go a long way in keeping you consistent before, during, and after a trip as well as preventing you from falling off the rails because of a 3-5 day trip that you had no choice in taking.
Travel itinerary
This is the first and potentially most impactful piece of planning for success during a given trip. I generally try to follow a consistent pattern when I travel because I think it takes a lot of pressure off the rest of the trip if done correctly. While this largely applies to people who are able to set their own travel itinerary, that doesn’t mean you can’t push for whoever may be setting your itinerary to follow this a little bit more than they might already (or try to set a schedule that makes this type of scheduling ideal).
- Aim for an outbound flight that is around lunchtime (11am or later) – the point of this being that I can get a full workout done the morning before I leave and no longer have access to my normal equipment, gym, etc. This likely means that you can wake up at your normal time and avoid waking up at a ridiculously early hour of the morning like many do for flights
- If this is not possible, my 2nd option is to pick a flight that best aligns with what time I normally wake up at
- When thinking about how long a trip is going to be – I always try to minimize the number of nights that I spend away, always preferring a nighttime flight home rather than staying another night and going home the following morning. This way you can get back to your normal routine as quickly as possible
- I generally apply the same logic to my flight home, ideally, I can get another workout in before I start travelling home – this way, travel delays will not ruin your plan
- If you have control over the actual timing of the trip - then scheduling this around a light week of training can also make the entirety of this process much simpler!
Amenities of hotel and surrounding areas
The next most important thing that I am paying attention to is which hotel I am staying at. If I have control over booking the hotel, I will always pick a hotel based on the amenities of the hotel and what is in the immediate surrounding area (ideally walking distance). This is important for several reasons:
- A hotel with great amenities – particularly a solid gym, but some sort of restaurant can also go a long way in reducing the stress of traveling
- A solid gym is obvious – if a hotel has a full gym (not just a few dumbbells and a treadmill), this likely eliminates the need to search for anything additional in order to get that workout in. There are more hotels out there with great gyms than you would expect
- I include a restaurant here because this can also take pressure off when it comes to finding meals or snacks during the day/night – these restaurants tend to have a lot of flexible options depending on your diet
- If you don’t have control over the hotel booking or your workout program calls for something that can’t be found in a hotel gym (swimming, for example), then the immediate surrounding area of the hotel is the next thing to look for
- I am typically looking for 2 things – big box gyms and snack options (think convenience/grocery store)
- Big box gyms like LA Fitness, Planet Fitness, Esporta Fitness, Lifetime, and others will typically allow you to either sign up for a 2-7 day guest pass or pay a one-time fee to use the gym (typically $10-$20, if you’re lucky you can expense this!). This will allow you to do basically any type of workout you’d like
- Convenience stores can also help a lot by providing healthier snack options – snacks can be hard to come by if you don’t plan ahead, which often leads to overeating or choosing less healthy options if you go into a restaurant hungry
Workout Planning
I am always a strong advocate of scheduling my workouts for the week in advance – this is especially important when it comes to travel weeks. Traveling tends to invite more unpredictable and unfamiliar circumstances into your schedule, so it is crucial to be prepared ahead of time.
After identifying what your hotel can provide, what is in the surrounding area, and what kind of work schedule you will have during that week – the next thing to do is identify what type of workouts you will be able to complete given your time and equipment constraints. When looking at how to schedule my workouts within a travel week, I typically make decisions based on a handful of guidelines:
- Schedule your most flexible workouts during the period of time you are traveling – this includes optional workouts, but also workouts that can be easily completed with the equipment you will have available at your travel destination. For example, running and weightlifting tend to be the most flexible workouts, while I typically find cycling to be the least flexible (hotel bikes suck and spin bikes at gyms are usually consumed by cycling classes)
- Schedule your least flexible workouts for the morning or day before you leave and/or the night/morning after you return from your trip (or both)
- If you have an off day or optional workout – try to schedule this on the last day of the trip, I tend to find that the last day is the hardest to get a workout in because you may be cramming to finish work before you leave, catching a flight home, or dealing with flight delays at the airport
- This is also an important time to have a plan for how to reduce the duration of a workout if necessary – which portion, interval, length, or exercise will you remove if you have less time than expected? Its always better to do something than nothing, even if that means only completing half of the workout you originally planned to do. Flexibility is key!
- Don’t be afraid to ask for some down time during your trip – I find that others will rarely default to taking downtime during the course of a day or between work and dinner but are also happy to take an hour to chill if asked. This is a great time to squeeze that workout in
Food choices and sleep
The last item is more of a way to make decisions during your trip rather than something to plan for. No matter how well you plan your trip, you will inevitably find yourself sitting at a restaurant deciding between a salad or cheeseburger, whether to have another drink or stay out a little later, and deciding that you are hungry a few hours before the next planned meal with no snacks in sight. While you will never get it 100% right, nor should that be the goal, you can certainly make a few good decisions to have yourself feeling better about the trip when you return home. Here are some of the ways that I think about these decisions:
- The first thing that I try to do, similar to my workout plan, is to try and eat one last meal at home before hitting the road – this is simply one less meal that you have to eat out while you are gone
- The next thing that I plan ahead for is to have the right kinds of snacks available and a consistent way to get them – the right kind of snack is going to depend on your diet/preference, but I find that Rx bars, almonds or other nuts, and fruit tend to be the most readily available options on the go. I typically stick to these options because I can find them all at an airport – I always stock up on these things before I get on the plane so that I have them available in my bag throughout the trip
- What I find to be the hardest decision to make is what to order at a restaurant. In general, I find that you have little control over the appetizers that get ordered at work events – because of that, I don’t worry much about what appetizers are around. Try not to eat a dinners worth of them but go for whatever is out there. From there, I try to be conservative with what I eat for my main course since that is the part of dinner I have control over – since I don’t always feel like salads fill me up (which are obviously a great option), I look for seafood dishes if they are available because they tend to come with rice and/or vegetables instead of French fries. In the absence of those dishes, I just try to find meals that don’t have deep fried sides
- Part of the reason that these decisions can be important is because you can safely assume that no matter what it is, everything in a restaurant likely has 300-500+ additional calories in it than the same thing made at home
- Alcohol is another tough thing to manage while on the road – since everything is paid for and everyone is away from most home responsibilities, a lot of people drink more than they usually would or want to during these trips. Obviously, the less the better, but this is typically easier said than done. I usually try to do a couple of things to mitigate this:
- Pass on the pregame drinks – happy hour drink before the dinner, work event, etc – great time to get a workout in as well!
- Try to cut a drink out during dinner – drinking a little slower, not getting a drink right away, or not getting one after dinner are all great ways to have 1-2 fewer drinks during the course of a dinner
- Call it a night one drink earlier – I find that this is a great way to have one less drink but also grab a little extra sleep. Personally, I find it hard to get a good night’s sleep when you combine the hotel bed with a couple of drinks. Going back to the room 30 min earlier can help accomplish both of those things at the same time
- Probably the least popular option, but you can also just avoid it altogether. The less you drink around coworkers, the less you are expected to drink, and the less of a pressure it eventually becomes – I also find that this option is tolerated much better around work than it is socially, so might as well take advantage of this leverage from time to time
When you combine all of this together, it really comes down to doing a bit of planning ahead of time and identifying the decisions during a trip that lead you to skip workouts, eat less healthy food, eat the wrong amount of food, or drink a bit more than you’d like. These are some of the strategies that I have used over the years and continue to use today with a lot of success. The more control you can gain over your schedule in general, the easier all of this gets – but I think that there are still plenty of tactics to use here, even if you are stuck following another person’s itinerary every time that you travel.