Whether travelling for a weekend business trip or 6 months, the principles of fat loss don’t change.
- Maintain a Calorie Deficit
- Eat sufficient Protein (0.8-1g per lb or 1.8-2.2g per kg)
- Keep food quality as high as possible for micronutrients and satiety
- Supplements as needed to support 1-3
One of the easiest way to make this easier is to travel with or buy Whey Protein, doing so will make hitting your protein goal much easier. It becomes easier to focus on whatever the goal of your trip is without worrying about eating decisions during the day by having protein powder prepared.
Why can I not just buy meat and local food etc for protein?
Well there’s nothing stopping you from enjoying local food, however when fat loss is the goal we need to consider the extra calories from fat/carbs which can be easily hidden in cooking oils or condiments. For example:
2 levelled scoops of bulk powders whey protein = roughly 244 Kcals and 48g Protein
If you were to get a simple meal consisting of chicken/beef, potatoes and some mixed vegetables. It would be assumed that this would be low calorie, however due to the oils/butters/fats used in preparation the meal could easily exceed 1k kcals and would give you roughly the same 40-50g protein depending on portion size. I’ll go into how you can still enjoy these meals later in the article but we want to keep calories in check as much as possible.
An example 5 day trip
You’re travelling for 5 days and want 200g protein per day. That’s 1000g Protein, let’s say we want to cover 60% of that from our whey. Therefore we would need 600g Protein from whey, the whey I recommend contains 70g protein per 100g. Take a nice even 1kg bag to cover 700g protein. Only an extra kg that can easily go into your carry on to hit your protein goals and keep your hunger in check.
Example Strategy
In my experience whilst travelling both long and short term I like to Intermittently fast or protein fast during most the day. Protein fasting could look something like this. Now to preface this: psyllium husk contans around 1.4g fibre per 2g, therefore try to match your fibre intake to what it was before you left as too much or too little can be problematic as the body takes time to adjust. If you don’t know your habitual fibre intake then look at your normal diet, if it consists of a lot of beans, lentils, fruits and vegetables then consume closer to 5g with the shake. However if you know you have a typically low fibre diet then just 2g per shake will suffice. You can also add a greens drink to the first shake of the day (have it seperately) to provide some fibre and micronutrients.
9am Protein Shake 2 scoops whey protein with water 48g protein 244kcal + Optional 2-5g psyllium husk
1pm Protein Shake 2 scoops whey protein with water 48g protein 244kcal + Optional 2-5g psyllium husk
4pm Protein Shake 2 scoops whey protein with water 48g protein 244kcal + Optional 2-5g psyllium husk
8pm evening meal – Grilled Steak/Chicken/fish with potatoes/vegetables (most restaurants we can estimate this to be around 1k+ kcals, however we’ve created a nice buffer for the day)
Even if the evening meal works out to be 1.2k calories, throw in another 200 Cals for a glass a wine. Total for the day 600 kcal for the day with 1.4k kcals for the evening meal + wine leaves us with a total of 2k kcals for the day. If there was a lot of walking during the day and maybe even a weight training session then we can still be in an overall deficit and continue or fat loss phase coming back even leaner than when we left!
Other Considerations
The meal frequency can be changed to whatever is prefered as long as it fits your goals. For example removing one protein shake if you protein goal is lower, or you know that the evening meal is going to be very high protein.
Supplementation Explanations?
Psyllium husk – Fibre is another tough one to get on Holiday depending on location, it can be done with the consumption of fruits/vegetables. However when we’re using the above strategy of protein fasting the only problem is fibre consumption, therefore the fibre boost from the psyllium husk will really help. Simply add 2-5g to each protein shake, it’s virtually tasteless and will also help you feel more full.
Greens Drink – Continuing on the point above if you don’t have access to fruits/vegetables then an easy (although not optimal) substitute is to take a greens drink once a day to cover your nutritional bases. This can be replaced or combined with a good multivitamin.
Whey Protein – I would almost consider this food and not a supplment, see it as a liquid chicken breast that digests faster and tastes like chocolate/vanilla/your favourite flavour.
Any other supplements? – Depending how much you want to optimise things or want to see how many different pills and powders you can take through security then I would support the addition of any of the supplements you regularly take for health and performance.
