Eating Healthy When On A Business Trip

Business trips add insult to injury for not only do the long hours tire you, deprive you of a good night's sleep, home cooked healthy meals, they have a devastating impact on your long term health.

1) Start your day with a good breakfast. Breakfast helps you kick start the day  after a long night without food. It also helps you concentrate on your work. Easy to prepare breakfasts include low fat milk and cereal like oats and fruit, whole-wheat toast and boiled egg, yogurt with fruit, idli sambhar, sprouts or even last night's vegetables with two chappatis.

2) Eat regular meals. Skipping meals can lead to out-of-control hunger, often resulting in overeating. When you're very hungry, it's also tempting and easy to forget about good nutrition. So have small frequent meals every 3 hours or so,  but don't eat so much that your snack becomes an entire meal.
                                                                         
3) Get Moving! It's easy to fit physical activities into your daily routine. Walk, cycle or jog to see friends. Climb stairs instead of taking an escalator or elevator. Try to do these things for a total of 30-40 minutes every day.

4) Snack smart. Snacks are a great way to refuel. Choose snacks from different food groups - a glass of low-fat milk, a fruit, low-fat yogurt, buttermilk, coconut water, a vegetable sandwich, few nuts or a dry cereal like puffed rice. Avoid fried and very salty snacks like samosas, pakoras, donuts, cakes, butter cookies.

5) Balance your food groups and don't eat too much of any one thing. You don't have to give up foods like pizzas, French fries and ice cream to eat healthy. You just have to be smart and eat less. Your body needs nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fat and many different vitamins and minerals such as vitamins C and A, iron and calcium from a variety of foods.

6) Eat more whole grains, fruits and vegetables to get FIBER. These foods will give you carbohydrates for energy, plus vitamins, minerals and the magic word fiber. Besides which they taste good! Try whole wheat breads, pizzas, and pastas or bajra, jowar and methi rotis. Bananas, guavas, strawberries and melons are some great tasting fruits that are high in fiber. Try vegetables raw, on a sandwich or tossed up in a crunchy salad. Fiber helps with weight loss, blood sugar & hypertension.

7) Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Preferably with plain water, fresh lime, coconut water, buttermilk  or fresh fruit juice without sugar. Fluids not only help replace lost body water, they also help in the process of digestion and absorption. Fluids help flush out toxic wastes from the body, and apart from quenching thirst, give a feeling of satisfaction, help prevent formation of kidney stones and maintain both body temperature and blood pressure.

8) Keep an eye on both types of fats and quantity of fat that you eat. Keep track of the % of fat you are consuming in your Food & Exercise diary. Make sure not more than 25-30% of calories/day should be from fats.

9) Include heart-healthy sources of fat (vegetable sources) such as:

1. Increase intake of Omega-3 Fats (fish, flaxseeds, walnuts, canola oil, and soybean products.). Daily, 6 almonds & 4 walnut halves are very beneficial.
2. Completely avoid saturated fat/ trans fats, specially butter, ghee, dairy products & other animal sources. Avoid high fat meats such as hamburgers, hotdogs, sausage, bacon. Always take the skin off chicken when cooking. Most processed foods like chips, cookies, cakes, candy, etc. are loaded with trans fats.

10) PLEASE make every effort to stop smoking. Lung cancer in India is an emerging epidemic specially among young smokers. There is no going back with cancer. Chewing tobacco is not an option as it can lead to oral cancers. Alcohol has loads of calories that can add up fast. If you are a regular drinker, then start by cutting a couple of drinks at a time.  Regular alcohol consumption leads to weight gain, potential liver disorders, high BP, Type 2 Diabetes & high cholesterol levels etc.

Remember, you always have a choice. All menu cards offer multiple items from each food category. Eg. If you have hypertension, don't order fried, saturated fat and sodium loaded foods.
Learn to be selective with what you eat but more importantly watch portion control as two serving add up to twice the calories.
Try to follow the customized diet plans given by your NutritionVista dietitian.

Poonam Vaswani,
Dietitian,
www.NutritionVista.com