Is There Such Thing as “Healthy” Vacation Eating?
I love long weekends in the summer! It’s a chance to spend more time being active outside and enjoy leisurely family meals.
We spent this past weekend in Canmore and lucked out with hot weather. Our days were filled with biking, hiking and cooling off at Quarry Lake.
When we go away we do enjoy eating out but it’s also nice to be able stay in and make some simple meals. With a little bit of meal planning, eating in can be relaxing and a great way to eat healthy while on vacation.
Before we left we packed our cooler and a bag of food so that we only needed to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store. I hate spending half of my vacation doing multiple runs to the grocery store.
I am a Holistic Nutrition Consultant and Paleo enthusiast but I want you to know that we did go out and indulge in burgers, poutine, frozen lemonade and Eggs Bennie. To counter balance these restaurant meals we packed healthy snacks for our outings like fruit, carrots, nuts, coconut bites, Lara Bars, meat sticks and lots of water. We also cooked a couple of breakfasts and dinners too.
Here’s what our vacation-eating plan for the long weekend looked like in case you are curious. I left out all the coffee I drank. I don’t know why vacation equals extra coffee for me. It could be the slower pace and a chance to linger over meals.
| Friday | Lunch at Communitea (Veggie, Turkey and Rice Bowl), Dinner eat-in (leftover sausages and grilled veggies with a green salad) |
| Saturday | Breakfast eat-in (Pancakes, Bacon and Strawberries) Lunch at La Belle Patate (Burgers and Poutine), Dinner eat-in (Steak Salad with coconut ice-cream for dessert) |
| Sunday | Breakfast eat-in (Boiled eggs, left-over bacon and pancakes with peaches), Lunch out Barpa Bill’s (Salmon Burger and Salad), Dinner eat-in (leftover steak salad with coconut milk ice-cream for dessert) |
| Monday | Breakfast at Summit Cafe (Poached Eggs with salsa, guacamole and hash browns) |
Now it’s time to get back into our routine and eat a little lighter to recover from some of the heavier meals we indulged in. I’m feeling the need to back away from the starches, increase my veggie intake and have fresh fruit instead of ice-cream. All it takes is a few small tweaks to recover from vacation eating.
How do you handle meal planning when you are on vacation? What do you do to make it easier to get back into your regular eating routine when you return? Looking forward to hearing your tips!
P.S. I want to give a heads up that I’m running my 5-Day Meal Planning Challenge this month. I ran it back in March and got such great feedback that I just had to run it again. I’ll be sharing the link to sign-up for the free challenge next week. The Meal planning Challenge starts on August 17.
eating plan, indulgence, long-weekend, Vacation eating
I just got back from a weekend away. We ate three meals out and the rest in–and I enjoyed them all. I actually enjoy cooking, especially when there’s no pressure (also my friends were a lot more appreciative of my morning fritattas than my kids are). We had fresh fruit, bacon, fritatta (using up lots of bits of stuff we had left on hand), and pancakes. It helped that we were in a partially stocked kitchen (olive oil, vinegars, spices, etc., available). I think the two challenges of eating well while away are having those kinds of staples (without schlepping a ton of stuff back and forth) and trying to have the right amount of fresh food to avoid waste while getting you through the time available (without those back and forths to the store you mentioned).
You are totally right about having the basics available, Sara. I needed vinegar for the pancake recipe and there wasn’t any in the cupboard so I had to cross my fingers and hope for the best. They weren’t the best but when smeared with blueberry jam it didn’t matter:)