Paleo Challenge – Vacation

We went on a fabulous mini-vacation to the mountains with family a couple of weeks ago.  It was so great to get away for a few days, even if snow vacations with kids aren’t exactly the most relaxing kind of vacation 🙂  

This ended up being a pretty easy vacation to stay on track.  My family is pretty focused on eating healthy so the meals we planned we all easy and Paleo compliant with the exception of a little bit of rice and quinoa and a few potato chips 🙂  My biggest temptation was when we went for ice cream, but I just said no and it turned out the ice cream wasn’t the best ice cream anyway so I really didn’t miss out at all.

Here are my best suggestions for when you’re traveling –

1. Stay somewhere with a kitchen if you can.  This is huge for being able to make your own food!  If you can’t stay somewhere with a kitchen and you’re driving, try bringing a crock pot and some pre-prepped freezer meals.  I like to freeze in ziploc bags and then I can just plop it into the crock pot and go.  Eating in saved us a lot of money and helped us stay on track.
2. Bring your own food, especially snacks.  Some Jack’s Paleo Kitchen Trail Mix Bites would make great on the go snacks or even breakfast, and they are easy to pack!  I also like to bring nuts to help take the place of chips. 
3. If you’re going to eat out, opt for meats and veggies.  This can mean a burger without a bun on some lettuce or chicken and veggies or a nice big salad, etc.  I prefer to get a chicken burger because it feels better to me to eat a chicken burger bunless.  I still get fries with my burgers sometimes, just ask if they are gluten free.  I know the fry oil isn’t optimal, but as long as it’s not a regular thing I personally think it’s okay, and I know it helps me stay on track because I don’t feel deprived.  I’m not consuming seed oils in my regular day to day life so it’s on my list of okay things to do occasionally.
4. Stay active!  We walked, skied, and went snow shoeing while we were there.  We had fun and didn’t sit around snacking all day because we were too busy playing.

Between eating in for the most part and staying active, I’m happy to report that I didn’t ruin the last 5 months of work in 5 days.  We work so hard to make progress, it’s really unfair to ourselves to let it all fall away for a vacation and then have to start over again!  The trick is balance – I had some drinks and thoroughly enjoyed a splurge of a few potato chips and some french fries and balanced it out by lots of activity and having the bulk of my meals healthy with lots of veggies.

I know St. Patrick’s Day is the next potential holiday challenge but I’m not going to post about it – We’re going to keep it simple and just have corned beef and cabbage with potatoes.  We’ll skip the green beer or Guinness, which is easy for me since I don’t like beer in the first place 🙂

So next up – What would a year of Paleo challenges be without the ultimate Paleo challenge – a Whole30?  Even though my diet is pretty darn clean right now, I’m heading into a Whole30 to try and resolve some digestive issues I’m still having.  We’re planning to start March 19th after we get back from a short business trip.  I think the toughest part will be no cookie sampling for 30 days!