When Adam and I were walking through a deserted 11:30pm airport Sunday night after our 40 hour trip to NYC this past weekend, I looked at him and said "you know, I was never one of those people who wanted to travel for work or spend all of my free time traveling". I wanted to be a designer, dammit. All of this traveling is becoming a pain in the ass and messing up my schedule in doing what I did dream of doing. 5 trips in as many months has left me never wanting to leave the house again. It also has made me ponder how hard it is to maintain a healthy lifestyle when traveling. Forget that once I return, I have missed that weeks farmers market and skipped the day I grocery shop, and have so much to catch up on with Manic Trout, that I have no time to exercise all week. The real problem is what to do while actually gone?

If you fly Jet Blue, the terminals and flights offer at least a bit of health options (there has been much time in airports as Austin airport is not big enough to justify direct flights) but on most of the other airlines, you're SOL. Once you arrive at your destination, the real fun begins...living in hotels, eating only at restaurants and being a guest. I prefer to not make a big deal out of my food allergies, I find it annoying when people are picky as guests. I normally just work around it, and its pretty easy to avoid aged cheese, red wine and good chocolate but being lactose intolerant, always avoiding dairy is not so easy. However, with the last one, its an intolerance, I'll live...so I just suck it up and go with the flow. Except people keep making creamed soups as the main course...what is that all about anyway?

Once we bump allergies and intolerances out of the way...then there is dealing with the preferred way to eat. As I discussed last week, I tend to gravitate to super heathy eating habits, avoid GMO's, buy organic and avoid refined flour and dairy. Traveling makes me understand that there are small pockets of the country where lots of people eat like this, I have been lucky enough to have lived the last decade in these places  because wow, its hard to eat this way in a lot of the US! Again though, as not one to ruffle feathers when I'm a guest, I just go with the flow and work around it...which means I usually feel sick to my stomach or hungry most of the time which results in my fall back crisis mode...eat as much sugar as I can get my hands on. This last trip resulted in my eating a large amount of the most delicious and tiniest cupcakes I have ever laid eyes on.

There are times when I can get to a store and stock up on apples, almonds and other snacks so at least I'm not starving to death, but other than that do you have any suggestions of how to maintain a healthy lifestyle when traveling?

oh and ps, I have not taken one photo of food on any of the 5 trips...except those cupcakes