How To Travel Without Gaining Weight
Not sure if it was the title that lured you in but I’m about to give you all the juicy details on how we travelled to Hawaii for 10 days and came back in BETTER shape than when we left. I know, kinda crazy right – and here’s the kicker, I was 15 weeks pregnant!!
So first of all, I must start by saying I’ve nearly mastered the whole not eating “like an as*hole” concept (something I coach about very often) and so I don’t feel the need to EAT EVERYTHING just because I’m on a holiday. Once you get your mindset around the fact that you don’t NEED to eat everything in sight to enjoy a trip and “let loose” your entire trips will begin to change. For the better!! I mean think about it, wouldn’t you feel 200% about travelling if you didn’t have to diet hard before just to feel comfortable in a bathing suit and then need to “start again” when you got home because you ate your trip away?
Okay let’d dive into it all… as soon as we landed we were STARVING and I searched our phones nearby food options. There are always options people – please don’t kid yourself. We stopped at Aloha which was a salad bar where I ordered this delicious bowl of heaven before we hit up Costco.
Going to Costco was always a part of the plan upon arrival. We got an air b n’ b with a kitchen ON PURPOSE. We wanted to be able to cook our own meals, have fresh foods on hand and not have to eat out every single meal. ps. NEVER go to Costco hungry!
Here’s our Costco haul – not super amazing photos but just wanted to show you quickly what we got!
We also hit up a local grocer to grab the odds and ends that we didn’t need massive portions of. My go to staples on this trip: fruit, protein bars, protein powder and frozen berries, electrolyte waters and more fruit! It’s something I’ve been craving like crazy since pregnant and it’s nutritious as fug, so why not!
The main protein source we bought was a four pack of lean ground turkey which we transformed into so many meals during our trip.
Starting with… these spicy asian infused lettuce wrapped tacos!
We often ate breakfast at home in the morning which was fruits and eggs most mornings or a smoothie. We’d then pack up a bunch of fruits, bars and snacks for our hiking trips. Oh, and turkey jerky! We grabbed a massive bag of it at Costco for easy protein on the go!
Post hikes I was always wanting something refreshing but higher calorie and often opted for an acai bowl or some form of a protein smoothie bowl! *Don’t forget to ask for an added shot of protein powder to yours!*
We’d often head back to our home, get changed, and immediately get our workout done. And let me tell ya – there weren’t any days where we WANTED to work out. After hiking alday and getting hit with the Hawaiian sun it was way too easy to say, “screw it” and ditch the workout but WE PUSHED THOUGH. You will always feel better once you are done and in 10-15 short minutes we were always so dang happy we made ourselves get it done. Yes, I said 10-15 minutes. There wasn’t one day we went to a standard gym, but we brought our bands and hit the beach for fun sunset bodyweight workouts – check them out HERE on my Instagram!
After that we’d shower and get ready for dinner. We’d either whip up something (with the copious amounts of turkey LOL) or go out. To be honest I wasn’t the biggest fan of the restaurants on the island. It was mostly North American food but just not all that great. We went for burgers, some asian infused foods, food trucks and brought home pizza – but honestly it just wasn’t all that amazing. I mean, I only had two bites of my burger so you know it wasn’t my jam! 😉
Here’s a few of my favorite food stops though – none of which were dinners haha.
This bowl was from the Sunrise Shack, which came HIGHLY recommended to us. It was this cute little smoothie shack on the side of the road on the north side of the island. Ahhhmazing is an understatement. I opted for the blue spirulina bowl with added peanut butter of course!
This is also an acai bowl but inside of a fresh pineapple and it looks as good as it tasted… I only wish it was bigger LOL. Seriously though, only a few inches were caved out and I was so dang hungry after basically running the Diamond Head Crater “hike”. Honestly this bowl was 100x better than the hike. This was the only hike we did that was touristy and I was not a fan.
We also made some pretty badass other meals with our turkey like this 8 layer dip served up with multigrain tortilla chips!
It took us a whole 10 minutes to make and we devoured it in a matter of minutes…well, most of it anyways.
This was what we did with some leftover ground turkey mixture to make mornings easier for breakfast too! We’d just toss up the extra meat with our morning eggs to make protein packed scrambles that tasted unreal!
One of my other food highlights of the trip was travelling around the little town of Haleiwa, which reminded me a lot of Fort Langley near my home town back home. It has the cutest little coffee shops, shops, ice cream parlours and this authentic little mexican stop. I opted for the tacos which I barely managed to eat. Food aversions can be oh so real and ruin your appetite in a heartbeat. But I highly recommend this little stop called “Cholos”.
That about covers some of the highlights of our food adventures. Each plane ride I opted not to eat the snacks offered but I did have my own veggie chips on hand if I got hungry. I’ve noticed that if I just stay hydrated and don’t stuff my face on the plane I feel 100x better when I land!
The biggest thing I want to encourage you to do is pre pack snacks, know you always have options and the choice of what you put in your body, and that just because the food is there doesn’t mean you have to eat it all.
ps…go to Oahu because it’s magical as fug!
Love Jess…and mini hot tamale! XO
