How to Stay on Track With Protein Goals During Summer Travel
Protein goals are hard to hit. Especially when you’ve already started building a physique and your protein needs are higher than the average person’s. Well, there’s one thing that takes an already difficult goal and makes it a lot harder. Travel.
Summertime is when you want to take time off work, travel somewhere, and unwind while you enjoy new things. Unfortunately, if you need 200g of protein per day for your big muscles, it can feel impossible to get that when you’re out camping, traveling around a new town experiencing new things, or relaxing on the beach far from your usual supply of protein shakes and chicken breasts.
That is why your daily protein goal has to be planned a little differently when your normal fridge, kitchen, and meal prep setup are nowhere around.
Today, we’re going to help you keep your protein goals on track without sacrificing your summer fun.
Why Meeting Your Protein Needs is Harder When You Travel
Meeting your protein goals doesn’t seem like it should be hard. After all, if you’re working out, you’re going to be hungry enough to eat everything you need pretty easily if you’re making good food choices.
That’s where the main problem comes in when you’re traveling. Your choices become extremely limited.
It’s not too hard to meal prep a week’s worth of lean protein for your lunch break, wake up and make some steak and eggs for breakfast, or make a more extravagant and protein-heavy meal for dinner when you’re living your normal life. You have full access to a kitchen, the grocery store, proper storage, and everything else to make it possible even if it takes time compared to eating out.
When you’re traveling, all those conveniences are taken away. You can’t toss a family pack of chicken breasts in your trunk for a 3-day getaway or consistently find a place to cook them properly. Let alone find all the dishes to boil your rice and roast your vegetables.
It’s hard for the average person who isn’t worried about their diet to eat normally while they’re on vacation. Let alone when you have a bunch of diet restrictions.
It’s simply more convenient to stop for a burger, grab a quick bite at a local restaurant, etc.
The issue with that is that the convenience comes with some major drawbacks. Mostly, the places you’re going to buy food from have no reason to care about your gains. They want to make good-tasting food that appeals to the average customer, and that means macros aren’t considered.
Not only does it mean that you’re not likely to reach your protein requirements, but even if you do, you’ll probably take in a lot of extra fat and carbs that you didn’t want for the day.
The food and lack of access to your usual tools aren’t the only issues. You also have travel schedules, long drives, flights, beach days, hikes, and random plans that make it harder to stop and eat the way you normally would.
That is why travel protein has to be simple. If you need a snack that works in your bag, car, hotel room, or beach cooler, protein cookie dough for travel makes a lot more sense than trying to recreate your full meal prep routine on the road.
Staying on Track: A 3-Part Approach to Keeping Your Gains This Summer
No matter what you do, you will have to face at least a little bit of a challenge if you want to stay on track and experience a good summer vacation. Leaving the comfort and resources of your home simply takes too much out of your repertoire for you to transition seamlessly.
Fortunately, vacation doesn’t tend to last too long, and you just need something that will get you through a week or two without losing your progress in the gym.
We have 3 tips you need to follow if you want to pull it off with minimal issues.
1. Stay Disciplined
This is one of the biggest factors that will impact your ability to make things work. After a while, it’s fairly easy to avoid tempting foods and habits at home. You put a lot of effort into changing the way you eat, and it becomes your daily routine.
Vacation throws off that routine, and since you’re having such a good time, it’s easy to start eating at every new restaurant you see, trying high-fat foods you’d never touch normally, and generally tossing your diet to the curb in favor of fun.
You can have fun. That’s what vacation is for. You just need to ensure that you’re doing it responsibly.
Try to limit how much you eat out. That’s where a lot of the problems will come from. Instead of eating out 3 times a day, consider making something fast and protein-rich for two of your meals, and try a new restaurant once per day.
When you do eat out, make smart decisions when you’re going over the menu, and don’t let the comfort of vacation make you go hog wild.
You do not have to eat perfectly to stay on track. You just need enough structure to keep your protein intake from falling apart while you travel. Planning a couple of protein-rich meals and snacks each day makes it much easier to keep up with goals like hitting 150g of protein a day, even when your normal routine is gone.
2. Plan Ahead
Planning makes the whole process easier. There are three things you need to plan.
First, plan out your general schedule for the things you want to do. Time is a huge constraint when you’re traveling, and it makes it easier for you to choose convenient food. If you plan properly, you can do everything you want while making time to eat properly.
You probably already did this when you first started your fitness journey and had to plan out your normal day to accommodate healthy eating.
Then, plan out the food-based places you want to go to in a way that satisfies you but also makes it easier for you to meet your goals. There’s always room for spontaneity, but if you can plan out most of your food stops, you’ll have an easier time eating food that aligns with your goals.
Finally, plan and prepare the meals you’re going to make as best you can. It’s hard to meal prep when you’re driving or flying, but you can figure out what you can take with you, what can be pre-made or purchased, and how you’ll prepare anything that you have to cook.
You may not have containers of chicken and rice ready, but you can still hit your macros without meal prep by building your travel plan around protein snacks, smarter restaurant choices, and easy foods that do not need much work.
3. Pick Good Protein Snacks
Protein snacks can really get you through the challenge of eating right while you’re on summer vacation. You get a huge boost of protein, you eat hardly any calories or junk, and you don’t have to worry about preparing anything.
That makes grab-and-go protein snacks perfect for long drives, airports, beach bags, hotel rooms, hikes, and random afternoons when your next real meal is still hours away.
The right snack does not just fill a gap. It keeps the whole day from sliding off track when your summer plans are built around movement, heat, and zero patience for cooking.
If you’re packing for the beach, bring pool bag snacks so you do not have to rely on whatever greasy food stand happens to be nearby. If you’re camping or hiking, protein cookies give you an easy way to bring protein without hauling around a kitchen.
Trust FUUL to Keep You on Track This Summer
Convenience is one of the main reasons people ruin their diets on vacation, but we have an answer to that problem. You’ll still have to make good decisions when you inevitably eat out, but FUUL protein cookie dough is a ready-to-eat, high-protein, low-calorie, macro-friendly snack that’s designed for situations like this.
You can buy a few bags, toss them in your car, and you have a grab-and-go protein boost whenever you need it.
FUUL gives you 40g of protein per bag, only 220 calories, no seed oils, a bigger resealable bag, and a softer, chewier, gooier cookie dough texture. It also makes travel snacking easier because protein cookie dough does not need to be refrigerated, so you do not have to babysit it like chicken, yogurt, or meal prep containers.
That makes FUUL an easy fit for summer protein snacking, road trips, beach days, camping weekends, and any trip where you want to enjoy yourself without letting your protein goals disappear.
Don’t mess up your gains this summer. Try FUUL and eat right no matter where you are!