How to Eat Healthy On the Go

With time on your side, healthy eating can be an interesting and rewarding pursuit. It can be quite fun rustling up a nutritious and delicious meal for yourself and friends or family when you have, say, a lazy Sunday afternoon to yourself.

Unfortunately, most of us lead rather busy – even occasionally quite hectic – lives. Without a little forethought, eating well can become difficult. Especially when you find yourself out of the house a lot.

So how do you make sure that you maintain a healthy eating lifestyle when life picks up the pace? There are actually few things you can do to fuel yourself in the right way.

Here are our top tips for how to eat healthy on the go.

How to eat healthy on the go — top tips

Always plan ahead

As the old saying goes, ‘fail to prepare and prepare to fail.’

If you spend your time thinking only day to day, sticking to only healthy on-the-go food can be very tricky indeed. You have to go out of your way to create meal plans and ensure that the kitchen is always stocked with nutritious food.

The best way to do this is to think ahead of time. Create pockets of time for dedicating to menu planning, shopping, food portioning and meal preparation. Buy in or make snacks in advance. Research the healthiest choices when you know you’re going to be eating out.

If you’ve always got something you can grab from a cupboard that’s healthy, you’re on the right track.

The most important meal of the day

Breakfast really is the day’s most vital meal. It can be tempting to skip it and see doing so as some kind of calorie-swerving cheat. In all likelihood, however, you’ll end up taking on more calories later in the day as you compensate for the hunger. Studies have shown we make poor dietary decisions when we’re hungry^1.

A small but filling protein-rich start to the day will set you up for the rest of the day’s healthy eating. Think eggs, oatmeal or yoghurt. Fruit is also a great option too, especially for eating on the go².

Here’s where the benefits of pre-planning come into play again. A small amount of breakfast prep the night before can save you both stress and time in the morning, allowing you to more easily eat healthy food on the go!

Let batch cooking save you time

Preparing meals in advance is a good way to ensure portion control and a predictable calorie intake. Provided wherever you’re going has a microwave, it’s preferable to eating out or buying a snack somewhere. It’s also much more cost effective and can be vital to your healthy food on the go plan.

It’s just such a great time saver. Cooking a large ‘batch’ of meals really doesn’t take much longer than cooking one portion of a meal. You’re just dealing with more of each ingredient.

You may need a large chest freezer to really get into this in a big way, but a few lunch boxes of food will fit in even the tightest fridge-freezer drawer.

Embrace the smoothie

Provided you don’t go off-piste and get tempted to reach for the ice cream, smoothies are a fantastic way to get protein and nutrients into your system if you’re in a hurry.

With time on your side, you can wash, slice, serve and enjoy a plate full of various fruits for a meal or snack. Pushed for time and with somewhere to be? Let your blender do the work for a healthy food on the go! Make a smoothie and enjoy it after you’ve left the house.

If you’re not a huge fan of fruit, or you’re keen to avoid their natural sugars, don’t fret. You can opt for a vegetable-based smoothie instead. Spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, watercress, carrots, celery and beetroots all make fine additions to a refreshing smoothie.

Making a smoothie is easy enough, but still takes a little time. One way around this is – again – planning and batch preparation. You can make a large amount in advance and freeze it in sandwich bags. Take it out the night before and simply pour into a flask or travel cup.

Stock up on – or make your own – protein bars

Whether you eat them as a snack around the house or as a travel energy boost, protein bars are a great healthy food on the go, helping to alleviate hunger and top up your system at any time of day.

You can, of course, purchase them in bulk and keep them at home. Or you can just pick one or two up when you’re out and about. There is one other option, though: make your own.

Dates, peanut butter, oats, fruit, dark chocolate… There are lots of tasty things to make your own protein bars with. Experiment until you find your favourite flavour combination.

Try to avoid making them too sweet. High fructose consumption can cause resistance to the hunger-regulating hormone leptin, which tells your body when to stop eating³.

Again, think about it ahead of time and batch produce and you can freeze the bulk of them and enjoy later.

Don’t get derailed when eating out

One way that dieters and those trying to eat healthy feel like they can lose their way is by eating out. You’ve no control over how the food is cooked and it’s often very tempting to plump for a less healthy option.

That doesn’t stop us, though. The UK’s restaurant trade is worth £17.8bn a year⁴. That’s a heck of a lot of dinner reservations.

Whether you’re sitting down for a meal or swinging by a café for a quick lunch, it’s vital you don’t see the meal or snack as ‘a cheat’ or ‘treat’. Of course you can order something that catches your eye, but try to choose healthy foods when on the go.

If it’s not possible to order particularly healthy, consider moderating your portion size. You can always ask for a doggy bag.

Keep snacks simple

If you lead a busy life, you’ll likely find yourself travelling a fair bit, making it difficult to choose healthy on-the-go food. This is exactly the kind of scenario where you’ll be tempted to snack.

Snacking isn’t necessarily bad, not if you’re eating something low in fat, but high in protein. Something healthy. In fact, regular healthy snacking can actually help manage hunger and improve blood sugar regulation⁵.

Predict when you may want or need snacks and pack something with you. It can be something super simple: fruit, some low-fat cheese, a yoghurt or a handful of your favourite nuts or seeds.

How to eat healthy on the go — be kind to yourself

Sticking to your weight loss goals can be challenging, particularly if you lead a busy life and often don’t have time to cook. However, with the right balance of preparation and self-care, you can easily find healthy food on the go, as well as being kind to yourself and your body.