Eating Healthy on the Road

Hyatt Place is offering a Hummus Trio plate on their new menu!

I'm on the road up to two weeks in a busy month, and it can be a challenge to maintain healthy practices.

Let's face it:  some days all I want is the comfort of a warm chocolate chip cookie.... am I right? 

Knowing this, knowing my weakness, I try to nip all temptation in the bud and plan ahead:

If I'm driving, I fill a small cooler with veggies, small containers of milk, yoghurt to snack on, and I try to book a hotel with a small fridge in the room.

I also tuck these into my suitcase:

Starbucks VIA Ready Brew packets (unsweetened varieties!)
packs of instant oatmeal
dried fruit pieces and/or nuts
small camping bowl and sturdy plastic utensils
paper towels or napkins
individual bags of tea

Just part of the breakfast spread at the Hyatt Place El Paso
Airport location--fruit, plain and berry yoghurts,
cottage cheese and a variety of fruits

That way I can always control at least one meal a day--breakfast--by heating water for oatmeal and coffee in the room's coffee maker. Some hotels offer great breakfast items, making it easy to eat well, and  not indulge.  One of my favorite places to stay in this regard is Hyatt Place, and the El Paso (Texas) Airport location is a good friend of our Texas Mountain Trail organization.  In fact, they were our first property to participate in our cycle-friendly program!  Yes, they offer indulgences at the breakfast spread that's included with the room, but there's also stonecut oatmeal, juices, cereals, fruit and yoghurt.  Easy, peasy.

Our El Paso Hyatt Place location is among the first 15 nationwide to roll out a new menu with some healthy options, including salads, soup/salad combinations, and my new FAVE go-to dinner item: (pictured above):   

Hummus Trio $7.75  A trio of Red Pepper, Roasted Garlic and Basil Pesto Hummus, served with Kalamata Olives, Pepperoncini, Fire Roasted Peppers, Warm Herb Flatbread & Carr’s Crackers

Yum!

Summer Treat

Layer small chunks of watermelon, feta cheese and cucumber on toothpicks or skewers for a tasty
summertime snack (depending on size of your chunks, as low as 20 calories per skewer!)

An Alternative Salty/Crunchy Snack!

Sometimes nothing seems to hit the spot but a little bit of salty and a little bit of crunchy.  For those of us who are watching calories and fat intake, we want an alternative to reaching towards chips, right?

Enter a snack we first encountered at a legendary Italian restaurant and bar, Lucca Grill in Bloomington, Illinois years ago--a plate of simple olives and celery sticks.  We wish it was still part of their appetizer menu.  At 4-8 calories, each olive delivers a whollop of salt in a tiny package.  A couple of these may deliver 10-15% of the recommended amount of sodium you need each day, but that might be enough to satisfy a craving for salt.

Celery gives you the crunch, and at one calorie per "stick," according to Livestrong.com, you can eat a full cup of celery slices and take in only 17 calories.  Seventeen!

Lucca Grill, Bloomington, Illinois
(Lucca Grill photos by Brian Brakebill)

In contrast, tortilla chips deliver many more calories, and it is easier to eat QUITE a bit more than one standard "serving," right?  A serving of potato chips is 16 chips according to Livestrong.com  (when's the last time you ate just 16?!?) and delivers 157 calories.


So here's a tip: when you're eating out, read the entire menu before ordering.  You may be surprised by what you find...there may be some good options there for new dining or snacking alternatives!

Our Favorite Post-Workout Recovery Snack

After we're done with a long run or workout, the snack we enjoy most is healthy and EASY and delicious.

Creamy, frothy and comforting, this snack is top of mind at the end of our workout.  We can't wait to get to the kitchen!

Three things you need:

1) A banana, fresh or frozen. A 7" banana has just 105 calories and is packed with nutrition, including lots of vitamin C and potassium.  Curious about it?  Click here to read "Why is Eating a Banana After Jogging Good" by LiveSTRONG.com

2)  1 cup of milk.  A cup of 1% milk offers 29% of the calcium and 10% of the vitamin A you need each day, based on a 2,000 calorie diet.  And just 102 calories in a cup!

3)  A blender.  Pop the first two in the blender, cover tightly and blend for about a minute on top speed.

Frozen bananas?  Sure, this is easy too.  Peel a banana, wrap in plastic wrap, then put in ziploc bag in your freezer.  Pop them out when you get back from your workout or your run, and they're ready to go.   Sometimes we add chunks of mango, or a few strawberries (both are great fresh or frozen), or even a canned apricot, too.  Rinse those apricots though..they're usually packed with sugary syrup which adds calories, but not that much taste in our opinion!

Calorie and nutritional information on bananas here.  And the same for milk, here.