How to Feel Like Yourself Anywhere
It's holiday time! Here are seven practical tips to help you feel your best, without sacrificing spontaneity
Welcome to the travel edition of the Full Serving newsletter. I started writing this because 1) most of my clients are heading off on holibobs and 2) I am also off soon, so all of the tips I’m about to share with you are top of mind.
Have you been to Corsica? Do you know and love it? I want to hear your tips. This will be the first time in years that I’m taking a proper break from clinic and the intention is to swim, hike, drink, write, read, eat. My bikinis will be thrilled to get some air time too.
Anyway - we’re chatting holidays today. If you’ve been here awhile you’ll know that I often work with nutritional therapy clients to help them establish a sense of routine on work trips. Many of them spend an inordinate amount of time in hotels, which is great for loyalty points but not so much the digestive system.
Going on holiday can obviously mean hotel time too but I take a slightly different, more flexible approach. The goal is to feel good while making plenty of room for spontaneity, long lunches and the occasional second scoop of pistachio gelato. Plus, we might be doing an extra thousand steps a day, and powering up for that is part of the planning process too.
Bearing in mind that travel can already ask our brains to work overtime - new languages, roads, meal times, menus - I like to establish a handful of easy habits that take care of the basics. Once they’re in place, we can stop thinking about them. Which leaves much more room for swimming, reading, and all the other reasons we went on holiday in the first place.
So, here are some ideas for you to pick and choose from. See what sounds useful, borrow the bits you fancy and leave the rest.
Some ideas to try out
1. Own breakfast
Holiday schedules have absolutely zero respect for lunchtime. Lunch can drift from 1pm to 2pm to 4pm depending on who’s hungry, whether anyone fancies another swim, or whether someone just ate a family sized bag of crisps. It’s not my recommendation to get pushy about other people’s mealtimes so let’s think about what we can do ourselves to feel good and stave off the holiday hangriness.
Breakfast is the one meal most of us have the greatest influence over while travelling, so let’s make it count. Make it protein-rich because it keeps you fuller for longer - it takes more time to digest than carbohydrates on their own, which is one of the reasons a protein-rich breakfast is likelier to get us through to lunch (even if it keeps getting delayed) than jsut a pastry.
Even if all you’re craving is a beautiful bowl of tropical fruit (completely understandable), it’s worth asking yourself one question - where’s the protein? A dollop of Greek yoghurt, an extra boiled egg, a bit of cottage cheese makes all the difference.
Easy win: Around 20-30g of protein is a practical target for many adults, but if breakfast abroad makes that tricky, don’t overthink it. Just get some on the plate. Smoked salmon is a good one to add on the side.
2. Stop at the supermarket
…especially if you’ll be staying somewhere with a kitchen. If you’re like me, foreign supermarkets are basically tourist attractions. They tell you so much about a place. What are people eating? What’s the milk situation? What’s on the pear agenda?
If you know what your set up is going to be like I’d recommend heading there straight from the airport. But don’t go overboard on the first shop. Think of it as buying for the next couple of mornings. Eggs, lemons (for hot water in the morning, sparkling in the afternoon), Greek yoghurt (for breakfast or in dressings), carrots, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, jars of tuna, stone fruit. If the meat looks good good, that too. Hard cheese. Olive oil if you’re there for a while.
There are usually plenty of occasions to eat new foods while on holiday. Your breakfasts don’t need to be anything special - stock up on a few things you’d usually get at home so you don’t have to think about what to have every morning.
Having fruit, veg, protein-rich foods within easy reach makes those foods more likely to end up on your plate. Repeat after me - we eat what we can reach.
Easy win: Prioritise the classics when at the supermarket and focus on whole, single ingredient foods when possible.
3. Prioritise your poo
Flying, dehydration, unfamiliar toilets, later meals and disrupted sleep can all slow things down. It’s one of the reasons holiday constipation is so common. And why we want to get our bodies in rhythm right off the bat because the sooner you settle into one the more carefree the rest of the holiday tends to feel.
Your gut loves routine. Water then breakfast then maybe a stretch, skip, walk. Even sitting on the toilet around the same time each day gives your digestive system familiar cues to work with. Travelling obvioulsy scrambles those cues, so your job is simply to give a few of them back.
One way to do this is to heed the call of nature. It might come at a weird time - especially if we’re changing time zones - but don’t fight it. The urge to go is partly driven by something called the gastrocolic reflex: eating, particularly breakfast, tells the digestive system that more food is on its way, which encourages the colon to contract and move things along.
Easy win: If constipation is something you’re prone to, buy kiwis and eat two with breakfast each morning. Start the day with a large glass of water, have breakfast before your coffee if you can, take a short walk afterwards and don’t ignore the first urge to go. The urge often fades but it doesn’t always come back when you’d like it to.
4. Follow the produce
Okay this is why I mentioned not to go overboard at the supermarket because if you can, it’s worth going to smaller shops and farmers market stalls to se what’s in season.
I almost never look up “the best fruit in...” somewhere. I just look at what everyone else seems to be buying. It’s also an easy way to eat more plant diversity without thinking about it. Holiday fruit bowls rarely look the same as the ones sitting on our kitchen counters back home.
Easy win: Buy whatever looks incredible where you are. Tomatoes in Italy. Cherries in France. Mangoes in the Philippines. You get the idea. Skip the imported berries for a week if the market is overflowing with figs, artichokes, runner beans, or apricots.
5. Pack herbal tea
It’s so easy to sneak a few herbal teas in the suitcase and can make a world of difference in unfamiliar places and to improve your wind down routine. Plus travel often means richer meals, later dinners and different eating patterns and a warm cup of tea can help our bellies feel calmer. My holiday tea drawer is usually a combo of the following:
Peppermint is lovely after dinner if you’re feeling full or bloated. A note - skip this if you’re someone that struggles with reflux.
Camomile is a bedtime favourite to help support relaxation and sleep quality.
Ginger is brilliant after a richer meal and is traditionally used to help ease nausea.
Lemon balm is what I reach for if my brain can’t seem to switch off.
Hibiscus is sharp and refreshing, delicious iced in hot weather and packed with polyphenols.
Fennel - a classic! Great to support digestion after meals.
Easy win: Slip a few tea bags into your suitcase. They weigh almost nothing and instantly make an unfamiliar kitchen feel more familiar.
6. Clear out the mini fridge
It’s less about avoiding what’s in there and more about making space for the things that help us feel good while we’re away. Having said that, I have been known to suggest calling ahead and asking hotels to empty the mini fridge before clients arrive if they’re working on changing habits around late-night snacking or alcohol.
Fill the mini fridge with whatever you picked up on that first supermarket trip. Put the peaches front and centre and the miniature spirits can happily live somewhere else for a few days. Choice architecture for the heads.
Easy win: Wash your fruit and carrots when you get back to the room. It takes two minutes and makes it much more likely you’ll reach for them later.
7. Don’t save your appetite
One of the most common holiday mistakes I see is people arriving at dinner absolutely famished. You’ve had a tiny breakfast, skipped lunch because there was a beach to be on, and suddenly the cocktails arrive, followed swiftly by the bread basket.
Holiday dinners are much more enjoyable when youre pleasantly hungry rather than running on fumes. You’ll probably eat more slowly, make choices you actually fancy instead of whatever you see first, and leave feeling comfortably full. When we become very hungry we also tend to eat faster, and it can take a little while for fullness signals to catch up.
Easy win: That protein-rich breakfast we talked about earlier does a lot of the heavy lifting here. If dinner isn’t until 9pm, have a small snack before you head to your meal. A piece of fruit with some nuts, some olives, is often enough to take the edge off. Crunch on some veg - any that you like works for me. Then when you sit down, order exactly what you want because you’re choosing with your appetite, not battling with it.
Think of these as nudges rather than rules. Borrow one or borrow all seven, Im just happy to help.
Wishing you long lunches, cold swims and all the fruit your bowl can handle. Bon voyage!
Loved this! And all useful reminders for routines at home too.
Brilliant advice! We so missed yoghurt on our recent holiday in France.