Airport, Service Station, Petrol Stop — Eating Like an Adult

The drive to the airport is where a good week of eating falls apart. You're up at four, you didn't pack anything, and by the time you've parked at Luton you're running on a petrol-station coffee and whatever was by the till. By mid-morning you're so hungry that the first warm thing you smell wins, and you board having eaten a pasty, a flapjack and a bag of something you don't remember opening. This isn’t a willopower issue, it’s a lack of planning..

Here's the thing worth knowing about those days. The damage isn't the single bad meal — one is nothing across a year. It's that hunger compounds. Skip breakfast, eat nothing nutritious by noon, and by the afternoon your body is demanding the fastest sugar it can find, and no amount of good intention beats that signal once it's loud. The whole game is to never get that hungry in the first place. Stay ahead of it and don’t leave yourself the opportunity to make bad choices.

So the fix is protein, early and portable. Most travel food you can find is beige, fast, forgettable. You beat it by carrying something with protein and a bit of substance. A bag of nuts, a couple of boiled eggs, a protein bar you've checked the label on, a pot of Greek yoghurt grabbed at the M\&S after security. At the service station, the same rule scans any shelf in ten seconds: find the protein first — a chicken pot, biltong, a meal deal built around the sandwich with the most filling and the least bread — then add fruit, then stop. It's the plate method in travel mode: protein first, something fresh alongside, the beige stuff last and smallest.

No-one needs to be the person with Tupperware on the plane. It's about not arriving at the villa wrecked, bloated and vowing to "start again Monday."

You don't need a travel diet. You need to not be starving at the one moment you've no good options. Pack the protein, eat before you're desperate, and let the rest of the holiday be as relaxed as it should be.

If you'd like eating built around your real life — travel days, holidays and all — our Nutrition and LIfestyle Programme, with Dr Amy George, GP, covers food, habits and the long game in a supported, no-pressure way. Book a free, no-obligation 15-minute chat with Jeremy or Beth at crossfitchiltern.com.