Airplanes certainly have made life easier by bringing the world closer but taking frequent flights for work or even recreation can be a hazardous prospect for your health. Apart from the usual jet lag, your body is subjected to extreme stress when faced with consistent travelling involving frequent flying at odd hours. And if you are one of those people who don’t like to watch their macros and their food intake, well, you might be doing some serious damage to your body by gorging on that airport and airplane food.
To ensure that you stay in your best form even with frequent travelling, we have brought you some advice around healthy eating before and during your flight. Here goes
Eat Before Your Flight
Quite a simple way to deal with unhealthy eating is to eat before your flight. How this will help you is that one, you will have more healthy eating options at your home or at the airport than in the flight and secondly, you will be able to get some movement before sitting in an airplane for hours at a stretch, a primary reason for weight gain associated with frequent flying.
Take High Carbohydrate Meals Before and During Your Flight
Increased insulin secretion, other than putting you in a better mood, is known to give quite a fight to jet lag. For elevated levels of insulin, eating carbohydrates before and during your flight is an excellent remedy. But it doesn’t mean that we are asking you to gorge on unhealthy food items such as pizzas and burgers, we are instead asking you to focus on healthy carb-heavy options such as whole grain bread, oatmeal, sweet potatoes and cereals.
Cook Your Own Snack and Take It with You
So you’ve eaten before your flight, and walked a few steps at the airport but the hunger pangs strike on the plane. What do you do now? Do you eat the food being served on the plane which defeats the purpose of having that meal before the flight? No, you don’t. This is when that snack, preferably light, you’ve packed from comes handy. You can satiate your food craving while not feeling guilty about eating bad food.
Pre-order Your Meals
Thank goodness that it is the 21st century, and the air carriers are coming up with more than one ways to take care of their passengers’ needs including vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free eating options. A boon for frequent flyers is the pre-ordering option which gives you the flexibility of deciding what you are going to eat on the flight. Doing so, you can not only eat healthy on the flight but also plan your pre-flight meals in a better way.
Drink Plenty of Water
We cannot stress enough on the importance of drinking plenty of water and staying hydrated before and during your flight. Frequent flying often leads one dehydrated and add to it heavy consumption of caffeine and you have a recipe for ill health. Always keep a water bottle handy, and think of ways to incorporate liquids in your meals even when flying.
