As busy as life can feel for most of us, all too often, convenience rules the day! What I mean here is that it’s too common to have the best of intentions to eat healthy and make other healthful changes.

Though following through and making healthy food choices is often a different story. Sometimes, this just doesn’t happen as we intend for it to.

Healthful eating on-the-run can be quite difficult. So let’s discuss how to stay on track with your dietary or health goals in busy, off the norm times.

Fail to plan, then you plan to fail

This old saying may be true for many things in life. Though there’s a lot of truth to this adage when it comes to eating healthy.

Without knowing what meals you’ll eat later today and tomorrow, how likely are you to make healthy choices at most of your mealtimes? This stresses the importance of taking the time to either think about, plan for, and/or prepare meals in advance.

For some, this means writing down in advance what they’ll eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, each day next week. I started practicing this myself a few years ago. To my surprise, I was delighted how much time, stress, and money it ended up saving me!

I don’t keep this up every single week. But I just want you to know how helpful it can be in practice. See an example of my week’s meal plan below.

Note, I live alone and sometimes with my busy schedule this means, I eat relatively healthy takeout meals and/or “processed foods”, for convenience’s sake, more often than I’d like. The more important thing is more of the nutrient-dense food staples, first and foremost.

On-the-road or off-the-norm? Take time to plan!

While on the road for travel or work, it can be quite difficult to maintain a regular intake of healthy foods. I try to work some flexibility into my meal plans. Notice how some of the mealtimes above say “out at _________ “. This is for days when I know I’ll be really busy and need something more flexible.

Proper planning can also include looking for food options in advance in the destination you are headed. This can also entail bringing a small cooler to have more options of which meals or balanced snack foods you can bring with for the day, without needing to waste as much. 

Some of my clients work as truckers and have limited food options in their long work days, on the road. If you spend a lot of time on the road – whether for work or travel – balanced snacks go a long way for preventing an ugly episode of feeling hangry!

Make sure to carry food staples that provide protein and fiber (paired with complex carbohydrates). This is key to promoting longer, more stable raises in blood sugar levels after mealtimes. This also helps to keep appetite and energy levels more stable throughout the day. Hence, it may also help promote more stable mood levels.

But sometimes you don’t bring enough food and need to grab meals on the run, with limited healthy options.

In these busy times, at least try and make wiser choices:

• Choose places that offer whole grains instead of just white breads and other refined grains
• Select restaurants or stores with options to fill up on larger portions of vegetables
• Choose more lean proteins and salads when given the option

If meal is indulgent and unbalanced, make sure next meal is balanced and nutrient-dense

When I travel, my usual diet habits are thrown out the window! I’m not saying I forget about all my usual principles of eating healthy and balanced.

But I do break from the usual diet from time to time. For every meal that I eat that is more indulgent and unbalanced while traveling, I try and make sure the next meal is balanced and more packed with important nutrients.

How does this all play into mental health?

Well, occasionally I’ll post on more general healthful nutrition or other general wellness topics. This was a lesson I learned when I first set out to write the outline for Foods for Thought.

When I started to research and write about nutrition for mental health, I realized I can’t only talk about nutrition for mental health.

I also needed to discuss the importance of self-care, sleep, stress management, and other general wellness topics. If we just focus on an optimal diet for mental well-being without regard to these other matters, that are also so critically important, then perhaps not much progress for mental well-being will be achieved.

In other words, I’m here to talk about holistic health. This model of care takes into consideration the interconnectedness of physical, mental, social and even spiritual health.

So I’ll try and keep each post somehow related to nutrition and mental health, but sometimes those connections may seem a little vague or unclear. And that’s okay. I welcome conversation on here.

Top 5 recommendations for busy, on-the-run weeks:

• Plan and bring food staples – includes good source of protein and high-fiber carbohydrate
• Make at least one meal include half plate filled with non-starchy vegetables – helps meet a lot of your micro-nutrition needs missed at other meals
• Limit intake of added sugars and refined grains, and choose more whole grains and complex carbs instead
• Snack on nuts & seeds – nutrient-dense and energy-dense staples that will provide quick & easy nutrition
• Bring plenty of water – preventing dehydration can also help control appetite and avoid unintended trips through the fast-food drive through

Thanks for stopping by today!