Traveling on Keto: What Not to Do

Traveling on Keto can be challenging but not as hard as one might think. With a little planning and preparation there is no need to change the keto lifestyle you’re use to. In the next few weeks I’ll be sharing with you how to plan and prepare for your next great adventure without compromising on the Keto lifestyle.

Introduction: Sometimes we fail

Let me start by sharing my story of personal failure and hence, the main reason I’m doing this series on how to travel on keto.

To begin with, I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that at some point on your keto journey, you’ll miss the mark and fall short of all your good intentions. I know I did.

Fortunately when we get off track, it doesn’t mean we’re failures, or we can’t reset again. It only means we’re human.

After our failure, the best thing we can do is take a deep breath, pick ourselves up, and begin again. Repeat as many times as necessary.

My Traveling on Keto Story

So here’s what started my big failure. I got a call from my sister about a fabulous deal on a 28 day cruise. Even though I knew being stuck on a ship for 28 days would make it hard doing keto, it was too good a deal to pass up.

So, Tim and I decided to go for it and we signed up. The only real issue I could foresee, was traveling on Keto, but I figured I could handle it since my body was humming along in fat burning mode. I had several months to plan before the big trip of a lifetime and why would I want to go backwards anyway.

Skip ahead to a few months later, when I had an unfortunate incident. It happened quite innocently while Tim and I were eating out with a few friends. I ordered the same salad I usually did, but for some reason they changed the dressing and I wasn’t aware of it. The dressing was loaded with hidden sugar and I had an immediate and violent reaction. I spent a good portion of that outing in the bathroom. Not a fun time.

Because of this occurrence, I started worrying about what would happen on the cruise if the same situation occurred and thus, it began my downward slide back into the land of eating carbs that definitely weren’t good for me.

The worry of a reaction to carbs caused me to rethink doing keto while traveling. So, I made the deliberate choice to start introducing carbs back into my diet about a month before our cruise departure. I don’t think it was a horrible idea to prepare my body for carbs. The problem was, I’m a carboholic. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. In hindsight, this was a BIG Mistake for me.

The Effects of My Big Mistake

It was apparent fairly quickly for me that I was headed in a bad direction. The ever increasing amount of carbs I was eating caused a major cascade of effects. While I had good intentions of starting the introduction slowly, it didn’t happen that way. I found that once I had that first potato, I wanted another and then another. The lack of carb cravings I had while doing keto came roaring back and I was hungry all the time.

In addition, my fibromyalgia symptoms started to flare up. I ached constantly. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, working from square one again. I realized I had a choice to make. I could continue eating carbs until the cruise was over and watch my health deteriorate or I could figure out the best way to travel on vacation and maintain the keto lifestyle. And so, I chose the latter.

How to Travel on Keto

Out of this, my travel series was born. In the coming 4 weeks I’ll share with you what I have learned. I hope to encourage you and help you to see that travel is possible while maintaining a keto lifestyle. You don’t need to put your health and well being on hold while you travel. All it takes is a little planning and preparation and you can be successful.

Coming up:

Part One: Airplane travel on Keto