When you are at home, eating according to the keto diet is much easier. You can buy the groceries you need and make low carb meals. However, traveling on keto can present more of a challenge. After all, despite its popularity, keto is not a mainstream diet and, subsequently, keto-friendly meals are not commonplace. 

So how do you travel on keto? Is it even possible to maintain ketosis when you aren’t cooking your own meals?

 

Here are seven tips for successfully combining keto with travel:

 

1. Pack some keto-friendly snacks 

Snacks can be helpful on keto. A tasty snack will hold you over until it's time to eat your next meal, defusing hunger in the process. 

Unfortunately, most popular and readily available snacks are loaded with carbs. Cookies, chips, snack cakes, candy – those carbs are hard to avoid. That’s especially true when you need to buy something to eat at a coffee shop, airport, convenience store, gas station, or vending machine. 

Avoid this problem by packing some keto-friendly snacks and taking them with you on your trip. Good choices include: 

• Nuts 
• Jerky 
• Keto fat bombs 
• Hard-boiled eggs 
• Veggie sticks with peanut butter 
• Tuna pouches 
• Keto-friendly meal replacement shakes 

 

2. Scope out the local restaurants online 

Once you know where you’ll be traveling, go online and check out the nearby restaurants. While you probably won’t find a keto-specific eatery, you should be able to view their menus so you can find the one that has the best low-carb options. 

3. Buffets are a keto dieter’s best friend! 

If you are stuck for somewhere keto-friendly to eat, look for an all you can eat buffet restaurant. Because you can serve yourself, you should have no problem constructing keto meals from what’s available. Use a nutrition app to check the carb content of any unusual foods. However, when in doubt, meat, fish, and veggies should be your keto diet cornerstones. 

4. Avoid your carb triggers 

Traveling means exposure and access to foods that you can’t eat on keto. Eating out means you’ll be offered things like breadsticks, and meals are usually accompanied by things like rice or potatoes. Some keto dieters find all this temptation hard to resist!

Avoid triggers and temptation by steering clear of these problems in the first place. As you take your seat, tell your server that you don't want the complimentary bread basket and then, when you order, ask for extra veggies instead of the usual potatoes or rice. 

While you might be able to use your willpower to resist these forbidden foods, you can save yourself a lot of stress by skipping them altogether. 

5. Drink keto coffee to hold off hunger and boost ketones 

Keto coffee is coffee mixed with medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil. Coffee is readily available so all you need to do is make sure you take some MCT oil or MCT powder with you so you can whip up a keto meal in a cup anytime you can’t find low-carb food to eat. MCT powder is better than oil when you are flying as it’s not restricted in the same way that liquids are. 

To make keto coffee, just buy a 10 to 16-ounce black coffee and add 1-2 tablespoons of MCT oil or powder. Simple! As an added benefit, MCT oil is quickly converted into ketones which will help boost your energy levels and deepen ketosis. 

6. Try intermittent fasting 

Can't find anything keto-friendly to eat? Then skip a meal and don't eat at all! This might sound drastic but intermittent fasting helps deepen ketosis and has many other benefits.