The Best Healthy Trucker Travel Lunch Recipe

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Are you in need of better travel lunch ideas? Here’s our best healthy trucker travel lunch recipe.

Because I know you know you need to make healthy changes. You know you have to head out on the road. And you know you need to eat. But yet how do you make changes? Where do you start? What do you make? What do you eat?

It’s all so confusing at times I know. The moment I want to change something in my own life my old self would get instantly overwhelmed and see a mountain. All I would notice are obstacles, and talk myself out of the simple solutions right in front of me because I was programmed to only see the struggle.

And when it comes to food, health, and changes I know many can relate.

I like to approach anything one step at a time. One box checked on my checklist at a time. For some, it works to just bulldoze down their old life, habits, and choices and replace them with new ones. However, I caution you to this only because without the necessary insight as to why you ended up there in the first place you could find yourself faced with more unnecessary struggle.

O.K. now let’s talk healthy trucker food.

As a truck driver, I get it, you are on the road, limited resources, limited time, and plenty of unhealthy food options. In a recent conversation with TA-Petro, they shared with me that their StayFit meals are of the lowest bought food items in their stores.

So that means one of two things: one, you aren’t buying them because you don’t like them; two, you aren’t buying them because you are cooking on your truck.

And quite possibly there is a third, fourth and tenth reason, but that is not the point. The point is. We need to change that. And since truck stops aren’t going to be changing anytime soon. That means you need to make the change. And that means you have to supply yourself with healthy, fueling, delicious food options so you don’t walk into the truck stops hungry and hangry.

Quinoa is a Great Healthy Trucker Food

Quinoa is one of my FAVORITE healthy food options. It tastes good, it’s super easy to make, it’s filling, and fueling because it’s packed with nutrients.

But don’t take my word for it. The Medical News Today posted an article talking about the health benefits and nutritional components of quinoa and it is amazing!

They stated that:

“Quinoa is naturally gluten-free. One cup of cooked quinoa, weighing 185 grams (g), contains:

  • 222 calories
  • 8.14 g of protein
  • 5.2 g of fiber
  • 3.55 g of fat, of which 0.42 g is saturated
  • 39.4 g of carbohydrate
  • Magnesium – 30 percent recommended daily allowance (RDA)
  • Manganese – 30 percent RDA
  • Folate – 19 percent RDA
  • Phosphorous – 28 percent RDA
  • Copper – 18 percent RDA
  • Iron – 15 percent RDA
  • Zinc – 13 percent RDA
  • Potassium – 9 percent RDA
  • One cup also contains more than 10 percent of the RDA of the vitamins B-1, B-2, and B-6, and traces of vitamin E, B3, and calcium.
  • Additionally, quinoa contains a healthy dose of fatty acids”

And that is just it! You need fuel. REAL fuel to supercharge that temple of a body of yours. And sugary snacks, energy drinks, and potato wedges just aren’t going to cut it.

So to help make your life a little bit easier here is a SUPER EASY and QUICK recipe you can make at home and travel with while out on the road!

Healthy Meal Prep Ideas

Pair the quinoa with grilled chicken breast, or lean turkey, or even salmon and you are on your way to a delicious meal.

Healthy Trucker Food Lunch Quinoa Recipe Mother Trucker Yoga

Cool Quinoa Salad Recipe for a Great Travel Lunch:

This is a simple recipe great for healthy trucker food on the go.

  • 1-2 cups leftover or cooked quinoa
  • corn
  • peas
  • chopped broccoli (steamed lightly if desired)
  • tea seed oil or extra virgin olive oil
  • fresh, diced garlic
  • salt (to taste)
  • black pepper (to taste)
  • non-fortified nutritional yeast (if desired, I love this it’s like a cheese topping)
  • optional: shredded carrots, chopped peppers, greens, or fresh fruit or onions, cumin, turmeric

Mix all ingredients together and pre-pack serving size containers for travel lunch success.

Healthy Trucker Food is Easy

That’s it!

Super easy and super simple healthy truckers lunch for on-the-go healthy eating!

And remember, anything new can be scary, hard, and confusing. But Mother Trucker Yoga has your back (literally). Take it one day, one meal at a time and before you know it you will be ready to go with the right fuel and right focus because you are what you eat. Or better yet, you are what you digest.

For more recipes like this checkout Karen Urbanek’s Rawality Recipe Book

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The Best Granola Recipe: Truckers Travel Breakfast

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Grab me some granola! It can be challenging to find health snacks, let alone a health breakfast. Well have no fear. My good friend Karen Urbanek who just so happens to have written an entire cookbook on health eating with a focus on raw, fresh, and delicious.

Now don’t go running. No one expects you to become a vegan and hug trees. But her knowledge about how the body works and what foods fuel you and what foods don’t it insane! Like totally insane!

And when she says she’s cooking, the entire town (no joke) comes running.

But you don’t have time to run over to her house in Utah I’m pretty sure and I wish I did, but I don’t either. I thought a good second place would be sharing her recipe for ZuZu’s Apple Cinnamon Seedy Granola.

I have to say, having tried this before, it is delicious! And SUPER easy to make yourself. And is perfect for travel.

But don’t take my word for it, try it yourself.

Mother Trucker Yoga Granola Recipe

ZuZu’s Apple Cinnamon Seedy Granola:

  • 1/2 cup pure cane sugar or coconut sugar
  • 1/2 cup honey or agave
  • 9 cups organic gluten free oats
  • 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1/4 cup flax seeds
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  • 3/4 cup dried apple
  • 3/4 tablespoon cinnamon
  1. Heat sugar and honey/agave until dissolved.
  2. Mix all ingredients together.
  3. Bake in roaster pan at 180 degrees for 2 hours stirring every 15 minutes.

And that is it!

Not only are these ingredients every grocery store has. But it is also super easy! And I love easy! And I love simple. Most importantly, I love good!

Chomp on this as a roadside snack.

Sprinkle this on yogurt (I love coconut yogurt) or grab a cup of fruit from the truck stop and mix it together.

Remember every little change you make adds up. And that is the truth!

But at Mother Trucker Yoga we understand that making any change can be challenging. So to make it easier consider keeping a food journal to help you track what you are eating. Because you can’t change what you don’t yet know exists.

Try out this easy recipe and let us know how you like it! And most importantly share out this recipe with fellow trucker or make some for them and share in the enjoyment of eating it together.

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5 Reason Truckers Need A Food & Fitness Journal

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When is the last time you saw someone advertising to a truck driver to keep a food journal?

Have you ever kept a food journal?

Have you ever tracked what you eat, when, and in what quantities?

 

You might be surprised to find that most Americans eat more than what their brain cares to remember.

Some of you may or may not know, but I found yoga as a means to step into recovery from a long battle with an eating disorder. One that I was told, best case scenario is I would “learn to function in the world on medication.”  But something in me said that would not be my future.

Having a food and fitness journal helped me establish a healthier relationship with food, fitness and myself. I used food to not have to deal or feel with anything in life. Maybe you can relate better to the word numb. I wanted to be numb.

But if you want to change anything, and I mean ANYTHING, you must first be aware of it. Aware of what it is you desire to change. And then be willing to step back from your excuses and loaded reasons as to why you are the way you are (be them true or not) and see things as they actually are.

I have worked with thousands of people over the last nearly 20 years and trucker or not, most of us have a skewed perception of what and how much we really eat and do over the course of a day.

Drinking that Diet Coke and Monster at 10 AM every day is so automatic that you most days forget you even do it. But when you don’t have it. Watch out world, things might get ugly.

And when it comes to moving more (some call it fitness or exercise), well we all know the response. I’m to BLANK. Or I do move a lot (except it’s only in small bursts one to two times a day straight off of sitting for several hours behind the wheel.

So what is the benefit of keeping a food and fitness journal?

Well, its really quite simple.

Eating is for fueling, not feeling.

When you track what you eat. How much you eat. Alongside how you are feeling or why you are eating what you are eating. It is important to point out that food does not fix how we feel-talking from experience. And many of us are eating out of boredom, loneliness, oral fixation, sadness and so on. And when we can see on a piece of paper right in front of us what is really going into our mouths only then can we start to do something about it. And when you tie in how you are feeling, well Dr. Phil we may have just found a very important piece to the puzzle.

It is easier to create a plan when you have data.

Trucker Food Journal

Have you ever tried to plan a route to get your load from point A to point B but it’s your first time running the load? So that initial time feels like a shot in the dark.

Hoping things go smoothly.

Hoping there are no delays.

Hoping you didn’t miss or forget something.

And because you have no real data to compare to, it’s shot in the dark. It’s only after you run the load that you gather data and then for future loads you can become more and more effective. Food and fitness are no different. Journaling (logging) what you eat and how much you move daily, as much of a pain in the ass as it may seem will only help you be more effective in the changes you desire to make. Those shots in the dark can easily become frustrating. And what if some of the changes you decided to implement weren’t even necessary? And could have been avoided having first collected data. AKA what you ate, and how much you moved in real time.

Fitness really can be at your finger tips. It really can be. It’s available to you each and every day. Except you and everyone else struggling with working out. Is just that, only looking at fitness as exercise. Hitting the gym, heading to a yoga studio or dying as you try to keep up with a P90X video that seems to have skipped absolute beginner mode. And if you are still wondering what yoga can do for you here are 60 benefits for truckers to read up on.

Fitness to me should be an equation incorporating your every day life movements.

Downward Dog Stretch while filling up with fuel + Core Marching while in the drivers seat waiting to unload + wrist stretches while driving + ANYTHING else you can throw in there = WAY more than you would be doing otherwise!

The little things can easily go unnoticed.

Three little packs of ketchup (sugar) here, sugar added to your coffee over there. Sweetened Ice-Tea at 2 PM, and on it goes. All those little things DO ADD UP! And all those little things are usually packed with sugar, preservatives, and you just don’t need it. Let me say that again. You just don’t need it. You want it, it’s a habit, extra ketchup, mayo, sugar, sweetener, and now your body craves it because it’s addicted to it.

But trust me when I say the world will keep turning when you opt out. But in order to opt out, you have to have a true sense of of much you are opting in on those condiments in the first place. So say hello to your food journal. How many ketchup packets, how many sugars, how large is the sweetened ice-tea and what are you feeling when you reach for them?

You might be doing better than you think.

When I talk to people about how much they are moving and what they are eating it is not uncommon to have a slightly slanted view of how good you really are doing. It’s easy to let the few not so great choices cloud our vision of success (talking from experience). Writing down everything can help you gain a better sense of where you truly are in your journey. Trust me when I say lying to yourself will not get you anywhere. And it is vital to celebrate the little wins, and acknowledge what you are doing right.

It is easy to want everything to change tomorrow and when it doesn’t we can easily get frustrated. But let’s be real for a moment and say where you are, and how you are did not happen over night. When I was going through the early stages of recovery I would have a slip up or bad day and think I just suck, and am doing everything wrong. But I had learned how to live this way over the course of 10 + years. So it was unrealistic to allow myself to think that I would be all good in a week, a month, even a year. And to be really honest, it’s been 15 years and and I am STILL working on things. Layer by layer.

Where to start.

Where to start? Seriously, where to start? Overwhelm can easily set in and before we know it we are complaining to our friends that this and that, and the other thing just aren’t working. Maybe it’s because you never really, truly laid out a plan. You never really figured out where to start because you never really stopped and took a week to figure out where you are.

This is a big mistake I see many people make. keeping a food and fitness journal can help you create a clear focus of where you truly are. But you have to be truthful and honest with what you write down, and don’t miss a thing. The will be a part of your brain that will say “this is dumb”, “just give up”, “you don’t need this”. My advice: “throw down some cuss words and do it anyway”. (that was my humor again). You got this. You really do.

So now what?

Well, you start to write it ALL DOWN! EVERYTHING. Don’t miss a thing!

For how long?

No less than three days, but ideally an entire week! And don’t forget to write down what you are feeling as well.

Here is a quick cliff notes sheet of everything to write down in your food and fitness journal:

  • Date
  • Time
  • Feeling/Emotion Connected
  • Are you truly hungry
  • What did you eat
  • How much did you eat
  • Movement: when, how long, how you feel

And most importantly, go easy on yourself. This is day one, step one on your journey to a healthier and happier you. And if anyone gives you grief. Just have them answer to me!

Here are a few suggestions for paper and pen food and fitness journals that could help get you started.

Not a paper and pen kinda person? Try texting to yourself your data. Look for an app. Whatever method you decide, commit and be honest. Because tracking your food and fitness in a journal is step one. And if you can do this, you and I, my friend, can do anything!

 

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Meals on Wheels: Truckers Best Breakfast

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I think you and I both know that stopping at a truck stop on any given day, you won’t always find the best breakfast. You might not ever find the best breakfast.

This is a struggle many truckers feel on a daily basis. Yet most are almost forced to choose what their overnight accommodations have to offer. And we aren’t talking the Super 8.

High sugar, high fat, high carb options fill the aisles and hot cases, alongside the attached quick grab-and-go restaurant. Although these options are a quick grab, the quick surprise is the pounds, blood sugar levels and crashes that go with these unhealthy food options.

Now don’t get me wrong, a sweet treat once in a while won’t kill anyone. But when this is your wake-up-and-go breakfast every single morning, you may find yourself in a situation that far surpasses an I-80 traffic jam.

So what’s a mother truckin’ roadmaster to do for breakfast?

Well on my latest show: A Daily Dose of Hope on Chrome and Steel Radio, I had Naturopathic Doctor Jeff Essen of Whole Life Clinic on. We discussed diabetes, the struggle of eating healthy while on the road, and what drivers could do to make a shift in the right direction. It all starts with breakfast.

His suggestion was simple, yet powerful – change what you eat for breakfast.

And what should you, the driver eat for breakfast?

The Italian Flag

I had never heard this methodology in all my years learning about the body, wellness, and my own food journey. Eating the Italian Flag for breakfast was a new approach to breakfast on the go.

He laid it out simply: Breakfast can be simple and easy, and yes, even done up while on the road in an eighteen-wheeler.

Italian Flag Truckers’ Breakfast Shake:

  1.  WHITE – Pea Protein (1 scoop)
  2.  GREEN – Powdered Greens (1 scoop)
  3.  RED – Powdered Reds (1 scoop)
  4.  Mix with Water
  5.  Optional – Ice

Truckers Breakfast: Italian Flag Smoothie

 

The key is to not overthink what you should eat. And if you can simplify things, what’s not to love?

But WHY eat the Italian flag?

Well, as Dr. Essen put it, giving your body a great kick start to the day is essential. Get a good source of protein (he suggests pea protein, but if you decided otherwise, know its source). Many people simply do not get enough greens in their diet, which aid in digestion and boost energy levels. The reds serve as a boost for your antioxidant levels. Unless you have superpowers to fight disease and boost your immune system, reds are essential.

I know changing your breakfast might feel overwhelming. Before you make any change it can be helpful to know where you are starting from. Keeping a food journal can be helpful to figure all of that out. Check out 5 Reasons Truckers Need to Keep a Food and Fitness Journal to help.

And when you are ready to make a change, the only thing you have to lose is the weight, stress, and disease your body is currently feeling. Plus, with a simple shaker bottle, you can travel with everything you need for a great meal on the go.

Here’s to a great breakfast on the go.

 

 

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