Hotels and Low Carb Breakfasts

Eat More Fiber, Less Sugar when Traveling

Mar 11, 2006 Dan Florio

You probably enjoy the free breakfasts offered by most hotels when traveling. If you eat on the low carb diet, those sugar and starch-laden buffets are frustrating.

Most free hotel breakfasts offer some high carb combination of breakfast cereal, oatmeal packets, danishes, frozen waffles, bagels, cream cheese, butter, toast, fruits and hard-boiled eggs. Free beverages usually include milk, coffee, teas and juices. Often the coffee is quite good, like a Seattle's Best or Peets brand, even.

While this provides a decent start to my day, my wife can't eat any of that AND stay on the low carb (also called lo-carb) regime. Hard-boiled eggs are fine for low carb dieting, but of course she doesn't like hard boiled eggs - only eggs that are scrambled or in an omelette.

When we travel on business together, she will have coffee, a glass of milk and a banana with orange juice. While the fruit and juice have carbs, they are at least of the healthy, fresh food variety; those are a better choice for the low carber than succumbing to sugary danishes and high-starch bagels.

Here's a good low carbohydrate tip we've developed: we have started traveling with a bag of our own low carb bread. My wife can bring in her own slices to the breakfast area, toast them, and add butter or cream cheese all she likes.

Low carb tortillas are another option she uses, since those are easy to find in supermarkets and travel better than loaves of bread. She puts butter or cream cheese on the low carb torts, then microwaves them to it gets all melty, like a breakfast quesadilla. It's really good with cream cheese and a few sprinkles of Tabasco Sauce - even I like that!

If you like hard-boiled eggs, you are usually in luck with the free breakfasts. But even those are not always available - so consider yourself warned. :-)

Basically, if you are low carbing while on the road, I've noticed it helps to have a plan of attack already in place. Take a look at what you can easily find, pack, or travel with, and incorporate your own ingredients with the free food you receive as part of your hotel stay.

Read the traveler's diet discussion: Join this thread to share tips on hotel foods and low-carb, low-fat, vegetarian and even high-sugar (!) menus.

Related, on Suite101:

• Hotels and Low Fat Diets - Low carb people are often on low fat diets as well...
• The Best Sushi in the Country - Sushi is naturally low carb.
• Healthy Kid's Travel Snacks - These healthy snacks work for adults as well.
• Bodybuilder topic - A History of Atkins and Low Carb Diets - Where did Atkins develop?
• Eating on the Grooming Job - A Review of the Low Carb Lifestyle - How a busy job can ruin your health...and how to get it back!

The copyright of the article Hotels and Low Carb Breakfasts in Business Travel is owned by Dan Florio. Permission to republish Hotels and Low Carb Breakfasts in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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