Stop Leaving Your Good Habits at the Departure Gate! A Busy Woman's Fierce Guide To Surviving Airport Travels
How to Eat Well and Survive The Airports (Without Relying on The Willpower You Don't Have)
You run a business, a household, a team — possibly all three simultaneously, so you are not someone who lacks discipline.
And yet there you are at Departures, 6am, queuing for a Starbucks pastry you didn't plan to eat, wondering how it happened again.
It happened because airports are not a neutral environment.
They are a carefully engineered perfect storm of early mornings, mild stress, decision fatigue, and food that has been specifically designed to be impossible to walk past. The smell of coffee and sugar hits you before you've even found your gate.
The pastries are at eye level. The McDonald's is lit up like a beacon in the exact spot where your willpower is at its lowest ebb.
So you don’t give in to temptations because you are weak, it's just what happens when your biology meeting a very clever retail environment.
And that so called willpower — is a finite resource that depletes as the day goes on, starting from the moment your alarm went off in the dark — so it is simply not the right tool for the job!
We teach all our flames that what REALLY works instead are systems!
Something simple enough to follow when you're tired and slightly stressed and your normal routine is somewhere back at home. Here's mine.
Walk the Terminal First
This is the single most useful thing you can do, and almost nobody does it.
Before you sit down anywhere, before you order anything, walk as much of the terminal as you reasonably can and see what's actually available.
The first food option you pass is almost never the best one — it's just the first one, positioned there precisely because tired, hungry people will default to whatever is closest.
When you scout first, you give your brain the chance to make an actual choice rather than a default.
You also give yourself two or three minutes of movement, which — even at 6am — does something useful to your decision-making capacity.
You're not wandering aimlessly. You're gathering information. There's a BIG difference.
Get Protein In Early And Go Hunting For it
Before the coffee run, before the browse around WH Smith, before the "just something small to keep me going" — find your protein.
Twenty to thirty grams of protein eaten early will set your blood sugar on a stable track for the next four to five hours.
It switches off the urgent, scrabbling hunger that leads to eating things you didn't plan to eat. It keeps your energy level instead of spiked and crashing. And crucially, it makes every food decision you take for the rest of the journey significantly easier, because you're making them from a place of genuine fullness rather than biological desperation.
What does that actually look like at an airport? Greek yogurt from a grab-and-go fridge. Smoked salmon and eggs at a breakfast counter. A chicken salad with something substantial in it. A boiled egg (I bring my own) and some nuts if you're really short on time or options.
It doesn't need to be complicated or Instagram-worthy. It just needs to have enough protein in it to do its job!
Know Your Traps
I'm going to say something about Starbucks and McDonald's now that has nothing to do with judgment, because this isn't about judgment.
Both of these places are extraordinarily good at one specific thing: making you feel, in the moment, like what they're selling is exactly what you need.
The smell of coffee and warm pastry activates genuine comfort responses in your brain.
The golden arches represent fast, predictable, easy — and when you're tired and slightly overwhelmed and just want something to be simple, that is a powerful offer.
The thing is, it's comfort that only lasts about twenty minutes before the blood sugar spike starts to fall and you're tired and slightly foggy for the flight. Which is fine, as long as you know you're choosing that consciously rather than being nudged into it by biology and clever retail design.
If you find yourself being pulled towards one of these places on autopilot, try naming what's actually happening.
Not "I have no self-control" — that's not what's happening.
Something more like: "I'm tired and my brain wants comfort and convenience and I'm being sold both right now." That tiny bit of recognition creates just enough space to ask whether it's actually what you want, or just what's available.
Then, if you still want it — have it. Just choose it rather than slide into it mindlessly!
What to Actually Order, Anywhere
You don't need a different strategy for every airport food outlet.
You need one lens: what has the most protein, some fat, and the least refined sugar and processed carbs?
Apply that lens everywhere and the decision gets much simpler.
At a salad bar or deli, you're looking for chicken, eggs, tuna, or salmon with something green and a bit of olive oil. Skip the dressings that taste very sweet — they usually are.
At a sandwich counter, ask for double protein and either remove one slice of bread or ditch it entirely. Most places will do this without blinking if you ask directly and confidently. Failing that look for whole grain breads.
At a breakfast counter, search out eggs with smoked salmon or eggs with chicken - they are your best friends.
Skip the pastries and the sugary cereals, which will have you flagging before boarding is even called.
At a grab-and-go fridge, look for Greek yogurt, boiled egg pots, protein drinks, or plain nuts. These are your "no thinking required" options — they're not exciting, but they're reliable.
If you go for a meal deal look for high protein salad options, wholemeal pasta dishes, sushi or protein packed dishes. Choose a nutty snack or fruit and yoghurt as yoru dessert and stick with water to stay hydrated.
The one habit that makes reading the grab-and-go fridge much easier: flip the packet over and ignore the front entirely.
Marketing language on the front of food packaging is not your friend. The back tells you the actual story. You're looking for protein of 15 grams or more, an ingredient list you can mostly recognise, avoiding vegetable oils and seed oils, and an absence of "low fat" claims, which almost always mean the fat has been replaced with sugar.
Pack Something
Even with the best strategy in the world, there are airports where the options are genuinely limited, or the queue for the only decent place is longer than your connection window. This is when a small amount of preparation removes the stress entirely.
I always travel with protein powder tubs or sachets, boiled eggs, fruit like bananas, a small bag of nuts, some jerky or biltong, and a square or two of good dark chocolate. Travelling seems to make me hungry and as soon as I enter the airport I feel compelled to eat!
So having it means I never have to make a panic decision in a rush. It's the difference between choosing from a position of calm and grabbing whatever's nearest because you're running for a gate and your blood sugar is on the floor.
It takes about three to five minutes to put together before you leave. It is worth every one of those three minutes.
The Check-In Before You Choose
One last thing, and it's the simplest of all.
Before you buy anything in an airport, pause for about thirty seconds and ask yourself: am I actually hungry, or am I tired and stressed and bored and the food is just there?
Then drink some water. Walk for two minutes if you can. (get your steps up!) And then choose.
This single pause will stop the majority of unplanned eating. Not because it's magic, but because most of what we eat at airports isn't driven by hunger at all — it's driven by the particular emotional cocktail of early mornings, disrupted routine, and an environment that is extremely good at making food feel like the answer to everything.
You're not trying to be perfect here. You're just trying to be in charge of your own choices, which is a very different thing.
The airport doesn't have to be the place where your good habits go on holiday before you do.
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