Nutrition and Health on the Road

I know that the title might sound like an oxymoron for those of you who have gone on tour. And for those of you have not been on the road it is probably the last thing on your mind. But for any of you who have been sick on tour you realize how important maintaining nutrition is. This doesn’t mean that you have to cut out the partying. In fact I would never ask you to do that because that is a big part of being on the road. You just need to maintain your body so you don’t get sick or crash from exhaustion or malnutrition. This can be achieved through a couple of different means: diet, exercise, and vitamins.

Your diet is important to watch because it is the hardest to manage while you are on the road. Living in a van provides you with little culinary options. It makes it even harder that you only get $5 to $10 a day for food. If you are lucky the venues will provide you with dinner, which is usually pizza, but that is not always the case so you need to make your money stretch. Fast food is inevitable because you will be in a rush constantly, so I recommend trying to eat it no more than once every other day. Grocery Stores are the way to go in order to get the most out of your money. For the cost of two fast food meals you could get a week’s worth of sandwiches at the grocery store. If you don’t have a refrigeration system in your van (which is usually the case) buy in smaller quantities and allot enough time to go to a store about every three days, just to keep you stocked up on the perishables. Don’t forget your fruits and vegetables. They make good snacks during drive time and will help prevent you from getting sick.

The next step in staying healthy on the road is exercise. I know that exercise is the last thing on your mind for tour, but I am not talking about running a marathon. While touring you spend most of your life in a van confined to one area with little space to move. Exercise is needed to get the blood pumping as well as to sweat out some of the party lag that we all encounter. Since gyms are not readily available and most people hate going to them anyway, the best way to get exercise is through activities. When packing up your trailer before you leave home don’t forget to bring a basketball, soccer ball, or even a hacky sack; anything that you can play for fun in parking lots or parks. And trust me, after the monotony of the road it is good to shake it up with a game every once in a while.

The last step to being nutritional on the road is vitamins. As mentioned above, your food options are minimal due to lacking a kitchen. And no matter how hard some people try, life on the road just inhibits you from maintaining a balanced diet. This is where vitamins come in. Most people live by wonder pills or powders that keep them going strong the whole way, but I just live by the basics. The two pills that you should take on a daily basis to help deter sickness and to counter the lack of nutrition in food are one Multivitamin and two Vitamin C pills. The Multivitamin will help maintain the intake needed of vitamins and minerals that the food you are eating is not providing. The Vitamin C will boost the immune system helping prevent you from getting sick. The third and last pill that I live by, which is only needed if you start to feel sick, is Echinacea. Herbalists consider Echinacea one of the best blood purifiers and an effective antibiotic. This herb has been used to help ward off the common cold and to relieve the symptoms of hay fever. Your options for vitamins are limitless. Find out which ones work best for you. Even consult your doctor to see if he/she has any recommendations.

The bottom line is getting sick on the road sucks. It can ruin a tour for you by preventing you from experiencing life on the road, and instead forcing you to spend the tour asleep in the back of the van. By taking small steps and making a conscious effort you should be able to maintain your health and rock every town you go to.