How To Make Sure You're Eating Right On The Road

This post has been written with the Life According to Steph audience in mind by Maggie Hammond, proud mama to two little people, and has one too many furry friends. Passionate about alternative medicine, education, the great outdoors and animal welfare.

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Is your band planning to go on tour next year? Are you worried about how you’ll handle diet and exercise while you’re traveling? 

This can be a really important but difficult part of a musician’s life – getting your nutrition right as you’re traveling and ensuring you don’t slip into bad habits.

Good Food Makes Good Musicians

Believe it or not, diet and exercise have a really big impact on your abilities to play and do the things you love. This seems to be particularly prevalent for female musicians who have a lot of image-conscious issues to contend with. 

Poor eating habits, not eating enough, or eating the wrong thing, can quickly lead to a downward spiral and may end up in you requiring treatment for anorexia or another eating disorder, like bulimia. Skipping meals can be seen as acceptable in a fast-paced timetable and become the norm rather than something to be avoided. 

It's not just skipping meals that is an issue either, with many hours on tour buses traveling from city to city and touching down in countries across the world, convenience food can become a crutch, as can comfort food that is high in fats and sugar. A properly cooked meal looks a lot less appealing than a candy bar or an order from a fast food place when you haven’t slept properly for the last three days and don’t want to cook.

Make Healthy Grababble

Changing your diet actually has less to do with changing the actual food in your diet and more to do with your attitude towards food.

You need to be honest with yourself about your commitment to good health and only put as much pressure on yourself as you can handle. If you know you’re not likely to be able to cook a healthy meal (or maybe you won’t have the energy to) why not keep some healthy snacks within a reachable distance? Or bulk cook meals those times you do have the time and energy. 

Sometimes, it’s not possible to change our habits, but changing the availability of bad habits is easy. Many of us eat for comfort, and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that as long as it’s within a healthy limit. 

A candy bar every now and again is fine, but if that’s all you’re eating, then you may have an issue that would be best discussed with a professional.

Get Real About Drinking

Drinking on the road can be a serious problem and we’re not just talking about alcohol. Abuse of alcohol and other substances is always going to be a problem in the music industry, a combination of convenience and temptation is never a good mix.

While alcohol is an issue, another type of drink that gets overlooked is plain water. Hydration is vitally important, especially for touring musicians who are on stage every night.

Standing under hot stage lights, with adrenalin pumping, maybe even some dancing going on, it’s easy to forget to drink and stay well hydrated. 

Before going on stage, take on enough water to keep you going through the first set, but keep fresh bottled water on stage with you too and make it a habit to drink regularly.