How to Eat Well When You Travel a Lot – Tips from a Whole-Food Plant-Based Commercial Airline Pilot

There’s a wheelchair sitting in my yard.

It’s stored in a protected area where rain can’t get to it, along with other random stuff belonging to our landlord; buckets, pipes, scrap wood, old hoses – a stash that I consider boring, but one that a handy person might be hot and bothered by.

From my desk (which is coincidentally also our dining room table), I’ve had a perfect view of the wheelchair since we moved into this house a little over a month ago.

At first, it bothered me because wheelchairs are associated with old age. And old age leads to death. And the fact that this party comes to an end is something that I can’t comprehend. So every time I looked up from my desk, I was slapped in the face with a wave of death panic.

It was obvious that my next move was to wheel the wheelchair to the side of my house where it was out of view. So that was the plan. But my plan was continuously foiled, because every time I walked up to the wheelchair and gripped my hands around the rubber handles, something stopped me.

It felt wrong.

• It felt like I was laying a brand new rug over a steaming pile of dog shit.
• It felt like I was reaching for a bottle of booze after bad news.
• It felt like I was hanging a tapestry over a dirty cupboard.

Temporary solutions are tempting, but dealing with the core issue is a better idea (something that our medical system can learn from). Fuck tempting. I needed to scoop up the poop, process the bad news, and clean the fucking cupboard, not wuss out with temporary, patchwork fixes.

So the wheelchair stayed.

And although there’s no getting to the core issue of death, I came to the conclusion that it’s time I open myself up and at least extend an invitation to the acceptance of death. And looking at the wheelchair in my yard every day is helping me to do that.

Now instead of death panic when I look at it, it’s more of a quiet sadness. I’ll take quiet sadness over death panic. And eventually I’ll be able to move the wheelchair without feeling like I’m avoiding something that I know in my heart that I must face.

Here’s the thing.

The stuff that scares us and makes us uncomfortable is the stuff that we need to stare in the face and run towards, not away from.

That’s the stuff that we need to pour light and love on, not cover up and pretend isn’t there.

Because when we face the hard stuff, the stuff that scares us, the stuff that isn’t easy, the stuff that we keep putting off and tucking away for later – when we face that stuff, it no longer has power over us.

And when we take back our power, we un-cuff ourselves from the self inflicted chains that keep us from being truly free and happy. And this party comes to an end, so don’t waste another day – take back your power and free yourself.

If you need to take your power back with food and reexamine how, what and why you eat, I encourage you to look at your diet head on.

Don’t look away. Don’t run. Be honest. Be open. And instead of making excuses as to why you can’t, declare to the universe with your strongest, most steady voice, why you can.

And then watch this video below. Because if Terra McGraw can make eating a Whole-Food Plant-Based diet work, then trust me, so can you. This will be especially useful if you travel a lot, like she does.

Did I tell you!? You got this – and I’m right here with you.

Learn more about our plant-based meal plans, bounce over here and then make the tastiest Oil-Free Coconut Vanilla Granola out there. Eat it as cereal or add it to salads and/or soups for a crunchy topping.

Wishing you a happy week. May it be filled with facing the shit that makes you uncomfortable, and figuring out how you can instead of telling yourself why you can’t. Even if that means looking at a wheelchair every day or batch cooking in three different cities each week.