Every summer and again around the holidays, the same question arrives in some version: I am going away for a week, what do I do. The worry underneath it is rarely about food. It is that the whole arrangement feels fragile, that the routine holding everything together only works at home, and that a week away will quietly undo months of steady work.

It will not, and the reason is worth saying before the practical part. Most of what you have built is not a routine. It is a set of decisions you have already made, about protein first, about how much you actually need to eat to feel well, about not letting the day get away from you before the first real meal. Decisions travel. The kitchen does not. What follows is how I help patients carry the decisions when the kitchen is unavailable.

The logistics, handled once

Two things have to be sorted first, and both are boring, which is why they get left to the night before.

The first is storage. Every one of these medications has a storage window and a limited room temperature allowance, and those are not the same across products, across pens and vials, or across manufacturers. I am deliberately not going to print a number here, because the correct number depends on exactly what is in your bag, and a figure that is right for one product is wrong for another. It is on the carton and in the instructions for use, and your pharmacist will confirm it in about ninety seconds if you call. Ask two specific things: how long the product tolerates being out of the refrigerator, and whether that clock resets once it goes back in. Most travel problems I hear about start with someone assuming the answer rather than reading it.

The second is timing across time zones, and that one belongs to your prescriber, not to me and not to a search engine. If a trip shifts your usual injection day, or moves you six hours, ask before you leave. It is a thirty second question in a portal message and it removes a week of low-grade worry.

Then pack the medication in the bag you carry on. Not for any exotic reason, but because checked bags get delayed, and a bag that arrives two days after you do stops being an inconvenience.

What the screening rules actually say

Patients are often surprised at how accommodating the rules are, and being surprised at the checkpoint is most of what makes people anxious about flying with an injectable pen.

TSA allows medically necessary liquids, medications and creams in your carry-on in quantities above the usual 3.4 ounce (100 milliliter) limit. You take them out of the bag so they can be screened separately, and you must declare them to the officer. TSA also recommends that medication be clearly labeled to make screening easier, which is the practical argument for traveling with the pharmacy carton rather than a loose pen in a toiletry case.

Cooling is the part people get wrong. Frozen items generally have to be frozen solid when presented at the checkpoint. But there is a specific medical exception: medically necessary gel ice packs are allowed in reasonable quantities regardless of whether they are solid, slushy or fully melted. You notify the officer and they inspect it. A small insulated case with a gel pack is not a gamble. It is an anticipated item.

Those are the rules as published on TSA’s own pages, which I checked again in August 2026, and they describe domestic screening only. International travel adds customs and importation questions worth confirming with the airline and the destination country before you go.

The airport is a protein desert, and that is solvable

Here is the real failure mode of a travel day, and it has nothing to do with willpower. You leave early. You eat nothing. You clear security, and the first food you meet is a pastry case. By the time you land you have had coffee and a bag of pretzels, your appetite is gone anyway because it usually is, and you arrive already behind with a headache you will blame on the plane.

The Dietary Reference Intake for protein in adults is 0.8 g/kg. In patients losing weight quickly on these medications I work toward something closer to 1.6 g/kg as a clinical target, in doses of roughly 25 to 40 g per meal, because appetite suppression pulls total intake down and protein is usually what comes down with it. There is a reason to care beyond the number. In the SURMOUNT-1 body composition substudy, which scanned 160 of the trial’s 2,539 participants at baseline and again at week 72, roughly 25 percent of the weight lost was lean mass, and the split was the same in the placebo group (Look, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2025). The drug did not invent that proportion. What is different is how fast the loss happens, and speed is exactly the condition under which protein intake stops taking care of itself.

So the fix is one decision made the day before, not a decision made hungry at gate C14. Put two shelf-stable protein items in the bag you actually carry. A ready to drink shake, a meat stick, a tuna or salmon pouch, roasted chickpeas, a hard cheese, nuts if you tolerate them. Not a day of food. Just enough that the pastry case is not the first offer you receive.

The hotel week: the smallest structure worth keeping

I do not ask anyone to reproduce their home week in a hotel. I ask for three things, and I would rather have three held loosely than ten abandoned by Wednesday.

One anchored protein meal a day. Usually breakfast, because it is the meal you control most and the one most likely to be included in the room rate. Eggs, Greek yogurt, smoked fish, cottage cheese, whatever the place offers that is not primarily a carbohydrate.

One grocery stop on arrival. Fifteen minutes, no cooking, nothing that needs a kitchen. Yogurt, milk or shelf-stable shakes, fruit, a rotisserie chicken if there is a fridge, something with fiber in it. This single stop does more for a week away than any restaurant strategy I could give you.

One rule at restaurants. Order the protein first and treat everything else as optional. If fullness arrives at the halfway point, and on these medications it usually does, that is information rather than failure. The to-go box exists for exactly this.

Strength work is worth protecting if you already do it, and a rack of dumbbells in a hotel gym is enough. Two short sessions across a week is not a compromise, it is the whole ask. If the week genuinely has no room, walking a great deal in an unfamiliar city is not nothing.

Fluid and fiber, the two that fail quietly

The things that reliably go wrong on the road are the two nobody plans for. Thirst cues are already blunted when intake is low, and travel days are dry, salty and disrupted. Fiber is the first casualty when food volume shrinks and the available food is restaurant food.

Neither announces itself. They show up as constipation on day four, a headache you attribute to the flight, and a flat, heavy feeling you read as the trip going badly. Carry a bottle and refill it past the point where you think you have had enough. Put fruit and something with fiber in the grocery bag. That is the entire intervention.

Coming home without a penance week

The most damaging part of a trip is usually not the trip. It is the week after, when people decide to make up for it, cut intake hard, and land straight back in the low-protein, low-energy pattern that caused trouble in the first place.

There is nothing to make up for. A number on the scale the day you get home is largely sodium, travel and a disrupted schedule, and it is not a body composition finding. The correction is not a deficit. It is the ordinary week: protein at each meal, the grocery order placed, the strength session back on the calendar, sleep. If you want a number to take seriously, wait five to seven days after you land before you weigh yourself at all.

A week that costs a little momentum and returns a week of actual life is a good trade. It is worth treating as one, because the plan has to survive your life rather than the other way round.

Sources for the screening rules above, both checked in August 2026: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/medications-liquid and https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/gel-ice-packs

This is general education rather than individual medical advice, and anything touching your medication, its storage or its timing belongs to the clinician who prescribes it. Confirm your own targets with your clinical team.

New essays go out Tuesdays and Fridays.

Archive: https://vitaearete.substack.com/archive

And when you want a plan built around your own labs, medications, and life: https://vitaearete.com

This article is general nutrition education, not individualized medical or nutrition advice, and it does not create a dietitian–client relationship. Medications and their side effects should be managed with your prescribing clinician. See the full disclaimer.