Fasting on a long-haul flight is one way to reduce jet lag. Photo / Getty Images
Eli Orzessek finds the answers to your travel questions.
I'm a guy who spends quite a bit of my spare time pushing weights in the gym, so my calorie needs are higher than most people, but on long haul flights, I get exactly the same size meal as everyone else.
As a result, I'm often hungry. This doesn't seem fair.
Can you help?
Craig
That's a bit of a humble brag, eh? Well, in most cases, flight attendants will be happy to help if you ask politely — there are often leftover meals or other snacks kicking around.
I'd recommend flying Qatar Airways. When I flew with them on the 17-hour journey to Doha, I was pleasantly surprised by how well fed we were. They plied us with food the whole way and I was a big fan of their movie snack boxes.
However, stuffing your face through the whole flight not might be the best idea when it comes to jet lag. According to the Harvard Business Review, you can reduce the effects by fasting for 16 hours. So avoid all food from the time you get to the airport, don't eat during the flight — but still drink plenty of water — and eat soon after you land, as close to a local meal time as possible.
In a Bloomberg article about "distinguished travel hackers", Melissa Biggs Bradley of luxury travel firm Indagare claimed a Singapore Airlines flight attendant had told her the "secret" of not eating inflight. Apparently your digestive system shuts down at high altitudes, so once you're back on the ground it starts working overtime and makes you more tired.
