The question turns up every summer and again in the week before Christmas, usually with a slightly guilty tone: what do I actually need to take with me if I am away for seven days? Underneath it there is often an assumption that a week away is a week off from looking after yourself, and that whatever you had going will have to be rebuilt on your return.
It does not have to work like that. A week away is not a break from your routine, it is your routine in a different kitchen — or in a hotel room with no kitchen at all. So instead of a list of everything you own, here is how I would decide what goes in the bag, in the order I would actually do it.
Work out what you would genuinely miss by Wednesday
Pack from the end of the week backwards. Ask yourself what you would notice the absence of on day three or four, not what you would like to be the kind of person who packs. For most people the honest answer is short: whatever they take daily, something that covers breakfast when breakfast is not happening, and something to drink out of.
Everything else — the third tub, the bars you bought in a hopeful mood, the shaker you never use — is weight. If you have not touched it in the last fortnight at home, a strange kitchen is not going to be the place you suddenly start.
Format decides what survives the journey
This is the part people underestimate. A tub is a commitment: it needs space, it needs a scoop, and it needs somewhere sensible to live once you arrive. Sachets go in a side pocket and stop being a decision.
It is one of the practical reasons I point travellers towards Bioniq GO. A personalised daily formula that arrives as one sachet of Swiss granules rather than a row of tablets means counting out seven of something, dropping them in the bag, and being done. No bottles rattling around, no working out which of four things you have already taken while standing in an unfamiliar bathroom. Up to 23 nutrients in a single daily dose is a great deal easier to pack than the same thing spread across several containers.
Count it out on the sofa, the night before
- Count days, then add one. Seven nights usually means eight doses once you include the morning you travel home. The spare costs nothing and saves the arithmetic.
- Put it in the bag you will carry, not the one you will check. Hold luggage goes missing occasionally; hand luggage almost never does.
- Keep it out of the car boot and off the windowsill. Heat and direct sun are the two things worth thinking about in transit — I have written about that properly in storing your sachets: heat, light and shelf life.
- Pack one breakfast solution. Hotel breakfasts vary wildly and self-catering means a supermarket trip you may not fancy on day one. Something you can make with water and a shaker covers the gap.
- Throw in two or three things you can eat standing up. Long transfers, delayed trains, an afternoon that runs past lunch — a couple of items from the protein snacks shelf stop the day turning into whatever is left at the service station.
- Decide your anchor before you go. “After I brush my teeth” travels with you. “With my usual morning coffee” does not, because your usual morning coffee is at home.
The anchor matters more than the suitcase
Here is where most routines actually fall over on holiday: not because anything was forgotten, but because the cue disappeared. At home the sachet sits by the kettle and the kettle goes on at seven. In a rented flat there is no kettle where you expect one, and by the time you have found it you are three days into meaning to start again.
So pick a cue that comes with you rather than one that belongs to your kitchen. Teeth, shower, the first glass of water, unzipping the washbag. Put the box of sachets physically next to that thing on the first evening, before you unpack anything else. It takes ten seconds and it is the single most useful thing you can do for the week ahead.
If you have not sorted it before you travel
Leaving it late is not a disaster, but it is worth knowing that a personalised formula is not an off-the-shelf purchase you can make at the airport. The starting point is a questionnaire about how you live, eat, sleep and train — you can take the free Wellness Assessment in a few minutes, with no blood test needed, and your answers are matched to one of 40 formulas. Do it a fortnight before you go and the box arrives in time to pack. Do it the night before and it will be waiting for you when you get back, which is honestly a fine time to start as well.
Bioniq was founded in London in 2019 and its personalised nutrition business is now part of Herbalife, which is why I am comfortable mentioning it alongside the shelves in my own shop. It can support the everyday things people care about across a week away — steady energy and focus, normal skin, hair and nails — as part of a balanced diet and an active lifestyle, and the granules are vegan-friendly if that matters to you.
Food supplements are not a substitute for a varied, balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
If a week away is what finally makes you think about simplifying what you take every day, build your personalised formula before the case comes out of the loft — one sachet a day is a far easier thing to pack than a shelf.
