Jetlag? Never Heard of her. Not on my Circadian Clock!
How I Flew to Paris and Back Without Losing a Single Day to Jet Lag! The exact protocol: flight timing, fasting, sunlight, compression, and the AM/PM peptide rhythm that kept me human.
Heads up before you read: this is my personal experience and research, not medical advice. I'm not a doctor. Always consult your healthcare provider before applying anything you read here to your own body.
I just got back from a week in Paris, and the thing people keep asking me is how I walked off an overnight flight and went straight into a full day like a functional human. So today I'm giving you the whole scene, start to finish. Because beating jet lag starts way before you board. It starts when you book!
Step one: schedule the flight like a biohacker
This is the single highest-leverage decision of the entire trip, and it costs you nothing.
Flying east, I booked the 8 p.m. departure out of the U.S. That put us in Paris around 10:30 a.m. local time. An overnight flight means the plane ride can be a full night of sleep, and a morning arrival means you land with a full day of sunlight ahead of you to anchor your body clock. It was perfect. C’est magnifique!
Flying home, I did the opposite. We got a solid night of sleep in Paris, took a 2 p.m. departure, and landed in New Orleans around 9:30 p.m. Yes, that makes for a 16-plus hour travel day. Yes, it's long. But you land, you shower, you fall into your own bed, and you sleep all night. We both woke up the first morning home feeling decent, which after a transatlantic flight feels like a superpower.
Step two: don't eat on the plane
This is my rule, and this trip I broke it, and my digestion paid the price. So learn from me.
Your gut runs on its own clock. Digestion essentially goes offline at altitude: you're sedentary, cabin pressure causes gas to expand (hello, plane bloat), and your body is under low-grade stress the entire flight. Food sitting in a system that isn't moving is how you land puffy, sluggish, and blah.
Meal timing is also one of the strongest signals your body uses to set its internal clock. Skipping the in-flight meals and eating your first real meal on local time at your destination tells your body, clearly and quickly, what time it is now. Fast on the flight if possible, or at least keep it light and pop some digestive enzymes for support. Hydrate like it's your job. Eat breakfast in Paris. Et voila!
Step three: sleep aids, even if you don't normally use them
For the overnight flight, take something. Plane sleep is hard enough without leaving it to chance, and one strategic assist can be the difference between landing rested and landing wrecked.
Melatonin works if you want to keep it simple, but my personal pick for at home and on-the-go is the CBN Dreamy Melts from Mary & Jane, and code DESIGNERGENES20 gets you 20% off. Small, travel-friendly, and they do the job. I’ve turned so many clients onto these who report the best sleep they’ve gotten in years!
Step four: compress everything
I flew in my Heat Healer lymphatic compression leggings (they now live under the brand's new apparel line, CEAN) plus basic compression socks, and the difference in how my legs felt on landing was real. Long flights are rough on circulation and lymphatic flow, and compression keeps things moving while you sit still for eight hours. On the way home, after a week of gluten-free croissants and a late-night birthday tiramisu, I upgraded to stronger knee-high compression socks. No regrets on the tiramisu. Minor regrets only on the bloat.
And on my feet: my new Alo Sunset Sneaker Mules, the best travel shoe I have ever owned. I snagged these last minute before we left and ended up wearing them so much! Slip on, slip off at security, comfortable through a 16-plus hour travel day, and they go with practically everything I packed. They earned their carry-on real estate and then some.
Step five: land, and get outside immediately
Sunlight is the master reset button for your circadian rhythm, and the first hours after landing are when it matters most. We dropped our bags and got outside as fast as possible. As much light exposure as you can get, especially in the morning, tells every clock in your body to shift to local time.
This matters extra for me. I know from my own DNA that I'm someone whose circadian rhythm does not adjust easily. If you've ever wondered why your travel companion bounces back in a day while you drag for a week, that answer is written in your genes. It's exactly the kind of thing we map inside Body by Design® testing.
The rest of day one:
No nap. I don't care how tempting the hotel bed looks.
We booked an afternoon spa session with sauna and cold plunge rounds. A luxury, absolutely. Also a legitimately great way to shake off the travel bloat and the blah.
No alcohol on day one. Give your body one clean day to find its footing.
Early night. We called it around 9 p.m. local and slept like champions and hit the cobblestone streets early the next day.
During the week: protect the rhythm you just built
Keep caffeine and alcohol moderate. Walk everywhere, which in Paris is not exactly a hardship, and soak up daylight. Keep your meals and sleep on a somewhat consistent local schedule.
A quick word on wine, because you're not flying to Paris to skip it. Support your body while you enjoy it. Wine is one of the most histamine-rich things you can drink, so I take a DAO enzyme with it. DAO is the enzyme that breaks histamine down, and it makes the difference between a lovely glass with dinner and a flushed face with a 2 a.m. wakeup. Then after a night that includes alcohol, I take Blowfish, my DHM liver support, which helps your body clear alcohol more efficiently so one great dinner doesn't cost you the next morning.
And my favorite piece of advice: stop calculating what time it is at home. Get your brain on board and your body will follow. Your body is here now. Let it be here. The peptide layer: my AM/PM travel stack
On top of all of that, I ran a deliberately split peptide protocol the whole trip, and this is the part I'd tell my PepSquad gals to pay attention to. What made it work was the timing as much as the ingredients.
Jet lag is a timing problem, so I treated my stack like a timing tool. Morning got the "wake up, we're on Paris time" signal. Evening got the "wind down, repair, we sleep now" signal. Same logic as the sunlight and the meal timing, just working from the inside.
The AM mix: NAD+ and Lipo-C. NAD+ is your cellular energy currency, and travel absolutely drains the account. Long flights, disrupted sleep, and time zone whiplash all tax your mitochondria, and NAD+ meets that demand head-on. I paired it with Lipo-C, a B12 and carnitine blend that supports energy production and metabolism. Together they did on the inside what my morning sunlight walk was doing outside: telling my body, clearly, that it was GO time. No dragging through the day. No 3 p.m. wall.
The PM mix: GLOW with KPV. Evenings flipped to repair mode. GLOW is the recovery and skin-support blend I've written about before, and KPV is a little anti-inflammatory workhorse I love for travel, when your gut and your immune system are meeting a new country's worth of food, water, and airplane air all at once. Remember that broken no-eating-on-the-plane rule? KPV was doing cleanup on that mistake. This is the stack that let me eat gluten-free croissants all week and not be totally wrecked on the flight home.
That's the concept: energize the morning, repair the night, let the rhythm do the work. If you want the how, the pairings, and the protocols built around your own biology, that's exactly what we go deep on inside PepSquad. And if you're curious what actually travels in my pouch, I broke that down in my Packing for Paris post.
The flight home: stay awake, land, crash properly
For a daytime return flight, your job is the opposite of the way out: stay up the entire flight so you're actually tired when you land at night. Don't overcaffeinate to get there. I used King Coffee strategically, since the reishi spores and mild caffeine kept us moving without wiring us past bedtime. These are great because you can mix with hot or cold water, and they’re quite tasty! Even boyfriend approved. No jitters, no naps… Landed at 9:30 p.m., slept all night, woke up home and human.
One more trick for the flight home: wear an analog watch, and set it to home time first thing that morning. Remember how I told you to stop calculating what time it is at home? Travel day is when you flip that switch back. Early that day I started thinking in New Orleans time: okay, it's 6 a.m. at home, and I'll be in my own bed by 9 p.m. Suddenly that 16-hour travel day sounded like one long, completely doable day instead of something to survive. Your brain starts adjusting to your homecoming hours before your body does.
Back home: the protocol keeps going
Jet lag has a second act nobody talks about: the week after you get home. I'm writing this from New Orleans, still running the same AM/PM peptide rhythm and the same sleep support, because re-entry deserves the same strategy as departure.
I had a cold plunge planned for Wednesday, my first full day back. I came home to a literal tropical depression instead, so the plunge became a cold shower at home. Same idea, zero appointments needed. Cold exposure is a beautiful mitochondrial support tool, and in the morning it delivers exactly the kind of wake-up energy a recovering body clock wants.
And the biggest one, because I know my own patterns: minimize your screens. Heavy screen time is my number one jet lag trigger, historically and right now, every single time I come home from an international trip. Your body clock is already working overtime to find its footing, and hours of blue light and mental stimulation pull against everything the sunlight, the sleep schedule, and the stack are trying to rebuild. So I take a couple of days off from heavy screen time when I land. Light phone use only, no marathon laptop sessions, no scrolling in bed. Just be. Unpack slowly, sit outside, let your brain land the way your luggage did.
The sleep schedule stays locked too: in bed around 9:30 every night this week, and I'm happy to report I'm sleeping straight through. That's the protocol working.
That's the whole scene, start to finish! Book smart, fast on the flight, sleep aids up, compression on, chase the sun, energize your mornings, repair your nights, and don't fight your own biology on the way home.
Want to hear more Paris favorites? I’d be happy to share some of our highlights from my favorite place on Earth.
Love,
Lindsey Strong
P.S. I rounded up everything from this protocol that lives on my shelf, the Dreamy Melts, my DAO enzyme, the Blowfish, and my favorite travel gear, into one Travel Essentials collection on ShopMy.