Okay so I have not been a good girl - sorry for not posting for so long.  I have been traveling for work for the last few weeks.  I haven’t posted in over two weeks, but the good news is I am still losing.  I have been trying to be practical over the past couple of weeks.  I consciously made a lot of good decisions but I also went off plan quite a few times.  I didn’t beat myself up over it.   For me, this is about making consistent positive change but not about giving up living life altogether.  Here is how it went:

My strategy for the actual travel days and flying is that I drink primarily water and only one diet coke during each trip and I eat fruit and nuts - I bring apples and mini boxes of raisins and preportioned nuts and sometimes a meal replacement bar like a zone bar.  I did have one bag of pretzels on one flight and it really wasn’t worth it.  I typically eat one apple, one other piece of fruit and a handful of nuts for meals while I am traveling.  If a meal is served on the plane, I eat parts of it, but honestly the airplane food isn’t very appealling.  There is a lot of walking and carrying luggage when traveling those these travel days so the combination of healthy, very light eating and a lot of walking were used to balance my actual days in my travel destinations (more below).

My strategy for my travel days at the destinations was trickier.  My business travels include lots of good food and drinks and socializing.  Since I knew that I would be drinking I tried to keep my choices of food very healthy (see The Plan) and servings small (think Weight Watchers/Lean Cuisine) which isn’t always practical at restaurants but I tried my best earnestly on the food part.   I traveled to London for a few days then came back home and then to Las Vegas for a few days.  While in London, I have never been served so many cookies (aka biscuits) in my life.  I had 2 cookies a day and I was able to bring myself to pass on the scones with cream and jelly and a lot of the other pastry type of things that were put out for eating.  I focused on selecting healthy choices and small servings from the meal buffets.  I tried to have a good breakfast everyday to get my metabolism going in the morning at a minimum some fresh fruit.   Lunches were usually salads and rice and vegatables and a very small serving of pasta.  Dinner was salad and an entree with plenty of vegetables (i.e. vegetarian pizza, pasta with vegetables).   I never ate after dinner except for one night at a pub when there was a big bowl of crisps (potato chips) that I couldn’t resist.  I drank several drinks every night.  My exercise included a lot of walking.  In between trips, I have been rowing for about twenty minutes a day at the rate of about 500-700 calories an hour about every other day.  I have been pretty good about following healthy eating choices in between trips because I was petrified to get on the scale for fear i gained weight from my trips.  The day before yesterday, I had scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast, wheat noodles with teriyaki sauce chicken and vegetables for lunch, and a potato skin (okay i should not have eaten this) a few french fries (again a no no) and a piece of vegetable pizza for dinner.  Yesterday, I had fresh fruit and nuts for breakfast (apple and almonds), oatmeal with flaxseed and maple syrup for lunch (it was a hectic day at work and i missed lunch) and pasta with vegetables and chicken for dinner.

So, I guess the net of all of this is that by keeping portions small and choices healthy for the most part and exercising regularly, you can still lose weight if you drink occasionally and make poor choices (like a cookie here or a potato skin there) once in a while.  What you cannot do is overindulge too much in those poor choices and you cannot consistently make poor choices for several meals in a row - what i mean is on the days that I had alcoholic beverages i seriously watched my food intake, and if i had a cookie it was one at a time not five at a time… having a blog and knowing that you will have to report your progress is another incentive to be good.

Anyways, I am pretty happy to have lost 12.8 pounds so far and I appreciate you reading this.  Blogging about my weight loss definitely is helping keep me on track.