11/14/2012: I'm Back!!

Morning Weight:  163.4
Morning Exercise: Strength training with personal trainer
Yesterday Evening's Exercise:  None - took a couple of days of rest after getting home from China
Yesterday's Calories: didn't count them
Vitamins:  1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine

OK, I'm back.  Officially. 

I got home from China late Sunday afternoon and have spent the last couple of days recovering.  Today I got up early and worked out with my trainer.  It's time to get back on track!!

If you've been paying attention you'll notice that I am a pound heavier than I was on the morning I left for China.  This is not too terribly surprising, in spite of the fact that I worked my ass off at the gym while I was there.  The travel days are the killers!!

I packed a lot of healthy snacks; Luna Bars, almonds, and prunes, along with my extra dark (85% cacao) chocolate bars.  I also asked for bottled water in the conference room of the factory.  With plenty of water and the snacks, I did a much better job managing my food while in China.  The days are rough.  They start with a meeting over breakfast which usually starts at nine and lasts a couple of hours.  Breakfast is at the hotel and it is an American/European style breakfast buffet with a hot food station.  So I can get my eggs, whole wheat toast, and fresh fruit for breakfast.  Unfortunately, as we are sitting there for two hours and breakfast time turns into lunch time I am usually tempted by the banana nut bread or the small pastries.  Limiting my calories at breakfast while in China is made more difficult by the fact that we are eating breakfast so late, by the time I get to breakfast I am really hungry.  At home, I eat breakfast at about 6:00.  In China, breakfast doesn't start until 9:00.  Of course, I am getting up later, too.  My typical day while staying at the hotel starts at 6:30 with an hour at the hotel gym, instead of 4:30, here.  I also tend to eat a little more at breakfast because I know there won't be a lunch, because breakfast goes so late.  So my breakfasts ended up being bigger than normal (probably by 300-400 calories) and lunch was skipped. 

After breakfast we'd go to the factory for a day of working and meetings.  Usually "lunch" was brought in around 5:00 in the afternoon, which I always passed on because it was some form of fast food.  There is always fresh fruit in the conference room and I would eat that during the day, have a Luna Bar around 3:00 in the afternoon, and a handful of almonds if I got too hungry before dinner.  Then, after working all day, everyone would cap off the day with a big dinner at about 8:30 in the evening.  I never got back to my hotel room before 10:30 at night.  The days were absolutely exhausting.  Eating dinner that late at night was rough, but this is where my snacks really helped.  I was prepared for the weird eating schedule and would make sure I ate my healthy snacks.  By dinner time I was never very hungry and food is always ordered for the table, not for individuals.  Therefore it was very easy to just take a little bit of the dishes that were healthy, predominately protein and veggies, without looking like I was picking at my food.  For the most part, I did not overeat at dinner.  One of the difficulties is the water.  You can't drink the tap water in China, so when going to a restaurant you can't drink the water.  Everyone drinks beer or soda.  Most of the time I would remember to bring a bottle of water with me to the restaurant, which helped a lot.  When I'd forget to bring water with me, I'd drink a lot of green tea.  It's not the same, but it didn't make me sick, either.

I exercised hard while I was there, alternating cardio/tread mill days with strength training days.  I used the hotel strength training routine that Jeremy Walters put together for me when Jack and I went on our vacation.  It kicked my ass, again!!  I was diligent and worked out every single day that we were there, with the exception of Sunday, which was the day we left for home.  We had to leave the hotel at 6:20 in the morning and the gym doesn't open until 6:00.  But that was the only day I didn't exercise.  I feel pretty good about that.  One of the days on the treadmill I wasn't looking forward to the 75 minutes it would take to do my 6.4 miles, so I decided to run for an hour and pick up the pace instead.  I ran for 10 minutes at 8km/hour (my normal pace), 10 minutes at 9km/hour, 10 minutes at 10km/hour, then back to 8km/hour for 10 minutes, then 9 for ten and back to 8 for ten.  It felt good to speed it up.  It made the time go by faster for some reason.

All in all, I did well on my plan while in China.  My food wasn't perfect, but it was reasonable.  I exercised hard.  I drank plenty of water and got as much sleep as I could.  I felt good about all of that.  What wasn't good were my travel days, both there and back.  The travel days are long, about 24 hours, door to door, with 16 of those hours in the air.  It is incredibly difficult for me to not over-eat on those days.  I start out strong, with a plan to eat only healthy food and snacks, but I am so bored and uncomfortable on the plane that I end up eating whatever they put in front of me.  In addition to that, while on the ground between flights, we eat again.  None of the food is any good, nutritionally, nor does it taste good, but for some reason I eat it anyway.  I can't even judge how much I ought to eat, considering the fact that I am awake for about 30 hours.  Does that count as two days worth of calories, or one?  I've given up on even thinking about it and have decided travel days are free days and I am just not going to worry about it.  Thankfully, that does not screw me up too much on the way there.  Staying on track in China is so difficult that I am ultra-committed to it.  That commitment makes it relatively easy to not let my day of reckless travel eating bleed into the first day we are in China.  Coming home is a different story.  By the time I get home I am exhausted both mentally and physically.  It's hard to get back into the routine of healthy eating and exercising.  This time around I took Monday and Tuesday off.  I didn't exercise and I didn't count calories.  I wasn't terrible about the food, but I wasn't good either.  It didn't help that Carla baked cookies to take to Drew's mother's house and left a tin here for Jack and me.  I ate several of them Monday evening and two of them for breakfast on Tuesday morning.  Then I made Jack take the rest to work so I wouldn't eat any more of them. 

Today, I am back on track.  I got back to the gym this morning and I am counting calories again.  Yes, I am one pound heavier than I was when I left, but only 1 pound.  I can deal with that.  Here is a photo of my chart that I took this morning:

11/14/2012 Chart

I am short a couple of photos.  I did not take Sunday photos the last two weekends because of the trip to China.  I will make sure to take one this weekend.

You can see the bumps in the road caused by my China trips.  At least this one wasn't as bad as my first trip!

On the way home I sat next to a guy that does a lot of tri's and other races.  He was excited to learn that I am training for my first triathlon.  We had a great conversation about training and exercising and it got me all pumped up about the triathlon that Ruth and I are going to do this summer!  It's fun to get excited about doing things that are good for me!!

I am grateful for my plan and for my chart.  I am proud of how far I've come since February 27th and I know I will reach my goal weight of 150 pounds.  I have no idea when I'll reach it, but I'll reach it.  These last 12-13 pounds are going to be a series of stair-steps, of that I am certain.  How broad each step will be will depend on how many times I need to go to China between now and the time I reach my goal.  But I'll get there.  I am committed to this and nothing is going to stop me, not even this nutty travel schedule, though it may slow me down!!  I'm looking forward to seeing 150 on that scale and the mega-shopping spree that is going to follow!!