I am back to work today and heading to Oslo for a meeting that lasts until Thursday.

I think the trip is a good thing - mentally to be engaged again, and I’ve always enjoyed spending time in Scandinavia.  In addition, I like the project & the people from work who are involved in this meeting.

I’ve also learned through the years how to handle meetings like this in terms of food without going nuts.  I eat my regular ‘at home’ breakfast while indulging in lots of fruits (and avoiding the pastries) and try to make a few simple rules like skipping the bread at meals and having only fruit at coffee breaks.  I usually try to be sane with desserts too - I think this trip I’ll allow myself one dessert and the rest of the time have fruit, but more than anything I will eat with the intention of losing weight and try to be both flexible and gentle on myself.

I won’t have much chance to exercise - we have pretty brutal schedules at these meetings (breakfast meetings at 7am, working sessions until about 7pm, then a group dinner at 8, back in the hotel around 11 or 11:30 to start it again the next day).  I haven’t been back to the pool in 2 weeks, but hope to head back this weekend. I am also going to investigate a new gym that’s opened near my house.  Gyms in Paris are usually horribly dirty, smelly, crowded, ugly and HOT (no air conditioning!) in addition to being at least twice as expensive as what I paid for a beautiful gym in the States, but this one is in a big American chain hotel, and they probably have to be up to American standards.  This one seems to have larger hours than typical French gyms too…  It’s at least worth checking out.

In the mean time, I think I’m going to start to work on my abs again.  I haven’t done my ab exercises in a LONG time and in addition to jelly-belly, I feel the weakness in my back, and that is enough to push me into action.  So I’d like to do some of the ab exercises twice this week, maybe once in Oslo.

On the weight front, my scale showed one pound down today - don’t know if it’s real or not (guessing not - I’ve not been good these past few days) but I’ll take it.