Round

Thank you all so much for your comments, they are helping to encourage me to get on track again.

Among the things that help the most is a little forward planning. I havent done it for a while, but doing it now should help.

Today I fly home and will be there until Monday morning. So I’m giving some thinking to the next couple of days, and what I can do to feel good about myself, my life, my weight.

Friday : go to the gym, buy some fruit & veggies, make dinner
Saturday : we are going to a day-long cooking class. Eating a filling healthy breakfast will help keep me from too much nibbling on stuff as we go. If we end in time I might be able to hit the gym, but it’s not that likely. Since lunch is likely to be rich, large & late, I’ll probably have a light dinner - so shopping on Saturday should include stuff for that. Maybe a stir fry, since we have a new wok?
Sunday : gym for sure, hopefully before noon. Day relaxing with my husband and finishing some personal paperwork I need to do. Hopefully a movie in the evening.

Monday : the travel starts again, but all week in one city, and maybe I’ll bring a WATP DVD?

Sometimes the hardest thing is just seeing where you are - and once you do that it’s somehow possible to see at least a hint of a path to where you want to be.

Since writing to acknowledge where I am and how hard it is, it’s seemed just a little bit easier to get on track. Yesterday I made healthy choices. Today as well. Not perfect, but healthy, and definitely in the right direction.

The cafeteria at our offices in Munich has a pretty nice salad bar and the soups are good too. Soup and a salad with a yogurt for dessert is healthy and diet friendly, available to me most days I’ll eat in the office, and can help eliminate some of the choices and temptations. This is one of the strategies I used 8 years ago when I traveled extensively AND lost 60+ pounds, and it’s something I need to do again. At the time I also had fixed rules for what I would eat for breakfast (ignoring a lot of the calorie-loaded choices at big hotel buffets) and that is something I do naturally now 90% of the time. I’d kind of forgotten about limiting my lunches to limited options, stocking up on fruit every chance I had (started this yesterday) and reigning in dinner choices too (not at that point yet).

I remember that with this approach I was a bit boring but was able to control food choices in about 80% of the situations, which gave me enough leeway. At the time I was also in hotels that had good gyms, something which is not currently the case, so I’ll need to see if I can get myself to do DVDs or go for walks or something in the future.

In any event, I’m feeling better and more in control about it.

In some ways it’s a bit like it was 8 years ago - a job so out of control that being in control of my diet was a big comfort — at least ONE THING I could manage. We’ll see if I can get the job in a better degree of control in the future - right now it’s not looking good for the first half of the year, and I’m trying to show flexibility and roll with the punches at work. But the dissatisfaction is deep, much deeper than it was 8 years ago, and I’m much less patient and willing to sacrifice than I had been…

Setting up a new organisation, new functions, new responsiblities and new competencies is no easy task, and frankly might turn out to be one I’m not up for.

But at least what I’ve learned in the past is coming in useful again!

Okay, the traveling sucks and is really, really hard.

I am getting up super-early on Monday to catch a flight and getting home late on Thursday nights.  IN between there is all the usual - delayed flights, having to eat at airports, business lunches, coffee breaks galore with tons of junk, business dinners, desserts and no time to exercise.

No time for much of anything except work in fact.

I am not happy about it.  I just spent 10 days giving in to it for the most part - often eating stuff at coffee breaks, having dessert, eating heavy German food.  I am up 4 pounds, 2 pounds each week.  It doesnt help that when I was back home in Paris I was tired, felt too lazy to exercise, and ate lots more stuff I shouldn’t.

While I try to figure out if or how I will keep this job and still have a life, I really need it to not kill me in EVERY sense - in that I insist on still having a good work-life balance, having time to build a great relationship with my husband, indulge in a few hobbies, AND keep my promise to myself to lose weight. Oh, and work on the Baby Project which is likely to be a huge, enormous time and financial commitment.

What I don’t know is HOW I’m going to manage this, but I do know I am going to do it.

I might not  be able to keep my job and keep the above committments, but I will keep the committments.  My priorities are clear.

My company wants me in this job and has said they’ll be flexible, but the proof will come in coming weeks.  Meanwhile I need to work out finding the time to work up a realisitic plan for my current environment and travel.

The worst part for me this past week actually began with the previous post - the realisation that this really will be HARD.  But hard or not, it needs to be done, and knowing it needs to be done just makes it neutral - the judgement of “hard” or “easy” is just judgement after the fact.  Once I have a solid healthy-eating strategy in front of me (which should be easier now that I’ve had many meals of German food and it is quickly losing it’s appeal) and an idea of how I can get exercise in on the road (no great ideas yet… but maybe next month’s hotel will help), I can just set the rules for myself for the days I’m in Munich.  I’ll need to be less social and more practical, but that’s okay.

Same for home.  Yesterday I realized, YET AGAIN, that once I’m actually at the gym I’m really glad I went and I don’t find it a waste of time, even if I have lots going on that day.  I somehow need to get myself to go for at least 15 minutes most days I’m home (knowing I’ll almost always stay longer) just to get in the habit of going.  I also need to go in the mornings, and irrespective of if my husband says he’ll go or not (he’s the master of “let’s go together at the end of the day” and then we never do…

Sorry for the rambling format - usually I think my posts through and rework them, but my work awaits and I just wanted to empty my head having spent too much time away.

It looks like my new job will be much more travel than I am comfortable with, at the very least for the next few months, and that it will be VERY hard to stick to healthy eating and to lose weight.  Not only are there many days when I have no opportunity to exercise from 6am until 11pm, there will also be a great many meals over which I’ll have no control.

Last night seemed a good test of how things will go, and it didn’t go well.  After getting home (early, much earlier than will be normal) I was tired and felt lazy and we didn’t have something healthy to cook easily.  So I grazed and nibbled and ate bites of various things and made generally not-so-great choices.

Our house always has treats and high-calorie items.  My husband is a Foodie with a capital F, and buys all kinds of treats and stuff, and my almost-9-year old stepson is here almost half time, so there is lots of kid food too.  Most of the time I can resist these things well - often because advanced planning has my own healthier treats stocked in the house, or because I’m careful enough to plan what I’ll really want or eat when I’m first hungry therefore not wait until ravenous faced with such challenges.

Being on the road there will be much less need for me to shop, and therefore the house will be less well-prepared.  If I get home late on a Friday dinner will likely be from the pantry stuff lying around or takeout.  Or at my husband’s mercy, as it was last night (although even last night was aided by the fact that I had the waxed beans in the house in the first place - no guarantee that will be the case in the future.)

I’m guessing I’ll need to revised my pantry strategy and stock more veggies in cans or frozen, and have meals ready to be pulled from the freezer or easily constructed.

I’m just already feeling tired by the organisation it’s going to take, not to mention the loss of pleasure from enjoying the market each week and cooking for myself and the family.

When I get back home tonight I’ll upload the pictures of all the goodies piled on our meeting table these past few days.

I resisted almost everything, but yesterday I did open the cookies and had 3 of them, which were probably about 100 calories (they’re pretty small). They weren’t very good, and for that I’m very grateful, because 2009 will be full of meetings in this building and those cookies are likely to be present almost every time - and it will be SO MUCH easier to turn them down knowing they are not so good.

The chocolate I already know is not so good from other trips here. Although the packages are cute as hell, the chocolate itself is only milk chocolate (and I prefer dark) and is that too-sweet German variety where you almost gag with the cloying sweetness in the back of your throat. Still, it’s chocolate, and therefore can’t always be resisted - but by bringing my own bars of the good stuff in my suitcase I can avoid eating the junk and instead allow myself a small amount of the good dark chocolate in case of need.

Yesterday we had this big platter of desserts that were obviously too big a size for anyone to dare to eat. After about 2 hours my boss got the idea to cut each one into thirds and then she passed out plates. The only one that vaguely appealed to me was the apple pie, and luckily my three colleagues each took that, making it very easy for me to say “No, thanks” and reach for another piece of fruit instead.

The big bowl of fruit was in fact the good news. It had grapes, bananas, clementines, oranges, apples and kiwi. I had a banana, clementines & an orange.

I think in the future I’ll add to my food diary when I travel a line about all the temptations around me that I manage to pass up — sometimes it’s quite an impressive list!

Well, I’m back on the road, and I expect to see a lot of airports, hotels & conference rooms this year.

Eating healthily while traveling will require rules and vigilance and also a good deal of flexibility.
Exercise will probably be even tougher.

I’m taking off today from exercise, not that I really had the choice, since I had to get up at 5:30 to catch my plane and we have no free time, but I would have taken it off anyway because after 7 straight days at the gym (swells chest w pride!) my legs need a break and a rest. Tomorrow is probably shot too from the travel schedule, but there is a small chance I’ll get in earlier than planned.

As for food, I am currently sitting in a conference room with a big tray of cookies, a plate of chocolates, a bunch of packets of nuts, a tray of sandwiches and a plate full of desserts. I took pictures of them all but don’t know when I’ll be able to upload them… There is also a bowl of fruit.

I plan to eat sandwiches and the fruit, and drink only water. There is a lot of fruit, and I’ll be perfectly happy with that. I brought good chocolate from France with me on this trip, so tonight if I feel the need I can have some of that instead of eating the stuff that is here in front of me and inferior in quality.

Dinner tonight will be simply the best of available choices. When you don’t have much control you can’t be too dogmatic.

For breakfast tomorrow at the hotel, and next week’s travel too, I will stick with my limited choices — fruit, yogurt, cereal and occaisonaly whole grain bread. None of the other local temptations — too easy to make bad choices, and with those items listed above I know I’m eating healthy and satisfied.

For 2 days in a row now I’ve managed to get in morning exercise.

I don’t think it makes much difference to your metabolism whether you exercise in the morning or later in the day - but I think it makes a big difference in how likely you are to do it.

As the day goes on, the things we want to get done, the time left in the day, and various distractions and unplanned events all creep up, knocking down the likelihood to get that planned workout in.  Add that to the fact that most of us are tired and that exercise is not our favorite activity of all time, and the good intentions can easily get run off the road.  I know everything that is between me and a planned workout is a potential reason not to get it done.

If I plan to work out on a weekend day I will often get dressed directly into my workout gear to help nudge me in the right direction.  This was no big deal in the US, where people often wear exercise clothes out in public (and brands like Juicy make a mint marketing this look), but it’s pretty shocking in France (probably more so on a body that doesn’t look like it actually makes it to workout very often!).

I’ve been back exercising regularly for coming on 3 weeks now.  Half that time was in the US on vacation, where it was easy - getting to the gym could be my biggest objective of the day.  Half the time was back home in Paris but mostly when I was still on vacation.  This workweek has begun with me having several work-from-home days, which is flexible for gym time, but not 100% so.

One of my goals is to work out at least 3x a week, and on most days when I’m in Paris (I’ll be traveling quite a bit in my new job).  So these days at home need to include the gym.  Monday I put it off and put it off and then was almost going to not do it.  I did, but also realized I spent more time worrying about it than necessary, and earlier sessions would really help that.  Yesterday was my first foray into the morning workout in a long time.  Today was a repeat, although more successful in that it was a tad bit earlier, and it was unplanned.

It’s been bitter cold in Paris (unusual for us) and yesterday my DH dropped me off at the gym on his way to work.  It’s about an 8 minute walk from my house to the gym, and in 20 degree weather I was happy to avoid one direction of that walk.  Well, this morning my DH asked me if I was going to get up & get ready for the gym (when I’d kind of thought I’d sleep in a bit) but in the end I did get up and was glad I did.  Especially when he called me later to ask if I wanted to go shopping and to a movie at the end of the day.  If I hadn’t already worked out I’d be trying to figure out how to do it earlier or more likely deciding to blow it off…

I don’t know how often morning workouts will really work for me.  When I work from home they should be okay, but I’m expecting to be told I’ll need to spend more of my non-travel days working from the French offices (phooey) which could still technically allow for morning workouts but they’d be mighty early…  In any event, I know they do help my stress levels quite a bit.

I’m realizing I’m focusing on too many objectives right now, so I’m temporarily cutting out one that I think is really important, “Leave Something Left Over at Each Meal”.

It will be important for me to continue to work on this, and it was really helpful to have it front-and-center over the holidays, but with changing jobs, traveling, and trying to get an exercise habit built in, it’s a bit more than I can manage right now.

I’m keeping the goal of tracking fruit & veggies and trying to hit 9 servings every day (ideal) because I find it’s really helpful to get me to choose fruit or more veggies when I’m hungry.

The LeftOver goal will be back soon, and is not completely out of my head, I’m just one of those people who believes in fewer goals followed well vs tons of goals followed loosely (or the surefire recipe for a nervous breakdown - tons of goals followed closely — been there, done that, not going back.)

The scale is moving in the right direction.  Although I step on the little bugger every morning, I really consider my Monday weigh-ins the official ones, as day-to-day weights fluctuate quite a bit.

My last Monday I was on my home scale was 3 weeks ago, and today’s weight (which has been pretty consistent these past few days) was a whole 3 pounds lighter!  That’s a pound a week over the Holidays, folks!  A pound a week while home with the parental and family obligations.  Restaurant meals all the time.  Mexican food about every other day.  Making cookies.  Eating cookies.  Pie.  Stone Cold Creamery ice cream.  Coming home to Paris.  Eating a rich and wonderful truffle soup.  Eating my pastries this weekend.

Yes, if I can eat like this and lose a pound a week, we’re not doing to poorly.

In addition, I’m really hoping I can keep up the momentum in coming weeks - I am down 9 pounds since November right now, and really would like that to be a nice double digit soon.

It’s frightening how easy it is to go off course, especially since I was doing so well.  The good thing is that it was a minor blip, and that it happened really early in the year, before I’ve finished my Best Year Yet work (upcoming post sometime this week), because I am now certain I’m going to give the weight loss a high priority (actually different components will probably each get a high priority).

Yesterday I felt like the little devil of my shoulder nudged me and then said “watch this”…  I’d done fairly well through lunch, although to be honest I’d eaten lunch (rather heavy) with my husband mainly for the social obligation rather than out of hunger, which should have been my big red flag, but wasn’t.  Then in the car on our way to the Chateau de Versailles we passed Pierre Herme’s shop, which is a favorite and somewhere we don’t visit very often (thank goodness).

For those who don’t know, Pierre Herme is considered by many foodies to be the best of the best of the pastry chefs in France or in the world.  His stuff is original, beautiful, incredibly expensive & also not diet-friendly.

Nevertheless, my little devil said to my husband “oh look, Pierre Herme’s shop is right here…”  I could have just shut up.  I mean, my DH was concentrating on driving, he didn’t realize the shop was right there.  And we’d discussed pastries the night before, so I knew it wouldn’t take much for him to go in.  And I also know my husband.  He is incapable of buying just one or a reasonable amount.  He generally buys pastries for about 3 times the number of people we have - and in this case that meant major danger, because the only people were the two of us and my 8 year old stepson, who still has that magical childhood gift of saying “I’m full” when he really is, not just when the yummy stuff is gone.  Which meant even more potentially for me to overeat.  For days.  And I knew this BEFORE the little devil voice said “Oh, there is Pierre Herme, and we’re running ahead of schedule so we have time…”

Ugh.  The rest of the story is painfully predictable.  After our visit to Versailles (where there is a Jeff Koons exhibit in it’s final days) we came home and had dinner.  Which started well (crabmeat) but took one fatty turn after another (French cheeses, and several of them, followed by the pastry Gallette des Rois which I ate every crumb of my ginormous size serving, then popcorn with real butter). 

Where did that “pay attention to your hunger” and “leave something uneaten at every meal” thinking go?  Out the window, I guess the devil side needed to throw it overboard in order to speak up.

The good news, I guess, is that I immediately felt guilty, and although I started this morning with breakfast of more Pierre Herme pastries, I did at least manage to come to my senses again, and am planning a nice veggie-fillled day or two to come.