Well, my week in Mexico serving with a medical mission team was a great success- and I was able to stay on plan! No cheats, even though the home made tortillas, dulce de leche, mole' sauce, etc etc etc were all around! Well, I ate a few dried and spiced crickets, and not sure if they were on plan, so that may have been a cheat!! LOL I was in Cholula and Puebla, Mexico, at 7000 feet. Drank more than a gallon of water a day!!!
The cultural aspect was an issue at first. Our Mexican host church fixed our lunches daily, and I felt I was insulting them by refusing their food. But I explained it was for health reasons for me to lose weight and the next day out came lettuce (washed and disenfected) and plain roasted chicken breast! They were so accomodating and wanting to make sure I had what I could eat. I ended up doing a variation of phase 2 since I was in the position where I had to eat 2 meals. I just split the protein 3-4 oz at lunch and 3-4 ounces at dinner and cut out the lunch IP packet.
My problem was very few veggies! My coach recommended canned and jarred veggies, but you don't find canned spinach, etc there. and their pickles, dill or otherwise, had sugar. So I ate canned jalapeno's as my staple veggie, with a couple of exceptions. didn't do much to help my regularity, but that's okay.
So....drumroll.......by my scale at home, I lost 8.5 pounds while out of country!!!!
Not too shabby!!!
Thanks for those that gave me good advice before I left!!!!
Mexico trip update! Stayed on plan-sorta!
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