Life on the Road

If you have been following this blog you know one thing about me: I like a good plan. When plans go awry I get antsy.

Last Sunday I was scheduled to fly to Chicago, Mother Nature had other plans. A canceled flight and rescheduled itinerary later I was en route to Chicago at the cruel hour of 6:30 a.m. on Monday.

All things considered Monday was not a terrible day for the diet. I had yogurt at the airport and a granola bar on the plane, a decent lunch at the hotel and a nice dinner out with my coworkers. I skipped the ice cream at dinner, but did eat a chocolate chip cookie during our meeting break that afternoon. I had some wine and a beer, but overall food-wise it could have been much worse.

I also snuck in a work out. In this regard the schedule change helped. So many people were delayed getting in we started after lunch on Monday and I arrived at 9:30 a.m., so I changed and went immediately to the hotel gym for 50 minutes of cardio.

Tuesday was not quite as good, I had a bigger breakfast than normal, but for lunch just had a turkey sandwich. Dinner involved a lot of wine and a huge dessert and no time for a workout.

Wednesday I had no breakfast and a fairly healthy lunch, no snacks of any kind and a lot of walking around a convention center and an airport. Dinner was a challenge though. The week before Christmas at O'Hare airport and the place was a zoo. I tried to sneak in to a regular restaurant to try and find something that did not come with a side of fries (5 months and counting, no fries!) and there was not a seat to be had. So I grabbed a sandwich from Quiznos, which was really not tasty and ate half of it standing up.

That is the short story, the longer version is I walked about 20 times past a McDonald's and really wanted fries. I literally was talking myself in and out of getting fries over and over. Am I totally insane? I didn't get them and I am proud of my resolve to stick to a fry-free lifestyle.

The next few weeks will be an avalanche of temptation and I ultimately would rather have some homemade Christmas cookies than a greasy soggy carton of McDonald's fries.