I just got back from 3 days of work meetings where I had to travel to another city and stay in a hotel. Just before I went I did a weigh in and found I was down to 85.1kg. When I converted my total loss since starting into pounds, I was surprised to discover that I had lost 14lbs, or 1 stone! However, I can’t celebrate too much. The 3 days away was horrible in terms of diet. There was one other person besides myself who requested low carb options, but there really wasn’t much available. The first day I had scrambled egg for breakfast, which was pretty good and lunch was a potluck that our work colleagues put on for us, and that was ok too as I was able to get enough to eat by sticking to mostly salads and cheese and I managed to stay away from the rice and pasta dishes, and then I went with a colleague who runs to the hotel gym and did a HIIT workout and my core strengthening exercises before dinner (I managed 2 HIIT workouts in 3 days!). But it went downhill from there. At lunch the following day the only low carb option was some salad leaves with a balsamic dressing. I had skipped breakfast thinking that lunch and dinner might be higher in calories than usual, so I was starving and succumbed to a sandwich as well. There was so much sugar and starch around. There was licorice and mints on all the tables, pastries and muffins in the morning, giant cookies at morning and afternoon breaks, desserts with lunch, cake brought in by our boss, etc. etc. I eventually ended up eating some of this too, but I saw the other low carb person eat way more of this than I did and the others who weren’t carb or calorie restricted put away this food like they hadn’t eaten for months!
I’m really not looking forward to getting back on the scale in the morning and I hope I haven’t done too much damage. Although I ate way more sugar and other carbs than I would have liked, I am still proud of myself for exercising some self-restraint in what turned out to be a full on gorge-fest. I also learned that even though I took some food with me, I need to have it with me at all times so I have something good to eat in case I get uncontrollably hungry. I ended up leaving most of it in the fridge in my hotel room as I had brought it for breakfast but then decided to go without, and it included things like broccoli bread that had eggs and cheese in it so I didn’t want it to go bad sitting in my bag if I didn’t eat it. I’ll be sure to have some nuts on hand next time, and to know that I need to have them with me. Also, I need to doubly confirm with the organizers that they understand what low carb actually is. They were suggesting that we could eat the fruit and fruit salad as that was healthy!
Anyway, at least I still have lots of good food waiting for me at home and can get back on track tomorrow and get that 1 stone mark to be a little more permanent and hopefully start losing another one! Hope everyone else is doing well.