Surviving Travel Without Blowing Your Macros

I, like many other people, travel for work. My feelings about traveling for work have changed over the years. It used to be, Sweet! I get to stay in a hotel and reimburse all of my meals! Now it's more, Fuck! Should I pack a cooler bag? I like eating for free so I haven't gone as far as prepping and flying with all of my own food... yet.

Here are some tips and tricks I've learned from four years (and counting) of work travel. These also apply to any kind of travel, but most people want to indulge on vacation.

1. Make your hotel work for you. People who work at hotels are fantastic and able to make your stay perfectly fit your needs, especially if you call ahead and ask nicely. I like to call up the hotel a few days in advance, introduce myself, and ask if it is possible to have a room with an empty refrigerator and a microwave. Many hotels will put a microwave in your room for the duration of your stay if you simply ask. Some hotels only have minibars and charge you to empty it. Those hotels are on my shit list. Make sure to ask for silverware or come prepared with plastic cutlery. The plastic stuff is especially helpful if you will be eating on the go.

2. Locate healthy prepared meals. Many cities offer prepared foods geared towards the fitness community. Googling meal prep or paleo delivery (even if you don't eat paleo) and the city is usually a good way to find websites. In New York, I like to order from Kettlebell Kitchen. The only downside is that they deliver to gyms so I have to hike over to CFHK to get my order even if I'm not training there that week. While in Houston this past weekend, I found a My Fit Foods down the street from my hotel. Sweet niblets, is that place cool. You walk in and can get all of your meals out of the cooler. Jeremy, the sales consultant, told me that next time I can call him directly, tell him my macros and he'll have all of my stuff picked out and ready to roll by the time I land. If you are in Texas, California, Oklahoma, Arizona, Illinois or traveling to any of these states, you need to try this place.

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3. Identify splurges. Unless you travel with the aforementioned cooler, you will find yourself hungry in front of a menu with tempting treats. Figure out when you will splurge and prepare for it. I knew I wanted to see my friend Bailey while I was in Houston, so I made sure to eat three My Fit Foods meals throughout the day (it came to about 1,000 calories) and then went to the bar to hang out. I was driving so I wasn't drinking (no alcohol carbs) and I decided to indulge in some fried pickles and french fries. It didn't wreck havoc on my day and I wasn't starving so I didn't need to eat a full meal there, which could have easily surpassed 1,000 calories. Flying home during dinnertime is my biggest pitfall. I usually try to go with tacos but yesterday's tacos were a real fail. I should have picked something up on the way to the airport and brought it through security because I would have been happier with my choice. IAH just sucks for food and I knew that, but I saw the taco place when I landed and thought I was good to go.

4. Don't beat yourself up because you didn't hit your numbers. Last night I was annoyed at myself because I was way low on protein, my tacos hadn't satisfied me and I ate them at 5:30 PM ET, and it was 9 PM and I was hungry. I ate Cheerios and focused on the positive food choices I had made while I was away. 

Planning My Macros

It's January so everyone's on a diet. At least four people have told me they're going to lose 20 lbs by cutting calories and doing lots of cardio. I cringe. You can totally drop a lot of pounds off the scale if you eat nothing and run your little heart out, because I've done it like 9 times, and I'm not going to tell you not to do that if that's the plan you choose. I just thought you might want to know my plan of attack for 2015.

Things I know to be true:

1. I need a plan if I am going to be successful.
2. I need a tracker if I am going to be successful.
3. I won't cook vegetables that don't come out of microwavable bags.
4. High quality ingredients are expensive and then you have to cook them yourself anyway.
5. Carbs are the devil. I need to eat a certain amount of protein and fat every day to meet my goals.

I know how to eat clean. I know how to read labels. I'm pretty damn knowledgeable and yet I don't have the body I want so I've decided to make some changes. My goals are to give my body the nutrition it needs to train at high intensity multiple times a week and to change my body composition. I was looking at photos from old Weight Loss Wednesdays where I weigh the same as I do now, and I look much different, (read worse), because I had a lot more fat and a lot less muscle. I want to lose body fat while maintaining the muscle I have now AND hopefully add some more. This means that my weight in pounds doesn't matter to me but the percentage of my weight that is fat does.

Food Diaries

I took about three weeks off from tracking my food and it was one of the smartest things I've done all summer.

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Logging your food is a proven way to reach your weight loss goals. Many respected fitness experts, including Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper, recommend keeping food diaries. Trainer Bob might be a vegan but he CrossFits at Brick so I trust his judgment, and I love me some Jillian even if she can't push press a 55# bar. There's been a lot of information circling about timing your eating and fitting your macros and eating for your body type, all of which requires some kind of food diary. It's a good habit to get into.

Unless it starts to drive you crazy.

The Importance of Keeping a Food Log

It's no secret that I have put on some weight in the past year. Long story short, I stopped being accountable for what I ate. I was accountable when I kept track of what I ate. I should've stuck with the food log.

I'm back at it and I have already cut down my calorie intake significantly without starving myself. It's amazing how seeing what you've eaten affects your appetite. I know I shouldn't be hungry if I ate a 600 calorie dinner, and I am able to tell myself that I am full. It's easy to overeat thousands of calories each week if you're not aware of what you're consuming.

I use Tap&Track on my iPhone. The newest version is the most convenient iPhone food tracking app I have ever seen, and I highly recommend it. I'm a little creeped out by the new Social function (I mean I guess I could start tweeting my meals?) but I'm impressed by the new and improved food database.

However you choose to do it, you need to keep a record of what you are eating. You will get results.

Get in Bed or You'll Get Fat

No, sexual activity still doesn't qualify as your daily cardio, although I have yet to test this out with a heart rate monitor. To avoid getting fat, you need to get in bed and get more sleep. Sleep affects your weight.

The amount of sleep you get influences the production of the hormones leptin and ghrelin in your body. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain that it is full. The less sleep you get, the less leptin your body produces. Ghrelin tells your body it is hungry. The less sleep you get, the more ghrelin your body produces. See the problem? When you're tired your body thinks it's hungry and keeps wanting more.

When I am sleep-deprived I can eat all day and not feel satisfied. I usually don't even notice until my pants start cutting of my circulation.  I almost never overeat on Mondays (unless I've had a Sunday Funday), but by Thursday I'm starving hours before lunch. Fridays are bad to begin with, and if I've gone out the night before, I can pretty much guarantee that I will eat three lunches.

So I challenge you to go to bed 45 minutes earlier every night. I struggle with this because Agent Hotchner's sexy grimace keeps me up watching Criminal Minds reruns, but I am going to work on that. If you keep a food journal, like I do, look for correlations between more sleep and better food choices.