Me vs. Buffet

Have been on vacation last few days, with all the challenges that brings to the weight loss and training programs.  Glad to be back this evening in many ways.

Where we went had a lot (LOT!) of junk food available – Ice Cream, Pizza Hut, non-PH pizza (yes two pizzerias), Starbucks, etc.  It also had some in-house restaurants that basically offered all-you-can eat buffets for breakfast and dinner and lots of fried junk (burgers, fries, etc).  Overall, I felt the trip went well.  I went over on most days, but in a controlled, semi-intentional way.  If you can’t indulge in a bonus ice cream or pretzel when on vacation when can you?  And I hit the gym most days to help limit the damage.  That said, estimation was a problem so I can’t say I feel super confident about the numbers either.  We’ll see what the scale says tomorrow (after it says ouch!).

On the breakfast front, I felt I did pretty well.  Most mornings I had my normal breakfast of toast + yogurt + a little – the little was mostly in the shape of fruit, a little granola and a little something (a mini-mini-muffin or a piece of sausage).  Pretty controlled, about 150 calories over normal, but mostly in ways I was happy with.  Especially since they had lots of yummy looking things on offer – breakfast pizza, breakfast stromboli, omelettes, danishes galore, plus the usual breakfast treats, etc.  Except for this morning, where I specifically planned to allow myself to gobble up whatever I wanted in lieu of lunch and as a way of making sure I knew I’d get to try some of those one day to help keep things in control the other days.  It was a pretty hefty breakfast but overall I’m not badly over for the day and we go back to normal soon.  3 stars out of 4 for me on breakfast.

Lunches were generally pretty good – with a slight overage hanging over my head from breakfast and dinner still to come I kept it pretty clean.  Fruit cups and yogurt parfaits supplemented something healthy-ish.  Afternoon snacks were mixed (one bad afternoon involved visiting a chocolate factory and a pretzel factory – samples were had), but still pretty controlled for vacation.  For dinners we generally ate away from where we were staying and were mixed.  Had too much weak Italian food one night, had a little too much tasty Japanese another, and had a a reasonable looking salad on another.

The big disaster came in between the Japanese and salad.  Pressed for options, we decided to try the buffet.  Wow, big mistake.  They made hard-to-resist breakfasts … dinner was astounding.  So many things to try (some truly delicious mini-meatball parm sliders and some fantastic other items plus some really weak items) and I did my best to try them all.  Then the desserts.  O…M…G…  I tried to be reasonable.. for about a nano-second.  Negative stars for me here.  I should have just skipped to dessert and enjoyed it more and did less damage overall.

Roughly a 2k calorie dinner – and only because I couldn’t fit anymore in.  The bad news is, yep, them’s eyes are still bigger than the stomach.  The good news, I’m pretty sure I could have mopped up everything I tried to eat and gone back for thirds 2 years ago without much of a pause.  This time, I thought I was going to explode and stopped eating.  I salvaged part of the meal with a 2 hour / 6 mile walk (it was either go for a walk or curl up in the room in the fetal position).

All in all, I’m over about 1500 calories (assuming my estimates are vaguely correct) for the time five days.  I’m sure the scale will be way up tomorrow.  But except for that one meal, relatively OK with how the rest of it went (again, if a vacation can’t involve a guilt-free ice cream/frozen yogurt with the kid then it ain’t a vacation).  Tomorrow night have something going on that won’t help either (going to do my best, but beers are tough to budget for under the best of circumstances), but then should get back on track on Friday.

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Oddly Edibles..

I was always a picky eater growing up (honestly, I am still a picky eater in many ways).  However, I have had the good fortune to get to do a fair amount of travel and have eaten a few things I never thought I would ever eat (and surprised my mother too).  Not the most exotic of exotic, but still pretty odd by my standards growing up Italian/Irish in NY.  Just added one last week while in Hong Kong.

Updated 7/25 on input from the other half.

1. Jellyfish – Hong Kong – tasted ok, did not like the texture.  Based on what it looked like, probably the tentacles.
2. Rabbit – London – not that unusual in the grand scheme of things but still, slathered in sauce, served like buffalo wings.
3. Kangaroo – London – tasted like a peppery steak
4. Crocodile (or was it Alligator?) – Australia – was so chopped into small bits and flavored hard to say what it was like.
5. Moose – Norway – was ok, came with nice sauce
6. Reindeer – Norway – also, ok, came with nice sauce.  had seconds (or was it the moose).
7. Emu – Australia – apparently I ate some, don’t recall what it was like.

Travelin’ Man

Tough week travelling for work to Hong Kong.