Day 88

So this week I've begun seriously planning the big vacation I'm going to take in May.  Two weeks in Europe is sounding more and more exciting, and assuming I stay on track with the diet I should have hit 200K long before then.  From the beginning of the diet though I've been hoping to make this diet over into long term changes of behavior.  In particular, controlling the quantity of what I eat, cutting out the significant portion of fast food, and exercising more.

So whether it's during an active diet, or even just trying to maintain the behavior changes, this vacation planning raises one key question.  How do you stay on the diet when you're traveling?  Here at home I can control both what I eat, and what goes into my meals, myself.  If I'm traveling though I'm going to eat at restaurants, or grab snacks during a day filled with activities.  If the average meal at a lot of those places is 1400 calories or more, it makes it a bit harder to eat sensibly.

Exercising is also more of a challenge.  Luckily my primary form of exercise is running, which you can generally do everywhere, but I won't necessarily have a gym to use if the weather's bad or other problems arise.  Also, on vacation it's a lot easier to come up with excuses to avoid the exercise.

The obvious answers are simply to maintain self-discipline.  Don't eat an entire giant meal just because a waiter puts it down in front of me.  Get out and run wherever I end up on this trip, heck it's a great way to really see another city.  Another option is to simply not worry about it.  It's a couple weeks, and an exceptional circumstance.  Getting back on track afterwards shouldn't be a huge problem.

So what's the right answer?  I'm not really sure, I think it's going to depend on circumstances a lot.  I also get the feeling that people with a wider range of taste in foods might be in better shape than me.  The food I eat on vacation is probably pretty bad for me.

Food today:  egg and cheese sandwich (300 calories), a piece of toast and peanut butter (300 calories), and then I made a lasagna for dinner (the piece was a little bigger than normal, so I'm calling dinner as 1200 calories).  Exercise was 50 minutes on the treadmill at the gym (762 calories).

Today's Results:
Daily Food Total:  1800
Exercise:  762
Points Earned:  1962
Total Points Earned:  113869
Points to go:  86131