Mitigation Strategies for when you lose control of your environment?

Kkaufer

Just got back from a two-day work trip which surprisingly completely threw me off track. This was one of my 'easier' trips, i.e. no time change, only gone 48 hours, I had a rest day built in and only needed to do one run.  And yet, the meetings ran long, I got caught in a snow storm causing a 8 ½ hour car drive, and every g.d. box lunch in America seems to consist of a crappy sandwich with a bag of chips and chocolate chip cookies.  So by the end of it, I lost nutritional discipline, which is big for me, because once I fall off the wagon, it takes me 1-2 days to recover, bailed on the run due to fatigue (long meetings and long drive the night before), and couldn't even workout this morning after I got home last night, because I was still so tired and feeling gross from not eating well.

And all this because of a semi-rough 48 hours (which for many of you who juggle crazy jobs and family obligations probably still sounds tame).  My conclusion is that I am very good at executing training and overall nutritional/life discipline when I'm in my home environment where I can control my surroundings (right down to avoiding all day meetings that don't' let prepare and eat my own lunch), but as soon as Im yanked out that stable environment, I fall apart.  It makes me so mad at myself, and yet, I can't figure out how to handle those situations better. I've gotten pretty good and juggling and re-arranging workouts, but keeping my nutrition on track is a massive problem for me when I'm not home.

So, I'm curious, what are your strategies for handling the 'extraordinary' that throws a wrench into your normal processes?  Any tips? 

Satish Punna

Hey Kate!

Sounds like a crazy schedule.  The one piece of advice I can offer is to remember that these blips in your training are just blips and when you have been training consistently one or a few missed workouts and a bit of messed up nutrition doesn't even amount to a speed bump, especially when you are far away from your A race.  So don't let it get you down.  Roll with it, take a couple of easy days and then climb back up on that horse.

I used to struggle to try to fit in workouts around my on call schedule and the kids activities and what not, but that just led to more stress, so now I just realize that the workout will be a wash and I don't schedule anything.  If I get in a few minutes easy on the treadmill or bike and some tubing exercise then I consider that a win.  Otherwise I end up stressed out and fatigued and training will suffer for a week.  Or worse yet the workouts get stacked up and boom- I'm injured. 

As far as nutrition goes, you could consider packing trail mix, energy bars, granola and other healthy dry foods.  Then you aren't forced to eat something unhealthy before you can seek out something better.  That works for me when I have to travel.  A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of whole wheat bread goes a long way for me.   I don't know how you judge your portions and manage hunger but I found the system in the 'Racing Weight' book by Matt Fitzgerald pretty easy to use and it seems to be working for me. 

Good luck!

rlh2000

Kate- I feel like I could have written that! I'm the same way, as soon as one thing gets out of my control and alters my original good intentions, it is all a wash. I'm really focusing on trying to not let perfect be the enemy of good. I am trying to get something in, no matter how small, more on the principle than any actual benefit. So maybe I get home from work late and am exhausted. I can still get a 20 min run in, and that is better than a 0 day. I find that once I let myself have a 0 day (not just a planned rest day) it is easier to skip on subsequent workouts and a downward spiral from there.

The nutrition part is also a struggle for me. I LOVE meal planning and cooking/eating healthy foods, but my willpower goes to hell in those situations. Last night I had a 5pm meeting and was planning on running home from work afterwards. In front of me at the meeting was a bag of Trader Joe's corn puffs, carrots and hummus, and clementines. Yes, I could have done a lot worse, but I just didn't stop eating the whole damn time. WTF? Well, then obviously I couldn't run home. I decided once I was home though that I could hop on the trainer, and just swapped yesterday and today.

I think a lot is knowing your personality. Are you able to do moderation, or are you an all-or-nothing person. I am an all-or-nothing, and seems like you might be too, so it is easier for me to say "I won't eat any of this" than "I will have a few bites." Of course, when I say "easier" it still ain't easy!

Curious what others have to say. Start a support group?

Satish Punna

I think the same commitment we have to the training in HAS to be applied to nutrition, sleep etc.  

Where I work we have monthly meetings catered with subs, cookies and soft drinks.  Once I made a commitment to eating as little processed food as possible and figuring out whether I was 'head hungry' or 'stomach hungry' , I started coming to the meetings having already eaten or with my own lunch and it has become fairly easy to avoid all the bad stuff.  I also started keeping a food diary which I kept up for a few months.  Nothing complicated, just a list of all the food I ate that day.  Once I realized I have to write it down and be accountable to myself, it got easy to avoid sweets (and I love sweets).  I don't keep the diary any more, but avoiding the bad stuff has become second nature. 

The important thing is to make a commitment to good nutrition, eat a meal only when you are truly hungry (i.e. stomach hungry), and be accountable to yourself. 

gwdykes@hotmail.com

Kate,  I too feel like I could have written your post.  My job requires about 125 to 150K miles of air travel each year.  Mix in the client and team dinners and conference rooms full of nothing but frankly junk from a food perspective is very difficult to maintain any sense  of normal.  I struggle and sometimes I have the exact same trip you described.  Nevertheless here are my  attempts to stay on track or at least not go backwards. No matter what I take lots of protein bars to supplement the bad times when there are no good choices.   I simply live by the mantra to make better bad choices.  I know sounds stupid but it does add up and it gives me something to hang on to emotionally.   The other trick I use is to travel with one of my EN water bottles.  Those times when tired or jet lagged and I want to go back to sleep rather than go to the crappy hotel deadmill that red bottle on the night stand provides motivation to get up.  Hope some of this helps..

Kkaufer

Thank you all for the feedback. I'm glad to know I'm not alone, and you each provided some valuable tips.  I just got back from another quick trip, which I handled a bit better than last week's trip.  In situations like this, there seem to be three pitfalls for me: 1) Alcohol.  When I'm traveling with colleagues, the 'polite' thing to do is to grab a drink at the end of a long day of meetings. I avoid it as best I can, but don't always succeed (in fairness, it's not always my colleagues' fault. Sometimes, a beer just hits the spot….)  Well, in my mind, beer and salad don't mix, so for me beer = burgers/fries/anything greasy.  2) Breakfast at the hotel.  Waffles/French Toast and muffins can be very tempting, but I know that if I want to have a successful day, I need to make a smart decision, so unless #1 happened the night before, I usually stick w/ eggwhite omelet or eggs If I fall off the wagon at breakfast, then it's really, really hard for me to make smart decisions the rest of the day. 3) Box lunches.  O.M.G., I HATE sandwiches that come out of box, usually w/ a bag of chips and chocolate chip cookies. I stayed away from the latter today, which I didn't manage to do last week, so there's progress… What I'm beginning to realize from experience and also from your comments that the best way to mitigate these situations is by really planning ahead (more than I thought), and that I just can't wing it on the road.  A quick snack of nuts etc. can go a long way for me, and I need to have an 'emergency' stash so I don't storm out of meetings at the end of the day ready to eat a cow!!!

MattAaronson

I think if you have quite a stable schedule then getting a wrench thrown in the works is probably tougher than if you travel a lot and are used to a schedule that you barely control. I spend on average 95 nights a year in hotels on business trips with many of those trips on short notice and not known more than 48 hours beforehand. I fit in most of my workouts although sometimes that means getting on the bike late at night on days I make it home. I do a lot of running on all the cities I travel to and find that pretty fun actually. In terms of nutrition, I actually eat BETTER when travelling. I have "rules" that I implement like:
- No eating in airports
- No airplane food unless it's a day flight over 8 hours
- No room service meals
- No eating pasteries in catered meetings
- No cookies or desserts in catered meetings
etc...

As a result of the above and other rules, I eat a lot less than when I'm at home and can snack away on whatever is in the house. I do end up with more than my share of work-related dinners, and in those cases I eat big steaks but try to minimize the sides. For "random lunches" I try to go to places where I know my order is a controlled number of calories, for example Chipotle or other places where you can calculate the nutritional content on line. I also carry a stash of bars (Clif bars or EAS Lean 15 bars) for snacks and/or meal replacement and also sometimes (when I remember) some 1oz bags of nuts.

Today is a prefect example of randomness and not eating a lot. On Sunday night I flew to Atlanta so skipped dinner and just had an apple. Today I woke up in a hotel, had a Lean 15 bar and went to a client's office. I was slammed in meetings all day so basically didn't eat much until I got to the airport this afternoon. There I ate a lot of celery and carrots in the lounge and had 1.5oz of trail mix. Then when I got to the hotel I had 1oz of mixed nuts from the dish the hotel left for me, plus an apple and some grapes. Today will be a ~1200 cal day for me which is ~500 lower than if I were at home. Tomorrow will be similar unless I get back to Atlanta early in which case I'll go to dinner with colleagues and put down a massive steak. That's just how it goes...

Ps. Kate, I'm at the Ritz-Carleton in Georgetown tonight and happy to invest the 500 calories I saved into a beer or two in the neighborhood if you aren't busy. Cheers!!