Staying on track when traveling

My day job requires me to travel a bit. I have been "on the road" for the past 5 days and won't be sleeping in my own bed for another 5 days. Uggh - 10 days of travel. It is extremely easy to let your program slip when you are traveling. Here are some of the things I do to help keep me on track.

Rule 1: Stay hydrated! Hopefully you are already drinking 1/2 your body weight (in ounces) of water a day (up to 120 ounces). When you are traveling, it is easy to slip on the water intake. Thankfully, there are usually a lot of places where you can purchase bottled water. I tend to buy the 1 liter size so that I am reminded to "get the water in me".

Rule 2: Plan ahead and carry some quick/easy snacks. For me, I always have some almonds handy. They work great as a snack, travel extremely well, and can be grabbed when you need them.

Rule 3: Be smart about the meals you order. When every meal comes from a restaurant, ask about how different things are prepared. Many restaurant's will make available the nutritional information about items on their menu. If you are already eating clean - be VERY wary of extra sodium! I had a nice salmon dish at a TGIF that had 1500 mg of sodium in the meal! 

Rule 4: Carve our time for your exercise plan. You are almost certainly going to have to be flexible and modify your exercise routine - but just do it. 

What are your tips?

Great scale days..

This is one of those "just have to share" posts. While most of my posts are more about sharing what I am learning along my weight loss journey - this one is a more of a "toot my own horn" kind of post.

I have had 3 consecutive days of "great scale days". In my definition, a great scale day is when one of the following are true:

1. Zero change in weight from previous day (e.g. weight didn't bounce up a little from prior days reading)
2. A loss in weight from previous day

For me - I have lost ~1 lb each of the last 3 days! WOOT! Over the past 18.5 weeks, I have averaged loosing OVER 3.5 lbs per week! 

Ok - back to my day job.... :)

Finding ways to stay in motion

Everyone understands that exercise is critical for health (I hope). Based on some feedback I got in my last post, it seems that not everyone is able (for a bunch of reasons) to exercise. Not everyone has the means to join a gym and not everyone can have a home gym like this either Body-Solid Sportsman Gym - BFMG20 (Google Affiliate Ad).

The key thing is to find ways to stay in motion. It is AMAZING how many calories you burn just performing simple tasks. If you are like me and a little anal (and need to measure everything), you might use a calorie burning app or use a web site that allows you to compute calories burned.

For example, I spent a couple of hours working on my car last night - and burned over 500 calories in the process! Knowing that took a LOT of the pain out of the skinned up knuckles that I earned for my trouble!

Even those that are in the "couch potato" class can find ways to get moving. Something as simple as just getting up during the TV commercials (better to walk around during the commercial) - will burn a LOT of calories. If you want to measure that activity, think about getting a fitness tracker like the one below:


The punch line of all of this - just add some activity to your everyday. I work at a desk all day. I am now getting up every 20 minutes or so - for nothing more than to walk around my desk. Just that activity is burning about 200 calories a DAY more than I would by just sitting at my desk. Since it takes burning 3500 calories to get a pound of fat - you can see where even little bits of activity add up to a lot in a hurry.

Core is key

I have been doing a ton of research in the area of "fastest way to get lean". It is kind of amusing (and just a little frustrating) how much material is out there on this topic. The most frustrating aspect is that there are SO many views - and it seems that every view contradicts every other view.

So - with a lot of time spent searching for a definitive answer - I thought I would put forward my own view (which is a distillation of what I have learned). Of course, this means yet another view is posted out on the internet!

That all being said - pretty much anything that gets you moving helps. Having said that - understanding what your goals are should influence what you should be doing.

For just dropping weight - nothing beats cardio. In particular - interval training. That absolutely kicks up your metabolism - and a great work out can be done in a very short period of time. The downside - you will lose muscle mass as well as fat. For many, that isn't a big deal. Think about the body type of long distance runners - that is what cardio as the primary exercise is guiding you to.

For those that want some definition - nothing beats strength training. Weightlifting - assuming you are stressing your muscles - will help you build muscles. Simple as that.

For the best of both - nothing beats strength training and focusing on core muscles (legs, mid-section and back). The idea is to perform exercises that bring in LOTS of muscle groups - the more the better.