My mega long trip of all things carbs, soda and lots of blisters. 

Welcome back me!! My husband (yes, husband now woohoo) have just gotten back from our Part 2 Honeymoon – travelling the USA, Cuba and Mexico for 2 months. Before I left I was a bit anxious about a few things, my business/clients, my fitness and health. I thought I would share my experience with you.

Before leaving for USA I heard a lot of stories about the enormous meal and drink sizes, and how all Americans are obese. This is so not true. Our first stop was San Francisco and we were spoiled for choice with small cafes offering organic produce. In fact we noticed a big push for organic and recycling. Of course there were the fast food joints, but it’s your decision to choose it or not.

In LA there was a mixture of perfectly bronzed thin toned bikini clad girls with their tiny short shorts and barely there tops. Muscle men and then the not so fit and healthy looking. At Muscle Beach Santa Monica we could have watched the athletic display all day. There were people on swings, bars, slack lines, and on a patch of grass, gymnasts, yogis, martial arts all crammed together. The activity was awesome!!

Not being able to cook for myself and have access to healthy snacks whenever I wanted was quite challenging.  During our road trips, we got pretty desperate and would eat whatever was on offer in a small town. All the airplane trips, waiting at airports, waiting for buses, travelling on buses, driving, driving and more driving – was quite challenging from a flexibility point of view too.

Having a fitness centre in a couple of our hotels helped. We found the best thing for us though was having a Fitbit. We were able to track our steps and activity so if we were having a lazy day we knew we had to go for a walk. This didn’t happen often though as we avergaed 15-20,000 steps a day doing our touristy thing!

A lot of things surprised me about our trip to USA.

• People were a lot friendlier than i’d been lead to believe. I like the fact that people just talked to each other wherever they were. We had some great conversations on the subway in New York.
• Yes some of the portions were mind blowing, the drink sizes were a bit over the top as well.
• There’s a lot of cheese…. in Subway I had 5 people ask me what type of cheese I wanted even though I kept saying no cheese.  It seemed funny that they couldn’t understand me NOT wanting cheese. Yes there’s a lot of cheese on the menu but hey it’s your choice whether you choose it or not. Not everything had cheese.
• You get over fried food VERY quickly.
• Dunkin Donuts aren’t very good.
• I am suuuuuper happy that we don’t have easy access to peanut butter M&Ms…. yes it was my downfall and i’ll admit it. I liked those things!!
• BUFFALO WINGS!!!!!!
• U.S.A is so diverse, we saw a lot of the county, it’s contrasts, it’s beauty and the differences between people and places.

Going from the ever so cool and vibey New Orleans with it’s flavoursome food to Cuba was a shock. Food is not a drawcard for Cuba, lonley planet will tell you it’s food is quite bland and they’re right. I have never craved fresh vegetables so much in my life. Lots of carbs, pastry, rice and whatever you could get your hands on as there were no grocery shops, not as we know them anyway. I think it would have helped a great deal if I knew Spanish. I will say however a big high five to their traditional beans and rice and I have already looked up on google how to make it.

Staying in a Mexican ecolodge in Tulum was interesting….. hahaha although we really appreciated the fresh fruit and eggs. If there hadn’t been terrential rain for the majority of our stay it would have been a wonderful place.

Going from these places where you had limited access to things to New York where you could have whatever you wanted at any time of day was like a dream. We explored so much, the blisters building on existing blisters on my toes were testament to that. Simply walking everywhere and exploring was a great way to stay on top of weight gain.

I’m not embarrassed to say I put on 2 kg from the trip, but I figured I came out pretty well considering I was away for 2 months. I ate, I enjoyed and now it’s time to shed that excess off.

Here are some things we did to avoid over indulging and blowing out whilst travelling. Hopefully they will help you too when travelling!

• Keep water bottles with you always. I made sure we drank a lot of water., we travelled and flew a lot, we were in countries where you couldn’t drink the water. Bottled water is your friend!
• Using the Fitbit to monitor our activity. We were able to get on top of lazy days by monitoring our steps and going for walks if necessary. So perhaps think about taking a long a pedometre or something similar to keep yourself in check.
• Using fitness centres whenever you have access. By week 3 of the trip I was really missing my weights and thankfully our hotel in New Orleans had a great fitness centre. Other centres usually just contained a treadmill and bike so we chose to get out and walk instead. Try and get into the habit of just doing something everyday, it doesn’t have to be a super circuit, just something.
• Being mindful of what we were eating. The novelty of naughty food got very boring very quickly and left us feeling bloated and sick. So get over it and think about what you’re putting in your body.
• You don’t have to eat it all! Stopping when I was full not when my plate was clean was important as some of the serving sizes were quite large.
• Say no to cheese! I made a decision that I would not waste my fat allowance on having cheese with everything. If I was going to blow out I wanted to do it with peanut butter M&Ms – yes I just admitted that! lol So choose your indulgences.
• Balancing our meals. We found that we averaged only 2 meals a day. We didn’t eat for the sake of it and if we had a big lunch and weren’t hungry for dinner, that was ok.
• Stock up on snacks. I was always really happy to find a grocery store wherever we were staying as I could access ‘normal’ foods. I became a fan of buying bags of carrots and using them for snacks, berries, fruit and muesli  bars. Snacks that could last a  few days and didn’t need a fridge were really helpful and kept us from overeating. Remember sometimes all it takes is having a snack to curb those cravings and stop you from overeating.
• If you need to rest, do it. Halfway through our New York stay my legs were constantly aching, we’d been away for over a month and the constant walking (and walking funny with blisters) was starting to aggravate an old hip injury too. So I took a nothing day. We slept and watched tv and just totally lazed around. It was the best thing for our legs and were able to tackle the rest of our stay with fresh legs. Listen to your body.

After a holiday clients always ask me did I eat naughty and get excited when I say yes. Yes I indulged on our holiday. I drank soda (yep, calling soft drink soda now) without thinking, would magically make peanut butter M&Ms disappear and ate way more bread than I care to admit. It also made me really think about my health though. These patterns of eating didn’t feel normal, like it should be the way you eat all the time. They made me feel bloated and sluggish and then hyper and then sluggish again and then yuck. Sure these things can be great every now and again, life’s too short to be too restricted or boring. You really don’t appreciate good healthy food though until you eat crap all the time. Two examples of this was being given a fresh banana in Cuba and a big bowl of yummy crisp garlic veggies in Las Vegas. They tasted so good I wanted to cry, anyone would have thought i’d been starved hahaha

 

Bring on the veggies!! (p.s don’t say veggies to waitors in America, they don’t understand and may look at you funny!)