Working On The Road

eraweir

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some new friends, motivation, suggestions, whatever... just trying to figure myself out right now. Back in October, I started a new corporate training position where I am on the road either 4 days out of every week or 7 days straight followed by 7 days at home and I am having a kinda rough time being healthy on it. As much as possible, corporate will let me book hotels with "fitness centers", though sometimes that's just an old exercise bike and two free weights, so I do a lot of getting up and taking a 5 minute walk on every hour of my 12 hour shift and doing small space exercises in my hotel room. At least it's something!

Food is the hardest part. Sometimes I can get a small fridge, usually it doesn't happen. I've read suggestions for truckers to bring a hot plate/kettle/whatever, but 90% of the time I'm flying to my locations so I'm finding I don't have a TON of options of preparing my own food... I'll head to a grocery store and pick out pre-prepared veggies, Greek yogurt, granola, apples or whatever to cover over a meal per day. And then that leaves eating out. I eat out a TON. And I guess that's fine, though I vacillate between sticking to house salad&soup combos (which can get boring) or just doing small portions... Nothing really seems like the right choice. My clothes are all still fitting but I'm not really losing either.

I don't know. I'm not really sure if I'm looking for advice or if I'm just looking to see if anyone else is dealing with something similar and how they're doing it. Sometimes I feel like I'm not even sure what the "right" choices are anymore.

kls13la

Having to travel for work makes fitness a lot more difficult. I travel off and on for my job, and here are some things I do:

-- Plan meals ahead of time as much as possible. Other than going to the grocery store, I will often just bring healthy snacks with me -- i.e. protein bars, sandwich thins, a jar of peanut butter, dried fruit, etc. However, eating out is unavoidable. I look around my hotel ahead of time to find out what the food options are. I actually vastly prefer chain restaurants because at least then I get a calorie count. (Applebee's, for example, has a ton low calorie options. More and more chain restaurants are starting to follow suit.) I figure out a few different options for different fast food places, at various calories levels. (Not a bad idea for anyone, really, if you find yourself stuck in a bind.) I order some kind of grilled fish or chicken with steamed vegetables quite a bit when going out to "nicer" restaurants.

-- Exercise can be a challenge. If the hotel gym sucks, I will bring fitness DVDs to play on my laptop, or use videos on You Tube. You can also download Jillian Michaels videos from the iTunes store, if you have an iPad or iPhone. (I assume the same goes for the Android store.) I also like the Gorilla workout app. Or, there are plenty of body resistance strength workouts that you can print out on on the Internet and use in your hotel room. Walks/runs outdoors can also be planned in advance from different web sites (i.e. America's Running Routes). Sometimes you can also do a "free trial" at a local gym for a few days.

It is really hard, though. I'm about to head out of town for work for a few weeks and I'm worried my food diary is going to look insane.