I knew that once I stopped going out to eat when I travel that there was going to be trade offs. The up side: I’d have time to hit the gym, and I’d be eating store bought food. The down side: nearly total lack of social interaction.

My routine so far for this trip:

• wake up at 6am
• get ready for work
• have breakfast in the room
• work for 8–12 hours
• head directly to the gym
• cardio or weights, alternating days
• back to the hotel & shower
• dress in comfy clothes

At that point it’s 8 or 9pm. I figure I have 2–3 hours of time I could spend filling the gaps. On a “school night” some TV in the room, a video on my laptop, or something else I can turn off when it’s time to sleep is probably a good idea.

What about Friday night through Sunday?

Yesterday I decided to pick up a pedometer. I was reading through the documentation this morning before attaching it to my bod and noticed it “auto adjusts from walking to running strides.”

My first thought: “only if someone’s chasing me with a large knife.”

I’ll track my steps per day and update again when I’ve gotten some details to talk about. So far I can’t hardly tell I’m wearing the thing.

There’s a particularly awesome trainer at my local Ballys. Her physique reminds me of Demi Moore in 1997’s GI Jane. The sum of our interaction since 2005 has been a wave and a smile and the occasional, “are you still using this?” when she’s training someone out on the weight room floor.

Yesterday I was laying on my back doing my ab workout and she walked right over to me.

“Want a tip?” she asked, and walked over to grab one of the half-circle balance platforms and placed it under my feet.

I had been doing leg lifts and touching my heels all the way back to the ground before pulling them back up to my chest. She put the balance platform under my heels and it made a big difference. I wasn’t bouncing when I hit the floor any more and there was a lot more control in the motion.

I thanked her for the tidbit and we got to chatting about my struggle with losing weight, what kinds of things I’d been doing, and of course, the GeekFit Podcast. She was really nice about everything; said she’d noticed how hard I’d been working and that she remembered where I was when I started at Bally years ago.

It was a really nice bit of motivation and one that was perfectly timed with me heading to Chicago for 3 weeks this Sunday. I’m armed with my national gym membership, a reservation at an extended stay, and a determination to return either 6–8 lbs lighter or 1.5 – 2% lower in body fat. It’s going to be awesome.

The last few years I’ve tried just about every Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers frozen meals the local supermarket had to offer. Some of them were pretty tasty, and others, not so much. There are times when I’ll try one and it’s really bad. I’m talking about veggies that don’t taste like their fresh counterparts, meat that I can’t quite put in any of the major categories, and bread that comes out tasting more like styrofoam.

So I ate the 300–400 calorie meal. Yes, there was food. Yes, there were calories taken in, but they were really bad tasting calories. I just blew a perfectly good meal trying to expand my options. Do you ever get this overwhelming urge to declare a “do over”?

Two things seem to keep me from pulling the trigger on that “do over” meal that puts my total calories at double, if not more:

1. Eating small meals 5–6x a day, the next one is only 3 hrs away.
2. I can punt with fruit, nuts, or if I’m really feeling ripped off, a spoon of peanut butter.

The most effective trick I’ve learned is just getting the taste out of your mouth by brushing your teeth. It works twofold in that you have alien food taste away from your taste buds and you have minty breath to boot.

The extended stay routine has kept me away from restaurants. Mostly. Tonight my buddy Rob Schricker came through and picked me up we went into Seattle to meet up with some friends of his.

The challenge: french fries.

I don’t know what it is about french fries. I can choose the chicken sandwich over the burger. I can even pass on the ranch and stick with ketchup. French fries get me every time. I didn’t avoid them tonight, but I think in the future I’m definitely going to have to either opt for fruit or something.

What would you do? Shoot me an email and help me out.

It’s time again to change up the routine. I’ve been doing weights and cardio on alternating days and feel like I’ve hit a plateau. For a while I’m going to try circuit training again to mix things up. Today I hit the gym, started out with 10m of treadmill and then started one a machine and moved counter-clockwise. I got about halfway through the first rotation and started feeling sick to my stomach. I gave it a few minutes but still felt pretty ill so I decided to cut my workout short and grab a shower. My heart rate was up all the way through, so I definitely feel like I’m going to get some good results here.

Stay tuned…