On The Road – Day 2

Yesterday I talked about my travel day, in terms of eating and exercising.  Now that I’m here for my first full day, how did I do?

Let’s start with the training, which was a fiasco.  My diet fared better but I’ll talk about that second.

Day 2 Exercise

Where on earth are people’s heads?  I continue to be astounded at how top rated hotels have such crummy gyms.  I’m staying at Treasure Island, a huge hotel in Vegas (though not the most expensive) – I’m guessing 3000 people staying here.  And yet, their gym contained:

• 3 treadmills
• 1 bike
• 1 stepper
• Some dumbbells, no higher than 40 pounds
• Lots and lots of towels (that way, they probably had 1 towel per drop of sweat that people excreted doing the lame workouts there)

I guess flabbergasted is a good word for my reaction.

Now, those of you paying attention to my past rants about gyms while traveling will say “But Darrin, didn’t you call ahead to make sure you had access to a gym?“

Well, yes and no.

No, I didn’t call ahead to ask what my hotel’s gym had.

But I did call ahead to find out about the hotel next door – Trump’s hotel – and was told two key things:  a) they had free weights and barbells and b) as a Tresure Island guest, I could use their gym for free.  Beautiful!

Except, not beautiful.

I got up early and jogged over to Trump to arrive right at 6 am.

And was told, no, I can’t use their gym and whoever I had spoken to was wrong.

@&*!  I was so ticked off.  I should have gotten the name of the person who told me that, but water under the bridge.

So, I jogged back and did a lame workout at my hotel’s gym.  But I’ve got a bonus video for you on that coming later tonight if I can get it uploaded.

Day 2 Eating

I started the day off with some cottage cheese mixed with berries and protein powder.  Remember, as I mentioned yesterday, I have a fridge in my room and stopped at a grocery store when I landed.

Then, after my “workout”, I hit the hotel’s breakfast buffet.  If you’ve ever been to a casino city, you know that the breakfast buffets are INSANE!  There is so much food to choose from!  But I played it safe:

• 3 omelets, with lots of veggies (tomatoes, onions, peppers, spinach), no “breakfast meat” (yuck), one omelet was just egg whites so the total was 4 full eggs plus 3 egg whites
• 2 cups coffee (1 regular, 1 decaf)
• 1 glass milk
• 4 fresh slices of pineapple
• 2 slices rye toast (dry)
• and as a treat I ate half of a cinnamon roll

Now, this is a ton of food right?  Well, this is an advantage of following my workout plans – you can eat MORE food and actually burn more. It’s a win-win for someone like me who loves food.  I’ll write more about this in a future article but I can eat a ton of food and not gain fat because I eat “clean” and I combine intense weight lifting with cardio.  Plus, while I eat a lot of food, the calorie content isn’t actually super high – more like 3500 a day.  Also – I try to front-load my calories to be a) earlier in the day and b) centered around my workouts.

So that was my two breakfasts.

Now what about my two lunches?

I had packed protein powder for the trip and boy did it come in handy.  After I spoke (this trip is a speaking trip for my non-worldfitnessnetwork job), I was due for another meal at around 11:30 am local time.

But the lunch hall hadn’t opened.  So I bought a bottled water, got a cup, added protein powder, and ate a banana I packed.  Was it a fun meal?  No way.  Was it filling and nutritious?  You bet.

Lunch #2 was a box-lunch – chicken salad (just chicken strips with iceberg lettuce), an apple, a bag of chips and a bag of cookies.  Obviously, I ditched the chips and cookies (and most of the lettuce).  But I was still hungry and was totally worried about making it for another 3 hours.  I was doubly nervous, because even if I could last the 3 hours, I didn’t see any place to get more food then!

Turns out I had to resort to another protein bar.  I really try to only count something as a “meal” if it contains at least 20 g of protein and also has a vegetable (or fruit).  I was not happy about resorting to a “snack”, but it was the only option I had.  I choose my protein bars carefully, so it’s better than when most people pop a protein “candy” bar, but still I was disappointed.  I found some solace in the fact that it was under 300 calories and had 25 grams of protein so it was just enough to tide me over until dinner.

For dinner #1, I knew ahead of time that I was going to eat pizza, my favorite food.  But also, unfortunately, not a very healthy choice.  But this is my once a week carbolicious meal.  I was torn because I had planned on this being my dinner #1 back when I thought I would have had a great workout the same day.  since that didn’t happen, should I skip the pizza?  Nah….  I went for it anyway!

For dinner #2, I ate some fat-free cottage cheese, protein powder, and strawberries.  (I only ate a tiny bit because calorie-wise, the pizza dinner was high.)  But this mix was SOOOO good it was like a desert but without the guilt.

In a little bit I’ll share two videos you might find interesting…

Is this useful?  Questions?

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Related posts:

1. On The Road – Day 3
2. On The Road – Day 4
3. On The Road – Day 7

Tags: diet, traveling workouts