This week I find myself in the tropical (read: sweltering humid heat) of Orlando Florida as I'm presenting at Collaborate 11 on Tuesday morning.

Travelling always has an effect on my training in two ways:

  1. It's much harder to find time to squeeze in the good workouts I desire, and if I do find the time, the lack of familiarity with the environment makes it hard to come up with good routes for my sessions. Thankfully, I had a bumper week this week on the mileage front, so I can take things a bit easier next week. A series of long gentle runs should be sufficient to allow my body to recover after last week's efforts, provided the heat doesn't kill me first.
  2. My diet goes to pot. Restaurant food just isn't the same as home cooked food and often contains way more calories and "bad stuff". I also love the opportunity to try new food when in foreign countries (especially when I'm expensing my meals 😉 ) and I find I turn to the plethora of junk foods and sweets we don't get in the UK just to see what they're like.

Not this time. This time I'm making a concerted effort to keep my diet in check. No fast food and where possible no chips, potatoes, rice or bread. I've chosen these four ingredients to concentrate on as they are the fillers almost every restaurant uses to fill their plates. This inevitably leads to over eating and by the end of the week, the last thing I want to eat is chips, potatoes, rice or bread. Instead I'm asking for substitutes: extra veggies, beans, salad or nothing and I'll add a side salad. Oh yes, and NO fizzy pop. The US has gargantuan sized soft drinks and in this heat I can easily see myself gulping loads of fizzy pop, especially Mountain Dew and Coke, if I'm not careful. Instead I'm having beer (they're smaller than in the UK) and water only.

If I'm diligent with this, I think I may actually lose weight this week, eat better and feel better for it. I'm also hoping it will help with the jetlag and accordingly I've set it as a mini-goal for myself. If I don't lose any weight, so what, but if I do I suspect I'll feel better in the long run than I normally do when cross-timezone travelling.

Update - 19 April 2011: I can confirm I did indeed lose weight whilst travelling on business. Weighed myself today and clocked in at 80.7, down from 81.7. I think this is the first time I've lost weight whilst travelling, especially to the US.