Stress and Travel

Last week, I traveled to Los Angeles for work. I knew that I'd be missing lunch on my flight out, so I made sure to eat a good breakfast with plenty of eggs and butter and avocado. It worked. I wasn't hungry at all during the day. Of course, sleeping through most of the flight helped, too.

We had a challenge trying to find someplace to eat in Pasadena that evening, plus we were trying to hold off until at least 5:00 Pacific time, so that we'd be on schedule with the local time. I hate eating dinner at 3:00 local time. I still wasn't hungry, at least not with the typical hunger pangs, but I was definitely feeling the mental fog of not having had anything to eat for 12 hours. I've been practicing intermittent fasting on an (what else?) intermittent schedule. It's not something I'm fond of, as a rule, but I can do it. I like that I'm not hungry when I'm forced to skip a meal.

We finally found a microbrew pub, and I did good. I had a steak salad with a pickled, fried egg (which was very yummy). Even though I ate until I was stuffed, I didn't have that horrible, bloated, sick feeling you get when you overeat on carbs. Within an hour, I felt fine again, and shortly after that, I was asleep.

Unfortunately, Mr. Grok was quite sick while I was gone, having suffered a bout of food poisoning, plus some other gastro problems, and he was taking care of Baby Grok. He wasn't doing well at all, and the stress of being away from home and knowing that your SO is in a bad way, and worrying about the well-being of your baby is very, very stressful.

As the week went on, and Mr. Grok got sicker, I got more stressed. Within a couple days, I was too stressed out to eat. It was a chore to eat eggs at breakfast, I skipped lunch, and dinner the last two nights only happened because I indulged in some wine and drinks that relaxed me enough to have some (high class) bar food. The last day, I think I subsisted on coffee, rum and lobster corn dogs. I even looked at the donuts and brownies they put out at the conference, something that normally I would have had a really hard time staying away from. But I didn't want any of them. I think it was partly the stress, but also because I've finally gotten a lot of the carb and sugar cravings out of my system. I did break down and eat one brownie over a couple of days, but I still consider that a big success over the way I used to eat.

The last day was the worst. We were flying home, Mr. Grok was sick and not answering his cell phone. I was unable to eat breakfast, and finally had some McD's chicken fingers right before the flight.

When I finally got home, things weren't as bad as they could have been. Mental note to self: keep working on the relaxation techniques.

Polished off a couple glasses of wine, ordered Chinese wonton soup for dinner and set about trying to get my life back in order.

I ended up losing 3 pounds last week. We'll see if it stays off. I've been stuck at this stupid plateau for 8 weeks. Finally on Monday, I was hungry for the first time in well over a week. I guess my system is getting back to regular, and probably wanting extra calories to make up for what it didn't eat last week.

Well, one thing at a time. I'm proud of the fact that even during times of severe stress, I didn't turn to food and sweets like I used to.