Leave it to me to go to a food city and bring my own.

 

Not my first choice.

A HUGE part of the commitment to compete is a commitment to your diet.  It’s not easy.  It’s not always fun. HOWEVER… abs are made in the kitchen.

 

This trip to has been especially hard for me because it’s my first with my new job… and I have a really fun team to hang out with.  So far I’ve been good, even working out twice in 12 hours due to scheduling.

Preparation is key.  This trip I packed up some old staples.  These are items that “save” me:

• Homemade fro-yo: I take single serving containers of plain Greek yogurt, add my on mix-ins, and re-cover them to freeze.  Freezing the yogurt makes it easier to get through security (it’s a solid) and it acts as an ice pack for your other foods.  And it’s tasty.  This week I had peanut flour-strawberry and vanilla-mango.
• Packaged foods: these are a great to have on had.  I pack up single-serving protein powders, bars, stevia, tuna, and rice cakes.
• Oatmeal: Usually I plan to get this from room service, but I wanted to try something new.  I pre-measured out my oats and adding in ginger and cinnamon.  All I need to do is add water/protein powder/hotel fruit to make oatmeal in my room!
• Jerky: I don’t often eat jerky, but Perky Jerky offered to send me sample of their (preservative-free) product.  I really like the turkey version only has 110 mg of sodium!  Score.

 

Of course I brought more… see below… 😉

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I’ve done detailed travel posts before, so this is WIAW travel food-edition going to be more of an overview.  I did manage some new (strange?) travel eats this time around.

Read on for my San Francisco treats, and then check out Jenn’s blog. for some more “normal” days of food.

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On the Plane:

Overnight oats in a jar make getting up early just a little easier.  These were packed with fig, cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla protein powder.

Yes, they made it through security.

 

Round 2 on the plane was the baked chicken from my food prep (recipe coming tomorrow), carrots, and airplane pretzels.

The fro-yo kept it nice and cold!

 

Hotel Breakfast:

This has become an art.  The Westin St. Francis has been fabulous with my crazy food requests.  They brought up apple cider vinegar so I could have my morning cocktail!!!  I downed that along with half a muffin (brought from home) to fuel a morning workout.  Check out the view I woke up to!

Then the full meal was delivered: plain oats with a side of berries, cinnamon, and coffee.  I mixed in my own protein powder, and added coffee to thin it out.  Perfection!

 

Other Mini-Meals:

You can actually find acceptable food to eat in cities like SF.  I got to enjoy a kale-barley salad with chickpeas and shrimp for lunch on our first day here:

 

This was the peanut flour and strawberry fro-yo creation I brought from home.  Can you tell how fantastically frozen it was?!

I ended up having to do my workout at midnight east coast time… this was just the treat I needed after.  I spent half the workout thinking about it.

 

This next snack happened at the conference.  People seemed a little surprised when they discovered I brought the egg from home.  I can’t imagine why…

It turns out hard-boiled egg travels really well!  Tomato Brownies travel well too.  I took it straight from my freezer from home, and by day two it had thawed and tasted delicious!  I didn’t reveal the secret ingredient to my co-workers.  They’d have been too jealous. 😉

 

Of course, there have been other eats.  When we go to restaurants I order veggies with a plain grilled protein or I bust out my “emergency” tuna.  It’s really no too hard too eat out (temptation side).

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If anyone wants to send random tweets of support and keep me honest… that wouldn’t suck. 😉

Do you struggle with diet?  It’s the hardest part about competing for me!

Do you like hard-boiled eggs?  This was my first time making them for myself!