dieting on the road (m)

It was the Eastern Sectional Championships this week and I had to follow my Weight Watchers diet from Room 305 in an Embassy Suites Hotel. 

There is an apartment complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts along Storrow Drive near Mass. General Hospital right in the heart of a heavily congested traffic intersection.  There's a famous sign there that says:  "If you lived here....you'd be home now".  

I decided this week that if I lived in an Embassy Suites Hotel, I'd be thin now.

Why?  Three reasons:

1. Personal Chef.  Every day I had the chef make me a veggie egg white omelet.  I also had a piece of fruit and a cup of tea.  I would not cook like this for myself every morning.  Plus the omelet filled me up through dinner time.  The chef and I became friends.  He greeted me daily with "veggie egg white, no fat, no tomatoes, no cheese, right?" Now I know how Oprah lost all that weight.  Staff.
2. No food in the room.  No snacking temptations.  I had a couple of those Weight Watchers candy bars with me, but they are so cloyingly sweet that one per day is more than enough.  It was like being at fat kids' camp.
3. Open floor plan.  Picture a large square with the courtyard in the middle of the ground floor and all the rooms around the square so that you can see every room.  Straight across from our room was the coach's room.  I had parents on either side of my room.  In other words, there is no privacy.  One night, I made light popcorn in the microwave.  Don't you think one of the mothers smelled it and knocked on my door and said "Can you have that on your diet? I'm just trying to help".  AAAAGGH.

The final ingredient for the week has nothing to do with the hotel per se, but was a big component to this week's weight loss: stress.  Watching your kid compete in this very solitary sport is extremely stressful.  One father turned to me and said "I'd rather testify before Congress" (he should know...he did testify before Congress on live television).  I felt my stomach churn like never before.

The good news is that I get to do this all over again in mid-January at Nationals.  That should be good for a 3-pound weight loss during that week of competition.