I’ve run into my first snafu with the pre-packaged meal plan diet – TRAVEL.  I travel often for my job.  This week was my first trip under the new plan.  My intentions were good.  I carved out a fourth of my suitcase for the packing of pre-packaged meals – breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.  I arrived at the hotel and was disheartened to discover no microwaves available.  I’m able to “rough it” pretty well, but I’m not willing to eat a cold box of red beans and rice. 

I looked at myself in the hotel room mirror and affirmed: I will make healthy choices from the “regular menu” at the hotel restaurant – something I’m going to need to do once I’m off the plan anyway.  However, “healthy choices” doesn’t translate well for a foodie.  Putting a fine dining menu in my hands is like cutting a line of crystal meth in front of an addict.  All sensible decisions fly out the window.  Soooo, for dinner last night, I ordered seared ahi tuna with a salad of baby beets, fennel and citrus.  If I had stopped there, I would have been golden.  However, that was just my starter.  For the main course, I couldn’t pass up the tender and richly unctuous duck confit.  Even the addition of the duck could be a salvageable healthy meal, but as soon as I sat down “they” were out to get me.  I was also presented with a amuse bouche of decadently creamy potato leek soup and, of course, freshly baked bread with butter and copious amounts of wine.  I scarcely made it out alive without ordering dessert.  Hanging my laurels on the tiny victory of avoiding the dessert trap, I waddled back to my room where I found a cheese and charcuterie plate complements of the hotel.  How did I have a chance?

Contrite, I started today with oatmeal and a piece of fruit.  Lunch consisted of a nice green salad and white bean soup. “I’m so great – I’m back on track,” I told myself. Dinner, unfortunately, avalanched quickly around me.  I ordered well – a winter fruit salad and pork tenderloin with brussel spouts, faro, and greens served with one glass of red wine.  As if my semi-healthy order was brandishing a gauntlet against the  foodie world, the restaurant broke my will with an additional small glass of white wine (the red didn’t “go” with my salad), a mid-course small plate of Italian soup and a prawn on roasted winter vegetables with its own second wine pairing – complements of the chef, of course and three ‘wafer thin” dessert bites.  Come on people, I can only take so much!  I ate and drank everything I was offered.  In the words of Hemmingway, it was good!

My snafu, sob!, has not been averted…