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The comfort zone: "when I travel for work, all my healthy-eating and fitness intentions fly south in seconds."

Jacqui Stafford

When it comes to eating healthfully, I have to admit that monotony works for me. I attribute my slow but mostly steady weight loss to finally adopting less-chaotic eating patterns. By munching on the same yogurt and high-fiber cereal for breakfast, the same spinach salad from the same deli for lunch, the same Clif Bar (I've eaten enough of them that I might as well start investing in the company) for a snack and, for dinner, the same repertoire of healthful recipes I learned to make in a recent cooking class, I've been able to mostly maintain the weight I've lost. What I eat, my fellow weight-challenged friends, may not be everyone's idea of food nirvana, but it seems to be working for me.

That is, until I'm removed from the comfort zone of my regular routine. When I travel for work, all my healthy-eating and fitness intentions fly south in seconds. Mix together a few time zones and several business dinners and cocktail parties and it's easy to see how travel quickly becomes a recipe for weight-loss disaster.

Why nibble angelically on yogurt and cereal when that lavish, Danish-pastry-laden hotel breakfast buffet looks so much more appealing? Who's to know if I slip up a little? (Reality check: One slip won't matter; an entire week's worth of slips will.) Hotel mini-bars are yet one more land mine for me.

With still another frenetic travel schedule looming, I make up my mind to stick to my good eating and exercise habits. So before a five-day business trip to Miami and Detroit, I get some expert advice and devise a plan.

"Exercise first thing in the morning," urges my trainer, Keith Veri. "It will set you up for the rest of the day and you'll be less likely to find an excuse." He's right, of course. Keith gives me a travel workout schedule that involves circuits of push-ups, squats and lunges that I can do in my hotel room.

Suki Hertz, M.S., R.D., my nutritionist, advises me on how to pack: "Stuff a few energy bars around the edge of your carry-on so you don't find yourself ravenous." She also recommends that I order a chef's salad for the mini-fridge as soon as I get to my hotel room. "The salad is filling, and the protein in the eggs may help stave off a binge," she explains.

During the trip, you could spot me on my pre-breakfast-meeting jogs along Miami Beach and at my pre-dinner half-hour workouts in the thumbnail-sized hotel gym in Detroit. Yet, while a few energy bars worked splendidly as snacks, not everything I planned ticked along like clockwork.

Suki's solution of a binge-reducing chef's salad? Er, no. I ordered it, but the salad remained in the mini-fridge untouched while the tantalizing offerings at the buffet got the better of me on more than one occasion. While I can attest to making huge strides in at least recognizing my danger zones, I've still got far to go before I can truly sidestep all of the minefields that threaten while traveling.

Yet my prognosis is heartening: However hectic my schedule, I make sure to get in the workouts before the day is over. And my consciousness has been raised so I'm now aware of those moments when I indulge. If I'm not dropping dress sizes as hastily as a starlet before a Hollywood premiere--the way I'd once expected to--well, slow and steady will just have to do instead.

WHAT I LEARNED

1. Take a stash of healthful snacks everywhere you go and don't allow yourself to get ravenous.

2. When you're on the road, do your workout routine first thing, so you won't get derailed or find yourself too tired for it later in the day.

3. Remove temptation by not taking the hotel mini-bar key when you check in.

NEXT MONTH

The binge monster rears its ugly head; how Jacqui deals with food during a stressful time.

then

month 1 Height: 5'4"

Weight: 156 lbs. Body fat: 33%

V[O.sub.2] max*: 41.9 ml/kg/min

Aerobic fitness: above average

Resting blood pressure: 120/80

Cholesterol: 213 (borderline high)

month 4 Weight: 149 lbs.

Net pounds lost: 7

Body fat: 28.5%

Net body fat lost: 4.5%

month 8 Weight: 141 lbs.

Net pounds lost: 15

Body fat: 24%

Net body fat lost: 9%

now

month 9

Weight: 144 lbs.

Net pounds lost: 12

Body fat: 24%

Net body fat lost: 9%

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