Hotel Breakfasts, Customer Meetings & a Sense of Uncertainty

Hotel Breakfasts, Customer Meetings & a Sense of Uncertainty

So, same old same old, I woke up, I got up and got ready to visit customer site for 2 meetings in Utrecht, and then I went down to breakfast.

I ordered tea, and got myself a yogurt (bio, but probably not low fat, they only have one sort of yogurts in my hotel), and 2 boiled eggs with ham and cherry tomatoes – not the most traditional of breakfasts but I needed syn free ham and eggs to cover the syns probably hidden in my yogurt, and the scrambled egg looked like it had cream in, and fried eggs are not ok – so, I think in the circumstances I chose as well as I could – but of course, I was still worried about the yogurt (but I ate it anyway). I took an apple and an orange with me as I don’t think I have a break for lunch today and I may well want them….

I forgot to tell you yesterday, not that it will have impacted you in any way– but, my satnav broke – I got to the Netherlands, plugged it in and it would not let me select anything on the top half of the screen – which given ‘navigate to’ is on the top – is very unhelpful. It has all my usual addresses for client sites, hotels, our office etc saved in their – so that was a tiny bit pants frankly. Anyway, I used the internet on my phone to find the addresses I needed, and google maps on the phone to navigate to the hotel – it was pretty good but drains the battery. So, I learnt a new skill, and need a new satnav.

I also used my phone to navigate to the clients this morning, and in case of having trouble with this new equipment / process (which I fully expected but didn’t happen) I arrived at customer site a little early, so I logged on to do some work, and the lovely receptionist bought me a coffee (I was very restrained and didnt eat the biscuit, but still a couple of syns):

Then off to my meetings, and well I was right about lunch, the break didn’t really happen so I ate my orange (I’m not going to put a picture of an orange, as I am pretty certain you all know what that looks like :) ).

After my meetings I rushed between the client site and my hotel to do a conference call I was not looking forward to. I thought there would be a fair amount of accusations and conflict on the call and I was wishing it over before it began, and then bizarrely it went really well and all was fine – no conflict, nothing untoward – I definitely did a small section of the happy dance when I finished that call.

And as if by magic it was 5.15pm by then, I had been sitting down in meetings pretty much all day, which meant if felt like a good idea to change and go down to the gym – 45 mins later I felt a little better. 30 minutes on the cross trainer and 15 on the bike – I usually run but my knee Is a little sore and I thought the other equipment might not be quite so high impact on it.

All day, even though I have been on plan – the tiny doubting voice has been on at me that I won’t lose this week – and I am trying to put things into perspective. I will not be able to go to my usual weigh in on Wednesday evening as I will still be here, BUT I can make the one on Friday morning. I will not be able to measure, plan and take the care I do at home with my food and syns, BUT I can make informed choices and try to compensate a little with less of the food and more of the exercise. Fingers crossed the +ve side wins as my Christmas wish for myself is to have a loss every week till Christmas, I don’t mind how small a loss – but a loss, and I will f eel a little crushed if I have an epic fail this week. Sigh.

I have a final conference call now – then I am free for the evening, which when you are on your own in a hotel is pretty damn dull frankly. My plan – maybe dinner, a swim (?), some TV and reading – blog completed and published and I am planning to do a little work on tomorrows blog – as I wanted to think about and find photos to show my journey a little more clearly, where I started, when I put on, me at my biggest, progress so far – which I think will be interesting for me at least, to put things in context – maybe even help keep me motivated, like writing to you every day does (thank you for that).

So after my final call dinner was very welcome ( I sat with the menu for some time actually, the problem was that I don’t know where the meat comes from (we all know I can’t eat that then!), the only fish on the menu I have tried before and it was a bit too fishy (I have no other explanation – it just was too fishy), and there are 4 vegetarian options: 1)Lasagne which I had yesterday 2) Pizza – not ok 3) Pasta stuffed with Ricotta which comes in a really creamy sauce so not ok 4) The Veggie burger with salad – but this comes with fries. Having had the fries before and knowing they are not that greasy or that there aren’t that many of them I opted for the burger tonight – and here it is:

So fingers crossed I made the right choice, and that my uncertainty about the scales this week proves unnecessary. Hope you all had a good on plan day x

Delays

Delays and Reflection

So, hubby and I were awake at 5.30am to check the storm damage and our travel potential – at that point there was no real update so we did the usual, tea.

Once the news started to filter in we realized the local main road was blocked by trees, the trains were not running till later in the day, and my flight was still re scheduled to the evening – so all in all not much we could do until things started moving – so hubby went into the garden and collected up the sizable branches that had managed to get blown there during the night and tidied them up – apart from that and the water that came down the chimney and made a puddle by the wood burner no real damage to speak of, thank heaven.

Breakfast was boring old muesli as I needed to get on with work. Hubby moved all his meetings in London to conference calls so I could hear him chatting away on the phone in his study, and I made my immediate Monday calls and carried out all of my usual tasks required before lunchtime.

Once the wind and rain stopped I also took the boys out for their wander round, and we surveyed the windy wet damage which thankfully all looked to be under control with people clearing up. Harry of course needed to sniff and shuffle through all new branch and leaf collections to assure himself they were acceptable. Henry waited impatiently and tried to pull me forward – so it felt like I had done some exercise by the time I got home again.

Lunch was beans and quorn sausages with cherry tomatoes (2 syns).

Then after doing the passport, ticket, money check I set off to the airport, where I had a tea and banana (resisting all the beautiful cakes).

I looked at my diary for the conference calls and meetings and given the potential for difficult conversations and conflict I felt a little like this:

 

Another short delay,  and then I travelled to the Netherlands, I didn’t arrive at my hotel till 9.30pm, and I was pretty tired – so I ordered a very late supper, veggie lasagne (yes that is a glass of wine, and yes it was needed).

A little TV in the form of BBC1 Ripper Street – as channels are a bit limited for English language here as you’d expect (I have never seen Ripper Street before but enjoyed it all the same), unfortunately I then caved in and ate a handful of the nuts in my room - so cross at myself, then a short read and off to sleep.

Sunday Stormy Sunday

Stormy Journeys

Woke up at 7.30am and my hubby went and made us tea, and bought it back to bed. So I had a lovely 30 mins playing on my iPad and drinking my tea to wake up nicely. Lovely. Then I struggled out of bed and prepared breakfast of sliced quorn sausages x 2 (2 syns), sliced baked potato from last night, mushrooms all in an omelette, accompanied by grilled tomato:

Well after that I managed to get to Zumba for 10am, my Sunday morning exercise fix. To be fair, I wasn’t really ‘feeling it’ this morning, I just knew I should go – so I did, I think that’s a major difference in me from years gone by, if I didn’t fancy exercise I would not have done it for anyone – but now I lean towards just getting on with it even when I don’t fancy doing so.

 Having zumba’d through my slight Sunday morning lethargy, I returned home, had a cup of tea and forced my achy muscles to head back out to walk the hounds. My son offered to help walk them, so at least I wasn’t trying to hold on to 3 leads with differing size and speed dogs on – which made it a far more pleasant walk.

Our house guest went home today, as her family are back from their holiday, so we headed back out to take her over to them…..then for a rest, feet up, a final cup of tea. Here is our house guest:

Unfortunately my rest was short lived, I would have cherished a short nap, but alas not to be – I had to change the beds, tidy my room, bit of hovering and pack my case to go to the Netherlands tomorrow morning. Now normally this would be fine, but given the storm warning out I was a little nervous about flying – which I am not normally, but as I was checking in on line, firstly it wouldn’t let me which was odd, then it seemed to check me in but when I checked my flight details it has moved me to a 5pm flight, when I was booked to go in the morning – so after some exploration turns out my flight is already cancelled and they have rebooked me for later in the day – so there we are, I have tomorrow to prepare for my flight and to work from home.

Having safely delivered Mia back to her family, and ticked the to do list in my head for the day, I started to think about dinner, and I really wanted a mini roast, so I made chicken breast, SW roast potatoes and parsnips, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and gravy – and it was delicious.

Blueberries and vanilla yogurt for pudding, which means I had another low syn day.

I am hoping I can keep up the good work whilst staying in a hotel this week. The good news is it has a lovely gym and pool, the bad news is it is hard to get on plan food as the chef puts all kinds of not listed items on your dinner – in line with most hotels I think. Well, I can but try.

White Spirit Mornings and Soggy afternoons

White Spirit Mornings and Soggy afternoons

Well, I would have liked to start my day with tea, but, I woke to the sound of Henry licking licking licking something – now I love my baby Labrador (well he’s nearly 5 years old, but still a baby), however he can be dumb as a box of frogs – so, suspicious, I went to investigate.

This week so far he has eaten a perfume tester resulting in much turmoil, and chewed up the lid to one of our lunch boxes, as well as having snapped his extendable lead, so it was with these acts of mischief in mind I went to find Henry. So, as we are decorating our home (very very slowly) there are unlikely articles around, and he had managed to put his paw into a high up glass containing a paint brush and white spirits – he was attempting to cover the act up (who knew labradors like to climb). So my morning actually started with a large bowl of soapy water and much cleaning of a chocolate paw…….after a call to find out what I should be doing and if I should be panicking.

He then smelt of lavender washing up liquid and went to sleep on a chair. Clearly exhausted by the excitement. After my tea, I took Henry, Harry and out current houseguest Mia (a Bijon we are looking after whilst my cousin is on holiday) for a walk by the river to ensure Henry really did lose all of the nasty substance.

Then I finally got another  tea, and breakfast in the form of a mushroom omlette with a slice of Leedhammer light (3 syns) on top.

I then quickly popped to Pets at Home to get Henry and Harrys food, bought Harry a new bed and rushed home to go to the gym. An hour of running and resistance training in the gym (I usually run outside but the combination of rain and mud pushed me towards the gym today) and by the time I got home it was 4.20pm – why do weekend days go SO fast? Well I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast so I grabbed a quick apple – but up with my lovely segmenting thing – still love that (apparently someone I work with uses the apple  segmenter to create potato wedges – I may try that).

Anyway, I was pretty sweaty so a long cold drink, one more tea, and a hot bath followed before I made our dinner and settled down to watch Strictly.

Dinner was paprika pork from the SW family feasts on a budget cook book – and very yummy it was too. No syns in dinner, no syns in my yogurt pudding, so plenty left for an options before bed. 

Sweet dreams and hope the storm tomorrow doesn’t do too much damage where you are x