travel for work

at the end of the week i am leaving for a business trip for a full week. i am going to be attending meetings and then going to dinners with various companies every night leaving little or no time to work out. i pretty much have the eating out thing down: sticking mostly to salads at lunch and dinner. what kind of easy travel foods can i throw in my suitcase to keep me on track for breakfasts and snacks? also is it possible to maintain my weight without doing any cardio for a week? how much should i be eating under my normal number to maintain my weight? any help would be SO appreciated!!

use the Expenditure tool to calculate your normal expenditure WITHOUT any activity (sedentary activity level) then subtract 500 cals (to keep a 500 cal deficit) and eat whatever than number is.

I.E.: for me - my Norm. Expenditure is 2100 without exercise at sedentary level - 500 cals to keep my deficit and that would allow me 1600 for the day to eat while keeping a 500 cal deficit and keeping me on track.

Do you have a laptop that you can take with you?  If so - perhaps researching the restaurant before you get there to see if they post their nutritional information - that can help you enjoy more than just a salad. 

For breakfast and snacks. I like South Beach Diet high protein cereal bars.  140 cals each and the cinnamon raisin is good and so is the chocolate. also - I like Slim Fast Optima shakes for breakfast - 180 cals and it keeps me full for a while.

Good luck! and Travel Safely!

I like to pack Kashi honey almond flax bars (140 cals, good protein and fiber content).

I usually travel to Mexico, so I can't really look up restaurant info, but I always order things with things that are easy to look up and I can estimate portions on.  I typically stay in a hotel with an exercise room, but I don't like to use them - most of the time they have machines I don't like to use, or I'm too unfamiliar with them.  Actually, at the Guadalajara Hilton, their treadmill menu is in Spanish, and my Spanish isn't good enough to know what it's saying.

I like to take DVDs to play on my laptop and I exercise in my room.  Yoga is the most space efficient, but if I move the furntiure around a little bit, I can do Tae Bo. 

It sounds like you won't have time in the evening, but what about in the AM before your meetings?

i am staying at the venetian in las vegas and they have a really great "health center" where i can do some cardio at least a couple times during the week, it just means waking up really early. i think my biggest thing is that i am maintaining my weight and am just worried about food choices because salad only goes so far...thank you so much for both of your imput. i will for sure get the bars you both suggested. one more question about the 500 calorie defecit: is that applicable for all people when they are wanting to lose weight or maintain weight? where does the 500 calorie defecit theory come from?

I'll second the Kashi bars. I traveled 100% of the time the first half of the year, and always packed enough of those to have one each day I was out.

Do you have a laptop with a DVD player in it? I used my work laptop and brought a cardio DVD and a power yoga DVD. I also packed my yoga mat (fold it instead of rolling it). So I worked out every morning and that way I didn't gain weight while I was on the road.

I would have my Kashi bar for breakfast and fruit from the hotel breakfast bar (if they had anything decent). For lunch I always had a salad with no meat or cheese since that's easy enough to control. For dinner, I'd have a normal dinner but eat just half of it.

Good luck!