Mental Preparation

I'm going on my first work trip next week. Starting on Sunday (yes, we're leaving on Valentine's Day), I'll be gone for a week. Where are we going? Somewhere warm? Nope, to snow-walloped Philadelphia. I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous.

First of all, I work from home, so my daily interaction with my coworkers or other employees is limited to e-mail/instant messenger and the occasional phone call. Now, I'll be with them for about 14 hours a day for a week. Apparently, we'll be having all our meals together, too. Yikes! That's a lot of togetherness!

It's also a lot of eating out. Our lunches will most likely be at the on site cafeteria. They almost always have a salad bar and some healthy sandwich options, so I'm not too concerned about that. Breakfast will be tough. I eat Greek yogurt every morning...next week, I have a feeling I'll be contending with something on the order of Panera. Dinner will most likely be a sit-down restaurant meal. I have no clue what restaurants are in the vicinity of our hotel, so there's not much scouting of menus I can do beforehand. My challenge will be to stick to the healthy eating rules I know: Grilled not fried, sauces on the side if at all, veggies not fries, etc. I just have to avoid eating badly out of stress.

I'm also concerned about having time to work out. When we meet for breakfast at 7:00, we have to be dressed and ready for the day. After the work day, we'll be having a dinner/planning meeting. When am I going to be able to visit the hotel fitness center (which is tiny, I might add)? At 5:00 a.m.? At midnight? I have to get at least a few workouts in. April 11 is rapidly approaching. To make away-from-home fitness as easy as possible, I'm taking my copy of Burn Fat Boost Metabolism. It doesn't require any weights, so I can do it in my hotel room from my laptop. I've also got several yoga podcasts on my iTunes. The tiny fitness center appears to have at least one mediocre treadmill. No matter how crazy my schedule is I'd like to get in at least 45 minutes of exercise a day. We'll be arriving at the hotel by around 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, so hopefully I can get in a really hard workout before the hard work even starts.

I'm betting the key to making this week successful (both professionally and health-wise) is having a plan and being mentally prepared. It's going to be a tough week, but if I can make fitness and eating right a priority in the middle of madness, I can do it any old day, right??