Calorie Warrior

To be honest I wasn’t exactly dieting in California. My original trip was planned from a Wednesday night and I was coming back on the red eye Sunday night. This would of been about four days where I planned to eat what i want and exercise in the form of hiking with my brother and walking around Hollywood.

Weather Problems

The first problem was the fact that Los Angeles and much of the west coats was completely rained out. Apparently the day I arrived LA was expecting to get more rain in that weekend then they’ve gotten in total over the last couple years. It was cold and wet until Sunday making it impossible to get out and do anything. Most of the trip was spent in my brothers apartment watching Netflix.

The other problem was that NY was expecting a super snow storm Sunday Afternoon into Monday afternoon. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have a problem with my flight until I woke up Sunday morning to an email from Virgin America letting me know my flight was cancelled. Check out the weather report!

I spent hours on the phone with Virgin America trying to reschedule the flight but couldn’t talk to anyone. Amy was pretty pissed knowing that Id have an extended vacation and she’d be stuck home pregnant with a driveway full of snow.

Low and behold the weather was wrong and we pretty much got a dusting. My new flight was scheduled for Tuesday night giving me an extra to days. This was OK but my brother had to go back to work Monday leaving me by myself for two days.

Dieting in California

Lets talk about the food part of the trip. Before I went I knew that this would be a problem because LA has great food but my brother was also doing paleo. For the most part I did my best to track calories but ate whatever I wanted within my range. It started when I got to the airport…. I didn’t eat anything that entire day and opted for a #2 from Mcdonals. Not my best choice but it was foo and i was on vacation. I didn’t super size it or anything. I counted the calories which still put me under 1,000 for the day. I grabbed two Kind Bars for the flight in case I got hungry. I’m not going to do a food play by play here.

For the rest of the trip I either ate food my bro cooked which was mostly breakfast or we’d go out to eat. We didn’t order appetizers and I got whatever Id want. Restaurants ranged from Sushi, Brazilian BBQ, Sandwiches to Burgers. I didn’t have dessert anywhere or snack on anything but grapes in his apartment. I stuck with diet soda, unsweetened Iced Tea and water. We only went out drinking one night which consisted of Captain and Diet coke for me. I tried to log everything.

I even took pictures of some of the meals to share on the blog….

Food Pics

This is the typical Paleo breakfast my brother eats every day. It consists of two eggs, bacon and half a baked avocado.

This is a salad place we went for lunch. Its just a giant all you can eat salad bar but they had soup, macaroni and desserts. You can see my salad blow but I didn’t take a picture of my mini muffin.

This was a homemade Paleo dinner with steak, roasted tomatoes and mashed cauliflower loaded with garlic and parsley.

Another Breakfast.

This was my sandwich from Mendocino Farms. Its grilled chicken with prosciutto and candied walnuts on cibatta.

This is a personal pizza and a sugar free soda I got at a place called EVO. Pizza was really thin and about 10” across with pepper, sausage and onion.

Fitness

I didn’t go to the gym while I was away that’s for sure. But… yes my bro has dragged me to the gym with him when I visit. I figured being outside and walking around would be more than I needed. Unfortunately because of the rain and being stuck inside for the beginning of the trip there wasn’t much walking.

As soon as it was nice out I wanted to hit the streets. I walked around Hollywood in the morning to get my coffee and run some errands. Later that day my brother and I walked up to Hollywood Boulevard to see where they shot the Academy Awards. This was all just casual walking around and lots of fun. Surprisingly I blew away any day I was on the treadmill according to the Fitbit.

Check out these stats:

Hollywood Walking

Over 21,000 steps!! I got a notification from my Fitbit when I hit 15,000 and again when I hit 20,000 congratulating me for the achievement.

Look at the calorie burn of just being active and looking around and stuff. This is so different then living at home stuck at a computer!

I only ate over my calories one day on the vacation and this day surely made up for it. Its like completely backwards as to watching how much food you take in and trying to exercise it out. This way you burn loads of calories and would have to eat them back.

My brother walks to work every single day which is about 3+ more miles. Each way takes him less than 20 minutes and his body loves him for it.

Sharing this pictures makes me think how much people walk around when they go on vacation and visit places that require them to walk around and site see. I think this is why I didn’t do so much damage on the cruise ship buffet on my honeymoon! We walked from the time we woke up until it was time to get back on the ship.

The second thing this makes me think is how much of an inactive lifestyle I live. If I walked to work everyday or even ran some errands without my car Id be more active and burning way more calories. Its too bad that where I lie has crappy weather and most amenities are too far to walk mainly because of the time it would take.

More than site seeing

If you think those stats are inflated just because we were seeing sites your wrong!. The next day I walked my brother to work, walked to get all my meals, walked to the post office to send a package home and I still blew my treadmill days off the charts.

Here is that screen shot:

California Lifestyle

This shot gives you a good idea of how active my brother is. He lives an urban lifestyle and does lots of walking.

Would I be skinnier if I lived in LA? Who knows, but I do know Id be much more active naturally. California especially has no rainy days (except for when I visit) so you have nearly 365 beautiful days a year to be outside enjoying life.

I was really impressed with my Fitbit too because I left with it fully charged and the battery lasted the entire time. The only complaint I have is that it didn’t recognize the 3 hour time difference. This isn’t the Fitbits fault but it kind of sucked that my stats would reset at 9:00 at night and all the walking we did after that registered for the next day.

Back to NY

Now that I’m back home I have to get back on the wagon and start counting calories and eating better. I also have to get myself back into a gym routine. I really hoped to be in the 230’s at this point and wanted to start weight training but my weights pretty stuck in this range. I’ll keep you guys updated.