My Battle with Hotel Mini Bar Snacks

I bet some of you who travel for business will be able to relate to my story. It involves being out of your environment, being slightly stressed, not having your usual foods around and having a mini bar stocked with tempting goodies 10 feet from your reach. Read on to hear about my battle with the mini bar.

 Here was the sceniero:
I worked all day in NYC and then ran to catch a train to Baltimore for an awesome conference called FitBloggin. I had been hired to be a nutrition spokesperson for a new exercise/nutrition campaign (more on this in an upcoming post!) The next day I was going to be in a video on how to fuel your workouts  as well as give a lecture on sports nutrition. Back to the scene at the hotel … I arrived at the hotel kind of late. I wasn’t really hungry as I had eaten on the train.  I was relaxing in the hotel room when suddenly I spotted the mini bar. Of course I had to open it just to see what was there. Obviously it was loaded with tempting mini bar snacks.

My battle with the mini bar
I happen to be a chocoholic and have trouble controlling my intake. While I eat a few mini chocolates daily, I make it a point not to keep chocolates in my environment. That would be pure trouble for me. Now here I am in a hotel room with a mini fridge full of tempting treats. I examined everything in the mini bar and closed the door. But the damage had been done – now I had chocolate on the brain! A whole dialogue was going on in my head including:
“You don’t need anything in there. You aren’t even hungry”  
“But I really want some chocolate”

and the worst thought of all … I knew my hotel room was being paid for by the company that had hired me. “WHAT WOULD THEY THINK WHEN THEY GOT THE BILL AND SAW THAT THE NUTRITIONIST ATE CANDY FROM THE MINI BAR?”  A total oxymoron!  I know this thought is ridiculous and they could probably care less what I ate, but those were my thoughts.

Facebook to the rescue?
So being the social media creature that I am, I had to post my dilemma on facebook. I actually got some thoughtful answers like “eat peanut M&M’s for protein and red wine is good for something,”  “close the door,”  “drink”.

The outcome
The good news is that I was able to have only one candy bar. I chose the Kit Kat. The funny thing is that I thought of going to the hotel gift shop to see if they had a Kit Kat to replace the one I ate in the mini bar. But then I thought they (the hotel workers cleaning the room) might know it wasn’t the same one. Ok so now you are probably thinking I am a bit crazy. It turns out the next day was very busy and fun … so I totally forgot about the mini bar (and my silly plan about replacing the candy bar). That next night I didn’t even think about looking inside the mini bar again. I guess I had gotten it out of my system!

Lesson learned
Not sure that there was a lesson learned here, except to say that eating one candy bar is not the end of the world. I know that many people have all or nothing attitudes. Once they deviate from their perceived healthy eating plan, the rest of the day is a free for all. My advice is that we are all human. If you slip on occasion, let it go and get back track. For  me that one candy bar was not so bad. But going to town on the rest of the mini bar would have been.   Lastly, if nothing else, this post shows you that even nutritionists have weaknesses when it comes to food!