Rotisserie Chickens

So I have been traveling lots with the family and my husband.  One of my greatest trials at keeping on track with weight loss and staying health is to fail at eating well and exercising are when I am away from home and out of my routine.  I am proud to say...not this time! Hubs and I have discovered the answer to all that travel...at least for us!  Rotisserie chickens.  

Ha Ha.  It's really more than just chickens... but that is how it started.  We take a cooler with us and have learned along the way to find grocery stores to purchase our snacks and even some meals!  I'm a small town girl and we don't have big city healthy food stores or amazing healthy grocery stores.  On this last trip we found a Whole Foods.  

<Pause sunbeam and angelic singing>

Whole Foods is THAT good.

Here is our hotel fridge after our trip.  Top left is a smoked chicken with barbeque sauce.  Top right is a ginormous salad that we will share.  Bottom left are two soups (local yumminess creole, seafood kind of soups), shrimp cocktail in the center and fruit on the bottom right.  Almost all hotels have microwaves these days at least in the lobby if not in your room.  You can also use the gas station microwaves if you need to!

That's another love of mine!  The Jimmy Johns Unwich.  No bread, lettuce leaves to hold in all the goodies.  I know the meat is processed and not "clean" but in a pinch it's a good choice and easy to eat while driving.

This little gem travels well too.  At the start of my trip I might eat it out of a paper cup (mixed it up at a rest stop) with some celery sticks I brought along.  At the hotel I mixed some up and then broke off hunks of banana to get that goodness into my mouth for a snack so I wouldn't over eat at dinner.  

I paid $7.50 for this bottle of water and cup of fruit!  Dang.  If I was smart I would have refilled my water bottle and stuck some of the fruit they served at breakfast in our fridge.  Sometimes the ambiance of purchasing a snack is worth it.  See the live Jazz band in the back ground?

Other snacks we take along?

bags of baby carrots-sometimes I need to mindlessly eat and they are crunchy and I don't have to feel guilty

cocoa roasted almonds-although a 1 oz serving is only about 20 nuts.  

microwave popcorn -pop it at a gas station microwave!

bananas, oranges, apples

I also cut up strawberries and cantaloupe before we left the last time.  

Having the containers was handy after another grocery stop too!

And back to the chickens.

Well, we have learned that the ones at Walmart are actually VERY yummy.

Hubs drives while I eat half.  Their Barbeque sauce is good (smokey) and we share a little cup of it.  They have napkins, forks, knives, everything.  Then when I am done we switch and I drive.  We remove the skin and I sometimes don't eat the wing or leg and leave it for him-he can have more calories than me.  Once we did this two days in a row lunch and dinner trying different chickens...Target, Walmart, Kroger, local grocers ha ha ha

I know. It's weird.  

We bought a bottle of BBQ for $1 that was pretty good actually and had like four meals for $25 for two people.  See...weird and cheap.  I'm winning ya'all over aren't I?

All in all at the end of vacation, I gain .4 (not even a half pound).  That is a victory.  In the past I would have gained 5 lbs and probably stopped all my healthy ways.

I enjoyed my meals while out on the town knowing I had done well on the trip down and back.  I continued my workouts.  I am learning to LOVE running in new places.  It has mixed up my training.  I have adopted some weight lifting strategies that allow me to do strength training with no weights if I need too.  

Does is seem humid here to you?  I think it's a bit humid.

Holy headbands that's gross.  I forgot my pony tail holder and there I am in foggy, humid, damp New Orleans running along the river.  It makes me laugh to look at it.

It's not a diet.  It's life.  Indulge if you want. 

But keeping the weight off and the work it takes to plan and do it is far worth the work.

Vacation shopping.  Honey can I get this?