I hate it when people are nice to me.
Well, that’s a pretty ridiculous statement, but there are times that the best of intentions can go a long way into leading to bad choices. Something about the road to you-know-where being paved with good intentions. Particularly when those intentions take the shape of cookies.
So I travel a lot. I travel a ridiculous “a lot”. As a result, people, particularly at hotels, often make a big effort to be nice to me. Either they feel sorry for me for travelling so much or they want even MORE of my business. Last week, I inadvertently had the opportunity to use my travel to self-experiment. I had two trips, one in Arlington, VA and the other in Boston, MA.
The first trip to Virginia started on a Sunday night with me walking into my hotel room and being greeted by a huge plate of insanely large and appealing cookies on the desk. “Welcome Mr. Kirchhoff!”. My first reaction was to shriek as though I had just seen a mouse with blood dripping from its little mouse teeth. I had a split second to react. What should I do? Stand on a chair and scream for help? Tell myself that I’m too strong to bend to the cookies, and let them stay in the room untouched. Fortunately, I chose door number three, and I quickly grabbed the plate and showed it the door, placing the cookies in the hall to tempt some other slow witted traveller.
The second trip to Boston went the same way with exactly the same greeting of a cookie plate. In this trip, I might have said hello to a glass of wine before I got to my room, so my judgment deflector shields were down. I let the cookie plate stay in the room.
So what happened? On trip number one, I had no cookies. On trip number two, I had three cookies. With the cookies sitting in the room, it was only a matter of time until I would fold like a cheap suit, and fold I did.
This is what cookies looked like in ancient Greece…
Reams and reams of research would now tell me that I never really had a chance in the Boston room. When we sit in front of our sweets, in plain view, it’s only a matter of time before they seduce us with their Siren songs and send us crashing into their crumbly nugget rocks. We need to be more like Odysseus and bind our ears shut so we don’t hear their horrid music. In this case, hiding them (childish) or merely setting them outside is clearly the way to go.
So now I’m writing this at JFK airport where I am getting ready to head to London for two days. I’m then in Atlanta followed by San Francisco. I will be in many more hotel rooms over the next ten days than in my own bed. In addition to being a little homesick, I will be in my familiar danger zone of being in rooms with minibars and cookie plates. I think it would be in bad form to put the entire minibar into the hallway, so I will need a plan B.
Therefore, I am formally writing my plan for the next week. It’s pretty simple: I will not eat in my hotel room after dinner unless I order up some fruit. Further, I will bind myself to this pledge by confessing via Twitter each day I travel whether I lived up to the challenge. My theory is that I cannot always mold my environment, so I need a second, backup weapon, and that is making myself publically accountable.
I read somewhere that if you actually write your plan down, you are much more likely to stick with it. I hope that’s true!
Look for me on Twitter to see whether I can man up to the challenge.
Cheers,
Dave
Thanks for this David, an oft-discussed forum topic and worth chiming in on. My job doesn’t take me travelling too often, but I *do* work at a lot of events, often run by very wonderful, very hospitable people who leave cakes, biscuits, chocolates or sweets at my work station and also provide breakfast, cookies, lunch, cookies, post-event drinks and cookies.
In this case though, unlike a hotel room where you can remove the offending items or squirt them with soap to render them inedible (unless you get desperate) then there’s little that can be done to block the temptation. Even when I politely decline when directly offered, I’m not overweight any more, so there’s almost always a well-meaning but deeply unhelpful comment and encouragement to eat all the things.
I’m in London on Wednesday myself and the thought of how to avoid de-railing foods fills me with dread when the event should be an enjoyable experience. Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, I will have PMT which is like the siren song except now the sirens have canons and they nod at the plate of cookies while lighting a match. Joy. If all else fails, I fully intend to stand on chairs screaming in the presence of chocolate.
PS. Caption on the painting is brilliant.
I travel a lot too, and work in a camp environment and must walk past a wall of cookies, bars & cinnamon rolls daily. Tomorrow I face being trapped in a conference room with catering. However I also realize WW has become my favorite charity so I need to but the focus on high beam as I want to get to goal. I do call my blog wwforlife as it’s a lifestyle not a diet.
Hmm, my family visited today and I made choc-chip fudge cookies. The leftovers are sitting there in their tupperware …. calling … calling …
I blame it on the wine, not the well intentioned hospitality staff
Overall I think you did well. As a lifetimer of 4 months, the idea is that we can stop without eating the whole plate. So 3 is more than one or none, but from my previous life before ww, Boston was a win.
We can all identify! I’ll bet you that your hotels appreciate your business enough that they would refrain from leaving cookies if you asked – especially if they are a chain that keeps notes on customer preferences. Maybe they’d even leave you a carrot!
And I loved your book!
Taking the ovvereiw, this post is first class
I ran into a similar situation at my local Dunkin Donuts. I love their coffee so while working at my old job I used to stop in for my morning fix daily. After quitting that job, I didn’t go in there for quite some time, as it was no longer on my daily route. Recently, I was in the neighborhood and stopped in. The gentleman behind the counter was so excited to see me he super-sized my iced coffee and offered me FREE DONUTS in an attempt to be “nice”! This is not nice. This is very very mean. I managed to decline and walk out, and i dint think I will return any time soon.
Check out http://www.sizezerokitchen.com for recipes and tips to stay on the ww plan
I feel you here as a fellow traveler, David! A plan is essential to success. I also find that my willpower starts strong but can be weakened by multiple interactions with temptation. I try to minimize said temptations as much as possible, but it’s sometimes out of my control. But going in with your “situational awareness” about you can be a huge help in finding strength to slay the temptation beasts.
I am heading to San Fran next week- when will you be in the city? Just being in the same zipcode as you excites this WW brand champion and fanatic more than it rightfully should
Saturday through Monday. Just look for the open hotel window with plates of cookies being tossed out into the street.
I used to work in the hotel industry as well as I’ve been a traveler (for meetings & events) and have had those trays delivered to me too. If you are the valued customer and the hotels were really good – they would know who you are, what you do and would send you a fruit plate. That would be the hotel chain I would filter all my business to – the one that really knows their customer. This is my first time on your blog and I love it already!
Great post, I wish I had your problem of travelling too much 8-). Well, maybe not, Anyway, I just finished your book and I really enjoyed it, and I found it very helpful as well. My current read is “The End of Overeating” by David A. Kessler, MD. I think you might enjoy it.
PS , WW since June 8, 2012 down 24.6, so far. Love the program, I recommend it to anyone who will listen to me.
Hi Dave.. I love your blog and recently enjoyed your book. I know activity has been a big part of why you, and so many others, have been successful with weight watchers. Your book really has helped motivate me to get up and exercise at 5:00 a.m. It’s not easy! I’m wondering if you would share your experience with ActiveLink. Knowing how you love gadgets and to manage what you can measure, I would love to see you write about this. It has really changed the way I think about both formal and informal activity and how it relates to my success on plan. Thanks!
Why isn’t this blog on the WW site? Or did I miss it? Just saying!
Sugar and fat should be dissonant to our psyche. Gracious, what could possibly be so “siren” about the awful things!? We’re a curious lot… And I think 3′s a win as well. though sharing your plan – that’s a bold move!
Thank you so much for writing your book – I LOVED it! I happened across it by chance at my local library on Saturday and I finished reading it today. I enjoyed your candor, sense of humor, and your ability to lay it out straight and I could totally relate to everything you wrote (except for the very manly bits). I enjoyed hearing about weight loss from a man’s point of view. I took seeing your book as a sign; I had just decided the night before to join WW again. I am at rock bottom right now – at my heaviest weight ever – and you came along just when I needed a kick most.
Keep up the great work, and keep putting your cookies out in the hall.