WLC Learning #10

Whole Life Challenge Learning #10 - Business Makes You Fat

Friends, at this point, you know what I eat, that I CrossFit, that I'm a cheating, lying son-of-a-bitch and intimately how I feel about this WLC. For these final 10 days, I'm instead going to share my top 10 Whole Life Challenge Learnings. Beginning with...

#10) Business Makes You Fat

It's a wonder that every American business person doesn't weigh 300lbs. As I write this, I just arrived back to my hotel room following the kick off reception of a conference. A healthcare conference, to be exact. At this healthcare conference, I stood in an exhibit hall for three hours full of people munching on buffet tables of fried food and buzzing around the several bars with not 1, but 5 free drink tickets. 

I pregamed this event with a salad which allowed me to mostly stay away from the buffet table. As it ended, I emerged proud and triumphant for having maintained self control and sticking to my plan. Feeling finally free of temptation and slinking away to my room, I passed a crowd of conference-goers convening in a post-reception room full of free pizza, s'mores and booze whispering sweet nothings into my ear. Snap back to reality and I see it's not the food beconing me, but a client prospect.

"You're having some s'mores with us, right!?" she coaxed cheerfully, 

"For sure! I'll stop in for a bit," I internally crumbled. I made a quick lap, never looking a marshmallow or pepperoni in the eye, and shuffled desperately back to my room to get my 10 in pathetic minutes of exercise.

So goes business conferences, and I endured 2 during the course of the Whole Life Challenge. Business networking centers around unhealthy behaviors - happy hours, networking dinners, appetizers, baked good smorgasbords disguised as "coffee breaks." And don't forget the travel food and lack of time for any physical activity.

You think you're safe at the office, and you're wrong. You eat your feeble reheated lunch and are forced to combat birthday bagels and donuts, leftover sweets from client meetings, catered in deep dish pizza and a god-forsaken solar candy machine that only requires you to cast a godamn shadow for a hand full of Skittles, M&Ms or the candy de jour. I hate that candy machine. We are not friends.

Cumulative Deductions: 32