Turned out TurboTiger was right, the nicer hotels in China had in-house gyms. That’d be 2 out of 3 or 4 hotels we stayed at. I’d worked my ass off (well, not really, that sucker’s hanging on tight to my hip bones) before the trip in anticipation of not having access to any gym, but between the 3 workouts we had in the hotel gyms and the 2 hours of climbing the Great Wall of China and the daily walking from, to, and within sight-seeing locations, I didn’t do too badly. I think I lost weight.

PMS bloating set in within a few days of the trip, as I weighed myself obsessively in each hotel we stayed in (and then multipled the bathroom scale number by 2.2 to convert kilos to pounds). I was also nervous about the three, sometimes four meals we’d get a day. It seemed like every time we got off a bus or off a plane, we were taken to a restaurant and fed. If we were in a plane, Air China also serves full hot meals with every flight, even those only 2 hours in duration. I ate guiltily, thinking of the cliched starving kids in China, and looking out the windows for them. I did see a few begging kids, but I can’t say it wasn’t a tourist trap scam put on by their nearby and slyly-grinning parents.

After returning to California, my body started its thing on time the day after I got back, and now that I’m debloated, I seem to be a pound or two less than before I’d gone on the trip. So maybe there really IS something to that “eat six meals a day to keep your metabolism up” thing.

Just to be safe, I still hit the gym whenever I could upon my return. Monday at lunch, full workout, weights and cardio. Tuesday at lunch, we had a meeting that took half an hour away from my lunch, so I did a quick gym turnaround and ran 3 miles on the treadmill, the most effective workout I could do in the shortest amount of time. Grumpy at the loss of lunch hour, I declined showering and simply wiped off, deciding they can deal with smelling me if they’re gonna make us give up our lunchtime for a meeting. (Altho I don’t think I do smell, even after massive sweating.) Wednesday, I’d forgone the noon workout to have a birthday lunch with a coworker. Thursday/yesterday, I did weights at lunch and no cardio as I had a late start, but made up for that by going to the gym with Mr. W in the evening and doing a 65-minute run with hills on the treadmill, plus a 2-minute cooldown. Today I’m certainly going to the gym at lunch.

I’ve been munching on portions of meals here and there, whatever being full-time in trial allows time for. Half a protein bar here, some coffee with a piece of fat-free angel cake there. Leftover albondigas soup here, leftover meat loaf there.

I know if I were anyone else, I’d see results in the form of 5 lbs lost in a week. But because it’s me, I’m just treading to keep my head above water.