Stay slim and healthy on your summer holidays

For anyone who travels, trying to maintain healthy habits on the road is tough. But the “Today” show’s intrepid travel editor Peter Greenberg shows you how you can keep the weight off, in his new book, “The Traveler’s Diet: Eating Right and Staying Fit on the Road.” Last year, he traveled 400,000 miles last year and lost 40 pounds, which is not an easy feat to accomplish. Greenberg was invited on “Today” to talk about some tips on staying fit while you’re traveling this summer either for pleasure or for business. Read an excerpt:

Chapter 1
Diet Another Day

The last time I weighed what I was supposed to weigh was in 1969. I remember it well. It was New Year’s Eve, and that was the night I gave up smoking.

Three days later, I was in Israel, on the border with Syria, covering a continuing border war. We were in foxholes, and someone had launched mortars toward the Israeli positions. As the explosions came way too close for comfort, the other journalists with me were convinced we were going to die. Suddenly, behind me, two Israeli soldiers appeared, and were handing out disgusting French cigarettes. Two of the other journalists, guys who had never smoked, accepted them and lit up. When the soldiers got to me, I attempted to decline politely, saying I was “trying to quit.” The war seemed to stop for about fifteen seconds while everyone looked at me incredulously, as if to say, “You’re trying to quit? We’re all about to die anyway. Take the cigarette!”

I didn’t. We lived. And I haven’t had a cigarette since. OK, so much for the good news.

But from the morning of January 6, 1970, when I returned home, I was on Oreo patrol. Snack food. Junk food. You name it, I went for it. And it showed. If it’s true that you are what you  … overeat, then I was the pie piper.

I became obsessed with certain “foods.” I had an obscene relationship with Diet Pepsi, drinking up to twenty cans a day. I found a candy connection online, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and ordered those red Swedish fish candies in bulk. I didn’t just stop there: Around my office you’d always find peanut M&M’s, Snickers, and Root Beer Barrels.

In 1987, I went on a serious diet supervised by a doctor, and I lost 51 pounds. Then I started traveling for Good Morning America for seven years, and the weight came right back — and then some.

Despite all good intentions, no matter what shape you’re in, or whatever your exercise program, travel is the great enemy. The minute you leave home, your routine takes an immediate vacation. And as more and more people travel, it’s becoming obvious that obesity is no longer an American disease. It has become a global pandemic. And as obesity rates soar, so has diabetes. In 1985, diabetes afflicted 30 million people worldwide. A little more than a decade later, that figure had escalated to 135 million. The good news — one could argue — is that as you are reading this, about 100 million Americans are on a diet. The bad news: Our lifestyles, coupled with our increased travel schedule, work against us winning the weight war.

NBC VIDEO Maintaining healthy habits when you’re on the road June 5: The "Today" show's Al Roker talks with Peter Greenberg about his new book "The Traveler's Diet." Today show

And it shows. I was never overweight as a kid. I didn’t eat a lot of junk food in high school, but that’s when I discovered Linden’s chocolate chip cookies in the cafeteria. By the time I became an executive at Paramount, they were delivering chocolate chip cookies to the office.

I love snacking. And snacks were everywhere. There were potato chips and popcorn in the office, pretzels and peanuts on the plane, chocolates waiting in my hotel room when I arrived. Let’s not talk about the minibar. And we haven’t even gotten to the social breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that go along with the job.

I hate scales. Always have. My mother, the queen of the less-than-subtle hint, gifted me each Christmas with a beautifully wrapped … scale. After the first year (this went on for more than ten years), I stopped opening the “present.”

Dostoyevsky once wrote that every man lies to himself. At the very least, we’re in serious denial when it comes to diet and exercise. I fooled myself into thinking that, given my lack of serious food vices — and all things being relative, my excess weight was an acceptable trade-off.

Apparently, I wasn’t alone. More than 30 percent of adults in America are obese, and the number who are overweight has tripled in the last twenty years. We are addicted to junk food, and, worse, our national food supply is the number one source of chronic disease.

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