Stay slim and healthy on your summer holidays

I fit perfectly into some pretty scary statistics, many related directly to my travel schedule. A friend once told me that you should never eat anything served to you out of a window unless you’re a seagull. And yet, the odds that an American will eat at a fast-food restaurant on any given day are one in four. Well, I did better than that. Three out of four days, you could find me at an airport, or in a rental car on assignment on the road, pulling off the highway long enough to get supersized. And on that fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day? I was eating out, at a hotel or a restaurant. Again, I was in trouble: That hotel or restaurant meal was 170 percent larger than a meal prepared at home. Odds that a person will closely follow a diet are, again, one in four. That was me as well (I was one of the other three). Then there were statistics that were not even close to describing me: The amount the average American spends annually on candy is $84. (I was spending at least ten times that amount.)

As the son of a doctor, and with my travel schedule, I get a checkup once every three months. The results, despite my weight, have never been cause for alarm. Blood pressure was always a little high, and triglycerides and cholesterol were always high but not out of control. I hadn’t smoked in more than thirty years; I hardly drink alcohol. Don’t drink coffee.

When I went to see Raymond Keller, a brilliant and talented physician, in March 2005, for another checkup, I thought that once again I could just breeze right through. He had always told me to lose weight and limit my intake of sweets and junk food, and, of course, I never listened.

But on this visit, the numbers started to catch up with me. My blood pressure was 145/95, and the cholesterol and triglyceride numbers were frightening. Then it was time to stand on the scale. I was more than a little embarrassed. I knew I weighed too much, but nothing prepared me for the number that confronted me. I weighed in at a whopping 284 pounds.

I thought: I can’t control the weather. I can’t control the political situation, and I can’t control who’s driving on the freeways. But I can control what I eat and how much I put in my mouth.

I knew I had to do something about this, but where to start?

Each week there are at least three new diet books published. I was confronted with a little bit of everything: Actually, I was confronted with more than I could digest (every pun intended).

• 3-Hour Diet
• 6-Day Body Makeover
• Abs Diet
• Atkins Diet
• Blood Type Diet
• Cabbage Soup Diet
• Jenny Craig
• Curves
• Fat Flush Plan
• Fit for Life
• French Women’s Diet
• Glycemic Index
• Grapefruit Diet
• Bob Greene
• Hamptons Diet
• LA Weight Loss
• NutriSystem
• Dr. Phil
• Perricone Promise
• Scarsdale Diet
• Slim-Fast
• South Beach Diet
• Step Diet
• Sugar Busters
• WeightWatchers
• The Zone Diet

There was even an eat-all-the-bread-you-want-for-life diet!

To challenge me more, I felt I had two strikes against me: no discipline and no guidance. And that was quickly counterbalanced by … shame.

That night, I had dinner with my editor at Men’s Health, Stephen Perrine. I told him of my disappointing checkup and that I was now motivated to lose weight. “But you travel more than anyone else I know,” he said. “How can you possibly stick to a diet and exercise program?” The problem, of course, is that so many of us travel, that on any given day even the most well intentioned diets are jettisoned, timetables and discipline evaporate ... And therein was the genesis of this book. Could wedevelop a diet and exercise plan that worked not only at home, but on the road, given all the obstacles? It was worth a try.

Excerpted from “The Traveler’s Diet: Eating Right and Staying Fit on the Road” by Peter Greenberg. Copyright © 2006 Peter Greenberg. Reprinted with permission from Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.  

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