Surprises Travelling to Zurich

Travelling days are always hard, whether you are a Celiac struggling to find food you can eat or someone determined to stick to a healthy diet. I had a flight to Zurich at 11:30am yesterday, which pretty much dominated the day. Just a short hop (2 hours) to Zurich, which means they only provide “snacks” on the flight. And invariably this means no food for Celiac’s or other “special diets”.  Knowing this, I made sure to get a good snack of nuts and dried fruit (OK, and chocolate) at the airport before boarding the plane. However, I was still very annoyed when the “snack” was a sandwich – with no gluten free alternatives despite putting gluten free on my ticket when I booked it. Not only that, but the staff had not even been told!

So, a latish lunch of sushi at the airport before heading to my friends where I was staying. To my surprise, I discovered my friend had taken up the latest fad diet – the 4 hour body diet. Basically, it’s a version of the low carb, paleo diet – No wheat or grain based carbohydrates (bread, pasta, porridge, etc.), no fruit, no dairy, nothing with white sugar, and lots of meat, fish, eggs, beans, lentils and vegetables.  Like most of these diets, it’s not so much what you eat that makes you drop weight so fast, but the fact that most of these foods are MUCH lower in calories than the ones you cut out. Going from 2500 calories a day to 1200 calories a day – of course you’re going to lose weight like crazy!

Which is why I went out and bought my own milk and juice for breakfast and ended up eating a gluten free hot cross bun with a glass of milk a couple of hours after our dinner of grilled chicken and salad. I’m not a dieter, I’m a runner, so I do need the carbohydrates!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2483.35	128.94g	318.38g	76.63g	0	37.64g
	21%	51%	28%
Calories burned through exercise:		Rest Day

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
07:00	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson's Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Sainsbury's Freefrom oats	50g
	with Sultanas	20g
	Sainsbury's Orange, Mango and Passionfruit juice	200mL
07:30	Black Tea	500mL
10:45	Sainsbury's fruit and seed mix	40g
	Brazil nuts	6g
	Galaxy smooth milk chocolate	42g
	Glaceau Vitamin Water, Revive	500mL
12:30	Black Tea	100mL
13:30	Maki and Nigiri sushi	10 pieces
	Edamame	1/2 cup
	Apfel Schorle	500mL
16:45	Fresh Strawberries	105g
	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
18:30	Grilled chicken breast	about 100g
	with Cattlemen's Classic Barbecue sauce	about 1 tbsp
	Spinach salad	50g
	with tomato	about 100g
	avocado	1/2 of one
	broccoli	2 florets
	strawberries	50g
	truffle olive oil	1 tsp
	and white balsamic vinegar	1 tsp
20:00	Sainsbury's Freefrom Hot cross buns	1 bun
	2% milk	about 200mL

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.