I took a quick business trip to Charlotte this week.  I had every intention of sticking to my diet.  I packed two oatmeal bars to have as snacks on the plane trip to and from North Carolina.  A much better choice than the oversized and fattening snacks they serve on the plane.

On the way down there, I had lunch at an airport restaurant.  A side salad with balsamic vinaigrette was the healthiest option on the menu.  Dinner was at the restaurant next to the hotel and I had salmon and green beans.

It was around 9pm by the time I got back to my hotel room and I had to work on my presentation for Wednesday's meeting so there was no time to visit the workout room.  I was pretty proud of myself for not eating the bag of Doritos and candy bar that Marriott's management staff left on my desk.  Why in the heck would they think that is a good idea.

Wednesday's breakfast included fresh fruit and a light yogurt.  So far so good.  It was Wednesday's lunch that threw me into a tail spin. 

I looked over the lunch menu at Ruby Tuesday's searching for something... anything that was light and healthy.  Three out of four of us selected the same chicken salad. 

Seemed to be a great choice until they brought the salads to the table.  About a cup of salad covered with walnuts, bacon, "lightly" fried chicken, and about a half pound of cheese.  Nobody, even in their wildest imagination, would consider this a healthy salad. 

One of my lunchmates explained to me the difference between fried and lightly fried.  Lightly fried, at least in North Carolina, means the chicken is cooked floating on the top of the grease, where a regular fried chicken is held under the grease until there is no grease left in the vat because it's all been absorbed into the chicken.

My stomach was rather upset the rest of the day.  I stepped onto the scale this morning and was up two pounds.  I'm hoping that, by tomorrow, my system will be back to normal and maybe I'll see that the gain was just a blip from sodium overload and I'll be back down to my pre-business trip weight.

While I was gone, Bruce did pretty good on his diet.  He pulled a deer steak out of the freezer and prepared that with a big salad.  Tomorrow is our "official" weigh-in.  I'm hoping for the best for both of us.