Some people Instagram all their meals. I dissect the play by play.

I just got back from a work conference, which meant that I was living out of a hotel in a strange city for a couple of days. Keeping myself well fed was a top priority, as I had no idea about the food “landscape” of Salt Lake City. Challenge accepted.

Some additional considerations:

• I absolutely refuse to check bags, which means that packing food is a big more difficult. It’s harder to get food through security, plus it’s heavy.
• The conference organizers tried to be “healthy” in their food choices this year. That meant nearly vegan, fiber everywhere, stuff that makes my gut cry just looking at it.
• Recently I quit drinking coffee and eating dairy, and I’ve seen some health gains from this. I was determined not to throw off my new pattern of eating.
• However, as a splurge, I planned on going to a distillery tour and tasting. (How could you not in Salt Lake City??) I knew this was a potential risk, but it’s calculated, and I wanted to save all my potential for cheating on this.
• I carry a little snuffbox of salt from Jacobson’s Sea Salt just in case. This way, I’m never out of seasoning that I know is quality and free of dextrose or other fillers.

So how did this all play out in real life? Pretty dang well. I didn’t succumb to coffee or cheese (although I was tempted a few times), navigated some dinners out with colleagues, and never went hungry (although occasionally I got hungrier than usual between meals because I had to deal with the conference schedule and not my own).

Here’s a play-by-play.

Day 1

After I checked in to my hotel, I ventured out to the nearest Whole Foods (which I had checked out online prior to the trip, of course, because I am a compulsive googler). At Whole Foods, home of delicious roast chicken and hands-down the best quality salad bar, I stocked up on some staples:

• A plain roast chicken
• Shredded chicken and 6 hard boiled eggs from the salad bar
• 2 cans of just-salt tuna with a pop top
• A shrimp cocktail pack

Now I had a portable meal that I could take somewhere if needed (the tuna) and some snacks to stash in the hotel fridge. This “fridge” ended up being more like a cooler, so I grabbed the liner from the ice bucket, filled it with ice, and used that to keep everything cool. I kept the chicken until Day 3 and wouldn’t have eaten it past that, given these conditions.

When I got back to the hotel that night, I ate the shrimp out of the shrimp cocktail pack and the dark meat of the chicken. And all of the skin, because it is delicious. And maybe a hard boiled egg, because I was hungry.

Day 2

Breakfast from a restaurant nearby, scrambled eggs and bacon. For lunch, I was in a rush so I grabbed a hard boiled egg and some of the shredded chicken from my fridge.

Dinner, though, was a “welcome reception” for the conference. I quick scout of the meal offerings detected some beef skewers with onions and peppers, with a lot of seasoning on. I ate a few of the skewers at the reception, scraping off the seasoning and avoiding the veggies, and then stole a bunch more to take up to my room afterward. There, I rinsed them off in the sink–which gives you slightly waterlogged meat, but I’d rather have that then the other consequences. For dessert, I finished off the shredded chicken.

Day 3

I ran out of time for breakfast, so I snarfed my last 2 hard boiled eggs. By the time lunch rolled around, I was so hungry that I bolted out of the session I was attending and headed straight to Apollo Burger, where I ordered a bunch of burger patties and a side of bacon, to go. I ate most of it there, but the remaining burger patty I took back to the hotel and stashed it in my fridge/cooler.

Dinner was with colleagues at Oyster Bar. I ordered a 1/2 pound broiled halibut steak, which was very tasty but also very expensive. After the meal, I went home and ate my remaining burger patty and the rest of the roast chicken with some butter I stole from our table at the restaurant. I am shameless about stealing butter these days.

Day 4

Bacon and eggs breakfast again, patties and bacon for lunch (although this time with a friend), and patties again for dinner after the distillery tour. However, the dude at the burger place by the distillery misunderstood my order so I got one lone patty and a side of bacon. A snack, but certainly not dinner. So I ordered more patties and bacon from the location near my hotel when I got back.

Day 5

Bacon and eggs breakfast again, because it is delicious and filling. Consequences from the distillery tasting were nonexistent (yay!). For lunch, I found a nice place outside to eat my cans of tuna. I hadn’t needed them during the conference, and didn’t want to risk them being thrown out at the airport.

For dinner, I was planning to check out a Brazilian steakhouse nearby, but I ran into a colleague and we ended up getting barbecue at a place he liked. It was great barbecue, but they put a rub on all of their meats. Even though I’ve historically had issues with seasonings, I went for it anyway. It was the last night, what did I have to lose?

(I can tell you that–I could definitely feel the next morning. Nothing horrible, but definitely a step in the wrong direction.)

So, my friends, that is how I fed myself during a conference in Salt Lake City. Could I have been more adventurous? Yes. Could I have also just stayed with the steakhouse in the hotel and spent a million dollars on food? Also yes.

I’m happy with my choices, and I’m more happy that I’m seeing continued positive gains in the gut department even though I did stressful things like travel and work conferences.