Let's get up to date!

As you dear readers remember, in May my hubby and I moved from South Carolina to the great state of Michigan. As you probably recall, I spent a good part of the summer stressing over how to find a job and navigating all the stairs at the cottage.

It is with a very happy heart that I can report that I found a job (HOORAY!) and now that we have fairly reliable internet access at home I will try to get back to updating Get Moving Goode a few times a week. The next few posts will hopefully get us up-to-date.

First things first: my job! I am employed as a recruiter with a state university and have been in Southeast Michigan for the last month and a half recruiting high school students. Navigating in unfamiliar territory is always challenging, but I was really glad to get out and see parts of the state I’ve never been to before.

THANK GOODNESS FOR GPS!!!

To tell you the truth, I was really nervous about traveling. Not because I was scared of staying in hotels and driving, but because I was scared of packing on the pounds eating out at restaurants. I’m really proud to say that I didn’t gain any weight and actually lost a pound or two. This is credited to portion control—I usually ate at take-out restaurants where the portion size is limited. Here’s where and what I ate a majority of the time:

Subway
It will be awhile before I eat at a Subway again since the veggie and Swiss sandwich on wheat with honey mustard dressing was on the menu 80% of the time for lunch. I avoided chips and sodas, and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich on occasion to mix things up ;-). Kudos to the sub shop for offering healthy fast food options!

Panera
Can you really say anything bad about a restaurant that serves bread with everything? Usually I ordered a half and half: black bean soup and a classic salad, turkey (hold the mayo), garden vegetable soup with Greek salad. It’s also great that Panera posts the calories in an item right on the menu board.

I also made sure to NOT look at the pastry case… that took will power.

Wendy’s
Plain baked potato and small chili for under 3 bucks. Not bad, not bad at all.
Whole Foods
Loooove the salad bar! And the olive bar. And the bakery.
Breakfast
I made sure to stay at a hotel that provided breakfast—so I usually ate raisin bran with skim milk, or peanut butter toast.

The Car
I made sure to have healthy snacks in the car like almonds and dried apricots, plus bottled water (and I saved all the bottles to bring home to recycle-I did I did I did, so don’t judge). I also grabbed an extra banana from the hotel breakfast bar to take for a snack.

Coffee Shop
Inevitably, there were times when I had a couple of hours in between visits and college fairs, so I would head to a coffee shop to take advantage of the free wi-fi. My drink of choice is a decaf, skim cafe au lait (or misto for you Starbucks fans) or a simple decaf coffee sweetened with Splenda. Although I'm back to trying to avoid artificial sweetners.

Another tip that I learned from other college recruiters is to stay at an extended stay hotel that has a kitchen. That way you can buy healthier meals and you won’t have to go out to eat. It’s also a good idea because you can buy pre-washed lettuce and dressing and fix your own healthy salads (not to mention you can pick-up salad add-ons at the grocery store’s anti-pasto bar.) One week I purchased whole wheat rolls and boxed soup and ate that a couple of nights for dinner.

I'm off to hear my husband scream at the college football teams on the TV-- hope everyone is having a great weekend!