Weeks 20 & 21…in which I travel from Berkshire to Dubai via the plateau

Another REALLY busy work schedule meant that I couldn’t post the blog last week. I’d spent the week at an immersive event with another 30 gorgeous, young and fit people (see week 11, same event…but in the UK, colder and not on a beach). I spent the week eating things like this..

While really wanting to eat this..

But managed to avoid the bowls of sweets, marshmallows, brownies and jelly beans that seemed to appear every break time and stuck with small packets of almonds. Sigh.

I usually weigh on a Sunday but I left Berkshire, headed straight for the airport and caught a plane to Dubai fully intending to weigh at the hotel on Sunday and then post my blog.

There were 3 things that rendered this impossible. The first was leaving my laptop on the plane and not realising it until I was 5 minutes from my hotel. This triggered a meltdown of EPIC proportion. I’m not proud of my reaction. It was messy, dramatic and highly emotional. The hotel staff were remarkable. With genuine empathy exuding out of every pore (turns out losing your laptop on a business trip 4000 miles from home is a shared nightmare) they promptly upgraded me to a suite ‘we really want you to relax while you’re here Miss Shackell’ (I was on my knees at the time rocking gently with my hands covering my ears) and gave me a dedicated person who spent the next few hours tracking down my laptop. I got it back that very night, but post-traumatic stress meant that posting my blog was the last thing I could face. The second thing was that there were no weighing scales in my room. This surprised me and delighted me in equal measure but in hindsight triggered the third reason. For dinner I met up with a long time friend and decided that after the drama I deserved a ‘blow out’. As I can no longer get pissed and don’t do drugs I spent 2 hours eating my body weight in Thai food..

Seriously, I don’t even remember what it tasted like. I just inhaled it whilst I wasn’t looking. Had I weighed I might have made a different decision, like staying in my room eating a small packet of peanuts and lovingly cuddling my laptop (see end of blog post).

It’s REALLY hot in Dubai. Like melts the soles of your shoes hot. I was hoping if I stayed out in the heat long enough it might actually melt my body fat…after all 120 degrees is the same temperature for slow roasting lamb. But you can’t stay outside in Dubai because you would literally evaporate, no-one walks anywhere (the streets are intimidatingly immaculate, you’d mess up the sidewalk if you decided to try it) and you can hire a driver for the day for about 50 quid..

So I neither melted my body fat nor walked it off and despite it being the busiest week of my life (26 meetings all over the city in 4 and half days) and even though I managed to avoid the EIGHT restaurants in my hotel including a breakfast bar the length of an aircraft hangar..

..and regularly replaced lunch with one of these…

I DIDN’T LOSE A POUND IN TWO WEEKS, not a single pound…in fact, not even an ounce, FOR FUCKS SAKE!!

So, I have finally reached the dreaded plateau, the place where the energy consumed is exactly matched with the energy expended. The one place I was hoping I wouldn’t visit this year. Shit.

But I won’t stay here any longer. No thank you. I just need to refocus, get back in the saddle and on the treadmill…and stop eating copious amounts of fresh Arabian dates.