Everyone eats food from their purse....right?

Hello friends!

I had some friends visiting for the weekend and we went to the Rihanna concert, which was awesome!!!  I picked my friend up from the airport on Thursday and we spent time running errands, prepping food and going to the gym.  I packed all my food up for the day and ALL my water!  Which was a workout in itself!  I was dragging my food and water through the hotel where my friends were staying and taking my food with me when we would be gone out and about a long time.  Lots of places that we went had restrictions on what you could bring in (i.e. no food or water) so we found ourselves having to make time to go to the hotel room and warm up our tupperware.  Which we had to get pretty inventive since we didn't have a microwave in the room but luckily the hotel had really hot water so we would fill up the sink and let our tupperware warm up in the water.  Sometimes you just gotta make it work and as long as I wasn't eating cold tilapia I was happy!  The moment I could say my dedication was definitely showing was when we went to the Rihanna concert!  First off the concert was AMAZING!!!  We were close enough to see her very well and we were going crazy for every song!  The thing is we had plans to go out after the concert and I still needed to eat my last meal.  So I would either have to not eat my meal and be really hungry (and cranky since those go hand in hand) or I would need to bring my meal in ziploc bags with me.  Well you can hopefully guess what happened but I'll tell you anyway.  Between the first act and Rihanna I ate my meal :)  But here was my view of the concert:

She was amazing and I loved EVERY
outfit! 

Just entertaining the crowd!

It was a struggle to continue to fit in normal daily life that sets me up for success like grocery shopping, cardio, weights, and prepping/packing my meals and making time to hang out with my friends and go out!  I didn't have any drinks this weekend except for a glass of wine with my cheat meal.  Which I'll talk about on my next post.  I "partied" without drinking, and everyone really understood when I had to turn down drinks or food that was offered.  I had a plan to stick to and I did everything I could to stick to it and I even did some prepping for my buddy!  She has a different diet and workout routine than I do and she got to adjust her menu for weekends so I made her meals for the weekend too!  Again I enjoy cooking, prepping and organizing and I didn't want her going without her meals she needed!  Right now its back to normal and although I miss hanging out with my friend like crazy I'm glad to get all the tupperware washed, grocery shop, clean out the fridge, and start getting back to drinking all of my water I need to and my regular sleep schedule.  My first day back to work was a little rough so I'm glad I can get back to my morning cardio routine, I feel more energized at work when I wake up earlier and get so much accomplished before the sun comes up :)  I have to say that I did NOT do this completely alone though, my husband was fabulous and such a great help.  He helped me pack my meals, and while I was at work he cleaned SO much of the house!  It was nice to start my day off with a clean and ready house.  I am lucky to have such a supportive person by my side and telling me how proud he is of my dedication.  I hope that everyone has someone in their lives that can be supportive of the things they do and take the chances to be that supportive person to others!  No matter how strong the person is, everyone needs to know they are believed in!

Cheers,

Ash

P.S.  The most funny moment of the weekend was when we went to a club to go dancing.  I had packed a ziplock baggy with my Cinnamon Roll powder for a just in case emergency meal.  I knew I could always get a bottle of water, drink part of it and then mix in the protein powder if we were out late and I got hungry.  But I didn't realize how it would look until the door guy asked for me to open my purse and of course being the happy go lucky me that I am I said "Sure! No problem!" and then I realized the look on his face when he asked "What's this?"  Now I am naive but I do realize that some people travel with things they shouldn't be to clubs so explaining that I am training for a competition and I need to eat every three hours and this was my emergency meal was kind of humorous.  I had to tell him to smell the powder so he would realize its flavored Cinnamon Roll powder.  I let him know he could throw it away if he wanted although I really wanted to keep it with me in case I was hungry!  But alas he had to toss away one perfectly good scoop of protein powder.....*sigh*  But I got a good laugh out of it all :)