I survived my conference with only minor damage!
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys! I didn't have reliable wifi to check in often, but I really appreciate the ones I read. I took them all to heart. I actually didn't even eat half of the food I took. I was able to go out for meals and mostly stay in check. I got 2 eggs from the hotel restaurant and was surprised I could eat them both, but they were fried so the yolks were runny, and I was full for a solid 6 hours afterwards! (Now I see what my NUT meant about only really "using your tool" when you eat til you're satiated.) Bunless sliders from the Cheesecake Factory was another meal (2 if you count the leftovers). Yesterday my hotel messed up and locked me out of my room early, so I only had time to grab a bunless hot dog, but even it didn't do too much damage.
The worst part was probably the train ride home. I ran out of the Propel waters I took, and the cafe car was out of water and 2% milk, so I had to get an 8 oz. 1% chocolate milk (the only other options were soda and juice). It was more sugar than I'd had to date, and combined with the motion sickness, I almost had a very upset seatmate. But I survived! Plus I met up with a ton of people I've only known from a Facebook group and had a TON of fun! I'd budgeted $100 for food and only spent $35, so my company will be very happy too, hahaha.
Thanks for the concern, but I promise I didn't "test" it. I certainly didn't stuff myself. I had a lot of issues with hunger the first few weeks out of surgery. My NUT told me I need to eat until I'm satiated, not stop at an arbitrary 1/4 cup or 2 oz., or else I won't get the early satiety benefit of my tool and will just feel hungry all the time, leading to more frequent meals and grazing. My plan says verbatim, "the best way to determine the amount to eat is to listen to your body."
We MO are notoriously bad at recognizing hunger and fullness signals. I know some plans recommend continuing to override these signals by prescribing exact volumes of food to eat per meal, but my plan advocates for learning to listen to your body the way the non-MO do, paying attention to portion sizes but using your body to determine how they should vary for different foods. With almost a year of therapy under my belt, I'm getting better at recognizing hunger and fullness. I'm certainly a lot less miserable than I was the first few weeks, and my weight loss has actually sped up.
There's also a lot of difference in how eggs are cooked -- this morning, for example, I had scrambled eggs from the cafeteria at work and was done after about 1/4 cup. But I promise I'm paying attention. =)
