The caloric elephant in the room (MSing and weight gain)

SteveSoCal · 2020-03-06T02:46:16+00:00

I was recently doing some cleanup on my computer. Organizing old MSing docs and pics that have been passed down from computer to computer over the years, and I noticed a few things. First off, I’m going on 20 years of mystery shopping! While that seems amazing, I also found a few pics from just before I starting MSing, and a number from each year since, and was disappointed. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s been a while since it came up; I gained 14 lbs. the first year I started shopping…and I’ve never lost it. I was quickly aware of the weight gain, and how it related to dining assignments, working long hours at my desk, and the change in my life that MSing brought about. I have just struggled for many years to find a productive way to deal with it. I remember taking a cruise assignment that was two weeks long, swearing off bread for the length of the cruise and being happy that I didn’t gain more weight. I remember committing to going to the gym for 1 hour each day in every hotel I shopped. I remember making a policy of always sharing my dessert, cutting out soda, avoiding buffets, limiting myself to two glasses of wine a day, non-fat, low-carb, whatever the diet of the year was and being happy I wasn’t gaining any more weight…but never returning to my original weight. In recent years, I started gaining even more. I decided to make some more drastic changes in my life at the end of last year and took a 4-month break from MSing. That still wasn’t enough to effect change, however, so I went all-in; Joined the overpriced gym, hired a trainer and bought a FitBit. The good news is that it’s working. I’m more than halfway there. I’m starting to reincorporate mystery shopping into my new lifestyle now and learning a lot about what got me to this point to begin with. 1. MSing does not promote a healthy lifestyle. It encourages ordering a soda with every meal, 3-course dining and working long hours at a desk. The shops that send you to the gym don’t offer any bonus for actually using said gym, and the hotel shops that provide a gym seldom leave you enough time to actually use it! In 20 years of MSing I have 2 instances where I received a free personal training session, and probably 200 where I received a free soufflé. 2. If you want to include mystery shopping in your life and still have a healthy lifestyle, you need to base it on healthy eating habits. Now, I take the calorie-in/calorie-out approach. I track everything I eat, and every calorie I burn, and won’t put anything in my body that I haven’t already burned off the calories for that day. Sticking to water with each meal whenever possible. Sticking to two fine dining shops a month. Yes; it limits the assignments I can take, but I’m feeling better every day. Missing pizza, but not enough to break down and actually eat one. I just like to smell it when I walk by the pizzeria. I’m also not spending nearly as much time in front of the computer, or being stressed out about deadlines. I’m sleeping better and actually spending less on food than I did when I was shopping a grocery store once a week and taking 10 dining shops a month, so I just wanted to post this as a reminder that we often lose sight of the forest for the trees. At least I did. For almost 20 years I was so enamored with the idea of getting something for “free” that I didn’t really understand the effect it was having on me.

The caloric elephant in the room (MSing and weight gain)

April 14, 2020 01:26PM

@SteveSoCal wrote:

@JASFLALMT wrote:

Home life with a partner who you like a lot can also be a great way to burn calories

Yes, I spent a lot of time chasing the cat around

So, did anyone else start singing Atomic Dog in their head?

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April 25, 2020 05:14PM

Well typical of them I am still waiting on my Christmas gifts from Cirrus and here it is almost May

@SteveSoCal wrote:

@sestrahelena wrote:

we need to talk about that time when I was five and you never showed up!

I had asked the people at Cirrus to help distribute gifts that year. You may need to remind them....

April 27, 2020 12:31AM

Stupid covid has shrunk me britches.

April 27, 2020 03:03PM

Between food allergies and a specific type of healthy lifestyle, I choose not to take any dining shops including high-end restaurants. IRL and not during COVID-19 times, I can eat out at high-end and clean (as in clean foods) restaurants because they will cater to my food requests. MSCs put way too many restrictions and requirements basically make that impossible. And it saves me a lot of time not having to write long, detailed reports so less time sitting stagnant in front of a computer. No weight gain in years.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2020 03:04PM by LuvsTraveling.

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The caloric elephant in the room (MSing and weight gain)

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