Personal Insights
Fasting at SAP TechEd??? Yes!
SAP TechEd events are known for their extraordinary tasty food and beverage. There is a variety of snacks, excellent food for lunch and dinner, culinary specialties prepared according to regional recipes and of course sweets. You can grab street and fast food when you are on the run but also take the time and sit down to enjoy the taste. For every diet, you will find the right food. And at the evening parties, there are usually even more international culinary specialties.
A side-effect is, that you might gain a little weight. Usually, this is not the problem. IMHO the three or four days shouldn’t matter if you have a healthy life at the rest of the year. But according to my experience, this is not the case for many people in the IT business. We are working too long, stay too long at our computers and are exposed to stress at work. Many of us are on the road and have to eat quickly or at different times a day. Some of us have chocolate and other sweet in their offices and enjoy occasional “sugar highs”.
And this is where the problem starts. As a consequence, I chose to get a more healthy life-style and Intermittent fasting worked for me well. This is an umbrella term for different variants. Some people are fasting on some special days a week where I prefer to eat only in a different time slot – say 6 hours a day. Since I travel a lot I found out that during working days sometimes an 8-hour time slot is more feasible. And the rest 16 to 18 hours a day I only drink water or tea. For me, this turns out to be no real restriction unless I eat sweets. Sweet cause “sugar highs” and they cause ravenous appetite. So I also gave up sweets. This is not so difficult, too, because after a while the sense of taste changes and no I found sweetened food and beverage in most cases much too sweet. For me, this kind of diet works. Without it, I tend to eat outside meals and even some snacks late at night. And it seems to me that the mind is calmer with “sugar highs”.
I have to admit that I was skeptical at first because intermitted fasting seems to be very trendy and many people created a hype. So please don’t understand me wrong: I am no “intermitted fasting” evangelist. I am only want to lose some weight.
Now I have the challenge that I want to continue this kind of diet during SAP TechEd. I think I will eat my first meal at noon and eat in a six or maybe eight-hour time frame. As usual, I will abstain from sweets and sweet food.
These are my plans for the next week. So what do you think? Are you also on a diet? What is your strategy? I would love to hear from it.
Good luck, Tobias
Last week I managed not to eat any of the SAP TechEd meals, and indulged at night.
I only had sweets twice - I had the great gelato that Las Vegas offers.
I also recommend exercising; I took morning walks and managed to get over 10K steps per day.
Tammy
I shared a warm butter cake with Karin Tillotson and it was worth every bite 🙂
I'll be interested to hear how the intermittent fasting goes! It has always seemed to me like SAPTechEd is such a rush, you feel compelled to grab whatever food is nearby because you don't know if/when you'll have the chance again. But maybe that's just in Las Vegas.
Sue
I'm hungry now, Sue!! Sounds great
Hahhaa, What i can say is it require lots of courage to do that. Whole year i try to have healthy diet as i am athletes too, but in teched time it quite difficult for me, every year normally i have session either for demo pod or lecture so even when i try to get prepared for session in speaker room i always drink lots of soft drink which is not good and in networking dinner it is impossible kind of for me. All i do is next 2-3 days i try to do work out more to cut the weight.
Restricting sugar intake (with no other limitations) helped me maintain a high energy level throughout the event in Las Vegas.
Good luck!
I am in for it at TechEd Barcelona. See you there.
I stayed offsite and clocked in so much exercise by walking back and forth that was able to offset my TechEd indulgences. Also - espresso twice a day keeps doctors away. Or something like that. 🙂
I intermittently practice intermittent fasting at home. My usual schedule is to restrict my "feeding window" to 8 hours from Monday-Friday, but then I don't worry about it on weekends. I also don't worry about it when traveling or otherwise doing something different from my typical weekday routine.
What I found was that for the first few days, perhaps a week, it takes getting used to basically "skipping a meal," but then pretty quickly your body (and your mind) adjusts and you stop feeling hungry. You also have to be strategic about what your 8-hour window is going to be. For instance, my wife is a great cook and I wouldn't want to upset her by saying, "Sorry, I'm not going to eat your dinners anymore," so skipping dinner is not really an option. Also, I usually go to the gym after work, and after a workout some replenishment is recommended.
So, that means skipping breakfast. I wasn't overjoyed about this idea, because it's pretty much my favorite meal of the day, plus you keep reading and hearing how it's the most important meal of the day. Hence, I allow myself to indulge on weekends.
But, bottom line, my energy level and general alertness increased, I sleep better at night, and... well, here I have to trust the literature, it's not something you can really "feel" in your body... I'm probably aiding my mitochondria and eliminating intracellular waste, and all those other longevity things that seem pretty academic.
Intermittent fasting is definitely a lot easier than "hard-core" multi-day or even just one whole day fasting, and the literature indicates it holds just as many benefits (see "caloric restriction" and its effects on longevity), so it's sort of a no-brainer!
But... I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to do it at TechEd, especially in Barcelona. I loved those sidewalk cafe breakfasts last year!