Jury Duty

I had jury duty today. This presented quite a challenge, as I had to plan my food and exercise around it, and Monday is my long day as it is.

My first problem was that I had to report for jury duty at 7:45am, which pretty much ruled out my going to the gym. I can get up early enough to go to the gym by 6:30am, which, while I'm certain that I have terrified several innocent people on my way to the gym given my general state at that hour,  will ensure that I finish my workout with enough time to get to work a little early and find parking. Unfortunately, I have a really difficult time motivating myself to get up much earlier than 5:30am.  Knowing this about myself, I went to my backup plan: I still woke up early, but instead of going to the gym, which would have made me late, I did my Wii Zumba workout for 1/2 an hour. It was not super high impact work-out nor was it a huge calorie burn. That said, it was fun, it was a good start to my day, and I got a respectable amount of exercise for 1/2 an hour.  Most importantly, it ensured that if my day went south and I didn't have time later, at least I'd done some exercise.

My second problem was how to plan my food for the day.  In my experience, days like this, where I know I'm going to be really busy and I'm not entirely certain how the day will be scheduled, lend themselves to a very high calorie intake. The courthouse is downtown, a very short walk from a number of restaurants, there are vending machines in the jury lobby, there is a Starbuck's right next door, and there can be a lot of free time to snack on these things. I had to make sure that I packed a reasonable lunch and I needed to make sure I packed something on which to snack. The challenge here was compounded by the fact that I couldn't really take a frozen entree to jury duty in my purse / briefcase, because (a) I wasn't sure if there would be a microwave in the jury lounge and (b) if there was a microwave, didn't want to tie it up for five minutes for just my lunch when there were probably a couple of hundred jurors on lunch break, at least some of whom likely needed to use the microwave as well.  I solved this problem by taking three blueberry yogurt muffins (see recipe on recipes page) with me in a plastic Tupperware container so as not to squish them in my bag. I also took two sliced Fuji apples, a low-calorie protein bar and a cup of plain cheerios (yep, I'm five, I was snacking on cheerios during jury duty). This worked beautifully. I had two muffins for lunch, and I snacked on the apples and cheerios. I didn't eat the protein bar or the third muffin because I wasn't hungry - but if I had been, I would have been prepared and I would not have had to run to the vending machine.

I came home at the end of the day to my husband's fabulous minestrone soup, yum!

There you have how I planned my Jury Duty Day. What kinds of portable, low calorie snacks could you use on a difficult "Jury Duty Day?"