In college, free food was like gold. The promise of free pizza caused college students to sign up for credit cards, attend meetings for organizations they didn’t care about and show up to sorority functions (this one I know about personally). Even though I have had a steady paycheck for over a year now, I still get excited at the promise of free food.

For traveling I was told that I had approximately $40 per day (or whatever was within reason) to spend on food which caused feelings of extreme joy. I thought I could eat like a king and drink Starbucks every day with that amount of money. I found myself saying things like, “Make that a grande instead of tall…of course I’ll have dessert…I’ll take the one with sprinkles and glaze…I can’t take that home so I’d better eat it.” The early mornings in the airports and late nights at the client sites also led me to make poor decisions. I was going out to eat every night, having a few drinks with dinner, not exercising and running on little sleep. Like a fool I was hoping my metabolism would ramp up and my hips would be immune to airport fast food. Not too surprisingly, I was wrong.