Days 19-21: Head for the hills

Sorry for the blog silence, but headed up to the mountains (Yamanakako) for Golden Week, Japan's version of spring break (a few old Emperor's birthdays jammed together to make a looooong weekend beginning of May). Not only do the in-laws not have internet at their mountain house, but took the wrong charger for my iphone, so was a complete blackout, which was kind of refreshing.....

Have scale will travel, but otherwise the weekend posed many challenges, and highlights, here are a few:

Diet

-Day 19 dinner was easy, make your own temaki: assorted sashimi, sliced cucumber and nagaimo, rolled in dried seaweed (salty), plus some extra veggies on the side for me (takenoko (bamboo), stir fried spinach in garlic).

-Day 20 lunch was a challenge: played golf and was stuck eating a typical Japanese golf lunch, choices either something fried, salty noodle soup or fatty meat, so went with the pasta, spaghetti vongole, side green salad (no dressing), extra side order of smoked salmon for my protein. Not bad, but oily and salty.

-Day 20 dessert: I did not give in to temptation, but good Lord...

Workout

-Not sure if it was the mountain air, or just because I KILLED it the day before in Yokohama, but tripped a record number of times jumping rope the first day.

-WARNING: if you are doing your rowing on the outside of the sliding glass door (after someone kindly locked it in place for you on the inside) and you have a mischievous 3 year old niece lurking about, make sure to release the bands before she unlocks and opens the door, or else SLAP! Fortunately my arms were straight out and not at full row, but still left a mark (BUT nothing close to Maren's finger...).

-Following Patrick's recent advice, one of the days I replaced 900 jumps with walking the 6400yd (5900m) golf course, and to be fair, the amount of time I was NOT on the fairway I probably ended up walking closer to 10km. The picture is my mother-in-law, nice drive straight into the shadow of Fuji-san.

A few questions:

-if we do end up eating something salty, is there anything we should do to counteract it (besides purging)? Was thinking of drinking a lot of extra water....?

-if a canned/bottled drink (I know, I know, cans/bottles are bad, mmmmkay?) says "zero calories AND zero sugar", like Coke Zero, is there still other bad (worse) stuff we should be avoiding?

-I assume if we are in a dire situation where we are unable to fill our food group quotas exactly, and something moderately salty or sugary or fatty slips in, as a 1-off exception it is fine, AND eating something is better than eating nothing at all....?