Road To Ruin Diary, Day Five
This is CBS News correspondent Mika Brzezinski's Web-exclusive daily road report.
I am on the exercise machine at the Wyndham in Little Rock, Ark., typing my blog. I have been consistently eating really well for about the past the weeks. (I got extremely serious about this diet on the trip, so when the road trip started, I went hard core!)
This is my first opportunity to really exercise and, I must say, something has clicked with me. I used to exercise simply so I can eat a lot because I love food! But since I have been on a healthy, low calorie diet, I don't feel I totally need to exercise so much and it's a liberating feeling!
I am so excited to get back to exercise for the joy of exercising. I think the treadmill of "workout to eat" is one that many working women get on and literally drive themselves crazy. There is so much pressure to look great (and thin!) that exercise becomes an unhealthy outlet.
The stress of work drives you to overeat; the overeating drives you to need to exercise and so on and so on and so on. I feel like, at least for now, I am off that. On this whole trip I have not touched a single bad meal. The boys ate fried, smoked, BBQ meals. I sat with them enjoyed low fat meals and salads and was extremely strict about it. Fries were floated in my face (Craig Crawford editor and seducer!!) and I did not touch them!!
And I will say as I walk on the treadmill, I have had a wonderful time and don't feel that I have missed out on this trip at all. It is a victory for me — a junk food fanatic — to have made it this far. The crew continues on the road to ruin. Tom Piccolo had wings and fries, Jack had ribs, Craig and Karen ate in the car, God knows what they were ingesting (I saw them wolfing down cashews), and mark LaGanga has absolutely no restraint!!
Today we will talk to former President Bill Clinton about his effort to end the obesity crisis and his own personal struggle to get healthy.