So a lot has happened over the past week (again, sorry for the lack of postings!) - I made it to my vacation destination on Saturday after 2 days traveling in the car. It wasn't too bad of a trip - luckily I didn't have to drive any of it so I slept most of the time. Food was a tad challenging as there is only so much you can do when you are eating on the road.
AWESOME SURPRISE when I arrived at the place I am staying at - my bathroom has a SCALE in it! Now I know this may be a strange thing to get excited about when on vacation but I am hoping that this will help to prevent the 5lb weight gain I experienced LAST year on vacation! I weighed myself when I got here and I may have gained a little weight but it is hard to tell because I really have no idea how the scale here compares to my scale at home. The good thing though is now that I know what I weighed when I GOT here, I can weigh myself every few days to see how things are going. If the weight starts to creep up I know I need to be a little more careful about my food choices and activity.
Speaking of which ... I have to admit that I have been making some pretty lousy choices so far. I think part of it is the whole attitude of "well I'm on vacation, I'm going to do what I want!" Well that's probably not the best attitude to have so I definitely need to work on that. Another part of it is that I really love food (obviously) and there are so many great restaurants here in the US that we don't have back in Canada - so when I go out for dinner, I want to try things that I know I won't get at home - or have my favourite (high fat) dish from a restaurant we don't have in Canada because I know it could be a year before I get it again. I am definitely going to try and work on my portions - that way I can still order whatever I feel like while still having a little control over the calorie intake (wishful thinking anyway). Exercise is the other issue. So far I have done none of it (with the exception of a few wall push ups and crunches that I did in my room tonight, which I doubt helped me very much). Now I will say that I have only been here for 3 full days so it's not like I've had a lot of time so far - the weather hasn't been all that great (pretty cool most days) and it poured rain today so that pretty much eliminated swimming since I've been here. I think I just have to get into the habit of going for a long walk every day - hopefully that will help to counter-act some of the food I plan on eating! Also, I plan on doing quite a bit of shopping so that should help with the exercise a little too!
Anyway, that's the plan - let's see if I can actually stick to it! Hopefully I'll post a little more often!
Thanks for the few comments of encouragement I have received! Please keep them coming! I love to hear from you guys!
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Challenges
Wow, I can't believe it has been a whole week since my last post! I'm sorry for my sheer laziness! Well, it's good news for Monday's weigh-in! Despite a less than stellar week I lost 1.4lbs this week! Yay!!
So, here is a bit of info on how last week went - since I didn't bother to post! I did pretty well with most of my "non-goals" - I didn't have ANY Subway cookies all week!!!!! YAY FOR ME! Although I will admit that I went into Subway on Saturday with the full intention of getting cookies, but as fate would have it - they were OUT of them! I was more than a little disappointed, but when I left I did actually feel better about it and was glad that I didn't have any. I have also been trying to drink as much water as possible. Personally, I find this a lot easier to do during the week when I am at work. I keep a bottle of water on my desk and sip at it throughout the day, re-filling it whenever it empties. I have to do it this way because I am a person who really only drinks when I am eating. If I'm not eating, I just don't really THINK about drinking at all. So I keep the water on my desk so that it is in sight and at my fingertips. On the weekend when I'm at home though I find it a lot harder to get my water in. I always drink a bottle if I go to the gym but other than that, it might be dinner time and I realize I've only had one bottle of water to drink today. What else? I went to the gym 2x this week - it SHOULD have been at least 3 but I got extremely lazy. Tracking went to shit again this week but I will get myself back on track!
So, you may be wondering about my post title. Well here is the challenge I am ABOUT to have - VACATION. Now I know this may not SEEM like a challenge so allow me to explain. I have been doing weight-watchers for a while so last year when I went away for a week and a half I planned on going for walks and tracking and blah blah blah. Well when I got home I had gained 5LBS!!!! NOT GOOD! So this year I am going away pretty much for the entire month (I should have Internet access by the way, so I will attempt to continue posting) and I am seriously concerned about the damage I could do to myself in that amount of time if last year I managed to gain 5lbs in 1/3 of the time.
So here are the challenges this vacation is going to bring with it:
1) no gym
While this may seem like a blessing instead of a challenge, even 2x a week can make a significant impact on my weigh loss/gain, so not going at all for 3 weeks will be really tricky for me. I am going to try and walk and swim as much as possible, but I said that last year too so I guess we'll see how it goes.
2) no weight watchers meetings
Now for anyone who isn't a member of Weight Watchers, the meetings might sound really stupid. I admit that before I joined I thought that too. Even after I made the decision to join I thought I would just go in for my weekly weigh-in and leave before the meeting but I have to admit that I do find them helpful. I have a great leader I really like and I do find that I always get SOMETHING out of the meetings - whether it be a good piece of information or a great tip. I do really like my meetings. Also, I find that knowing I have to go every week and be accountable to someone (or a room full of someones) does keep me more conscious than if that wasn't there. When my meeting is cancelled one week for whatever reason, I find myself being more lax in my program and "cheating" more than I normally would because I know I don't have to go back for an extra week. I can only imagine what 3 weeks of no accountability might do! As such, I turn to you guys to keep me accountable.
3)no scale!!
Again, to many of you this may seem like no big deal - maybe some of you don't even OWN a scale. Here's the thing, I am not a closet scale freak. I do not weigh myself several times a day - or even once a day - because I know that your weight can fluctuate many times throughout the day by up to 2-3lbs so there really is no point. I DO however, weigh myself 2x a week (besides my Monday night weigh-in at WW). Once on Monday mornings - so that I know what to expect at my WW weigh-in, and once on Friday morning. I compare my Friday morning weigh-in to my Monday morning weigh-in to decide how good I need to be over the weekend. If I seem to have gone up a bit, it encourages me to make better choices over the weekend and possibly haul my ass to the gym once or twice more. On vacation I will have no access to a scale, and therefore won't have ANY IDEA how I am doing. This is really scary for me!
So that is the major challenge I face - hopefully I will be able to post on here for extra motivation.
So, here is a bit of info on how last week went - since I didn't bother to post! I did pretty well with most of my "non-goals" - I didn't have ANY Subway cookies all week!!!!! YAY FOR ME! Although I will admit that I went into Subway on Saturday with the full intention of getting cookies, but as fate would have it - they were OUT of them! I was more than a little disappointed, but when I left I did actually feel better about it and was glad that I didn't have any. I have also been trying to drink as much water as possible. Personally, I find this a lot easier to do during the week when I am at work. I keep a bottle of water on my desk and sip at it throughout the day, re-filling it whenever it empties. I have to do it this way because I am a person who really only drinks when I am eating. If I'm not eating, I just don't really THINK about drinking at all. So I keep the water on my desk so that it is in sight and at my fingertips. On the weekend when I'm at home though I find it a lot harder to get my water in. I always drink a bottle if I go to the gym but other than that, it might be dinner time and I realize I've only had one bottle of water to drink today. What else? I went to the gym 2x this week - it SHOULD have been at least 3 but I got extremely lazy. Tracking went to shit again this week but I will get myself back on track!
So, you may be wondering about my post title. Well here is the challenge I am ABOUT to have - VACATION. Now I know this may not SEEM like a challenge so allow me to explain. I have been doing weight-watchers for a while so last year when I went away for a week and a half I planned on going for walks and tracking and blah blah blah. Well when I got home I had gained 5LBS!!!! NOT GOOD! So this year I am going away pretty much for the entire month (I should have Internet access by the way, so I will attempt to continue posting) and I am seriously concerned about the damage I could do to myself in that amount of time if last year I managed to gain 5lbs in 1/3 of the time.
So here are the challenges this vacation is going to bring with it:
1) no gym
While this may seem like a blessing instead of a challenge, even 2x a week can make a significant impact on my weigh loss/gain, so not going at all for 3 weeks will be really tricky for me. I am going to try and walk and swim as much as possible, but I said that last year too so I guess we'll see how it goes.
2) no weight watchers meetings
Now for anyone who isn't a member of Weight Watchers, the meetings might sound really stupid. I admit that before I joined I thought that too. Even after I made the decision to join I thought I would just go in for my weekly weigh-in and leave before the meeting but I have to admit that I do find them helpful. I have a great leader I really like and I do find that I always get SOMETHING out of the meetings - whether it be a good piece of information or a great tip. I do really like my meetings. Also, I find that knowing I have to go every week and be accountable to someone (or a room full of someones) does keep me more conscious than if that wasn't there. When my meeting is cancelled one week for whatever reason, I find myself being more lax in my program and "cheating" more than I normally would because I know I don't have to go back for an extra week. I can only imagine what 3 weeks of no accountability might do! As such, I turn to you guys to keep me accountable.
3)no scale!!
Again, to many of you this may seem like no big deal - maybe some of you don't even OWN a scale. Here's the thing, I am not a closet scale freak. I do not weigh myself several times a day - or even once a day - because I know that your weight can fluctuate many times throughout the day by up to 2-3lbs so there really is no point. I DO however, weigh myself 2x a week (besides my Monday night weigh-in at WW). Once on Monday mornings - so that I know what to expect at my WW weigh-in, and once on Friday morning. I compare my Friday morning weigh-in to my Monday morning weigh-in to decide how good I need to be over the weekend. If I seem to have gone up a bit, it encourages me to make better choices over the weekend and possibly haul my ass to the gym once or twice more. On vacation I will have no access to a scale, and therefore won't have ANY IDEA how I am doing. This is really scary for me!
So that is the major challenge I face - hopefully I will be able to post on here for extra motivation.
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