Does this happen to others? You go on a vacation – be it two nights a town a way, a week at home visiting your parent, or the one I’m less familiar with – a one week trip to somewhere that can actually have the prized name of “destination?” When you get home, you step on the scale and low and behold there is some obnoxious number that (in my case of a two day trip) is an average of 3.5 pounds gained per day. Per day!
It IS misleading, to a degree. I expected a little bump, after all I had salty margaritas, and ate food that others prepared (though I very closely watched my portion sizes). I drank water or un-sweet tea when I wasn’t drinking margs (and even those were limited to maybe 3 on Friday and 3 on Saturday). I was more active, too – playing in the pool with my “nephew,” as I like to call him (he’s actually my cousin’s child, and therefore my 2nd cousin, I believe – but nephew gets the point across better).
So, Monday morning – SEVEN pounds gained. Well, and I should say gained from the last time I weighed in, not necessarily the weekend alone. Tuesday morning, I had lost more than two of those (I think this is salt-related water weight). Today, another couple of pounds lost.
I know I’m not on an island (though fully expect some judgement from a few folks), but I just don’t “diet” when I’m relaxing like that. I definitely didn’t “pig out;” I was reasonable, conservative and only a tad snacky. The real bummer (for me) is I’m OUT of the 230s once again, and that was a place I wanted to live in for a while (well, at least until I hit the 220s!).
And, I have a looming deadline of August 31st to get into size 16. I’m quite nervous about this happening on time and so it is CRUNCH TIME. No alcohol (I quite literally had water at a bar, at a birthday happy hour, this Tuesday). Count calories, EVEN IF following the South Beach Diet. Avoid eating out at all costs (this is hard because of my social life, but I must try). If I do have to eat out, make good choices. E.g., the company’s COO took me to lunch the other day to a Korean restaurant. Instead of carb heavy sushi and fried pork in “Lunch B”, I got sauteed vegetables, broth-based soup and a teeny bit of rice. And ugh – I hate doing it, but I need to cut out the salt, too. I cut out the shaker a while back, but it slowly made a comeback. (BTW, I hate how I talk about salt as though I don’t have control over the shaker – as if it has a mind of it’s own. It doesn’t, Katie).
I actually did go to the grocery store on my lunch break for health snacks (yogurt, cherries, an apple, hummus), low calorie frozen lunches (yes, these have their drawbacks, but the pro of calorie control right now is worth it to me), and pretzel chips (for that craving of Doritos/SunChips/Ruffles that hits at like 11am, and 2pm, and 4pm).
I also need to cut caffeine back. It causes food cravings about 2 hours after my last sip, but BOY does it make me productive. I spent a good couple of hours updating my LinkedIn profile last night, even though I’m not looking for a job (crazy, right?). I was just on fire and could have worked longer had it not been the sheer fact that I must go to bed in order to have a reasonable amount of hours sleep before waking up (which my body did sans alarm clock at 6am or so). Aye aye aye.
I will post pictures from this weekend’s trip soon!
