Holidays and Health

      5 Comments on Holidays and Health

I’ve had a pretty busy Easter weekend, definitely creating some out-of-the-norm situations to make it tough to stay on program.  I’m taking it one day at a time, though, because I really, really want to get to goal weight on Monday!!  What follows is an accounting of my weekend, in food and exercise terms. :p 

Day 1 was Thursday, when my boys and I went to a Red Wings game.   I’m not a big pizza fan, so it was pretty easy to avoid that trap.  I actually had a low-fat Subway sub on the way home to get the family, so that made it easier to avoid any of the food.  So…day 1, mission accomplished!  Now, if only the Wings had won, it would have been a stellar night. :p Still, we all had fun, and the boys enjoyed watching live hockey (other than their own, ha ha!).

Day 2 was a fun Hockey Mom’s lunch on Friday.  This one proved to be more challenging.  I swear, Mexican food is just the worst kind of food to try to successfully diet with.  The kind you make at home can work, but it has been my experience that the stuff at Mexican restaurants is just so loaded with cheese and oil, it is a dieter’s nightmare. This was the case at the restaurant we ended up going to.  The ONLY thing in the menu that I found to be even half-healthy was the garden salad.  And honestly, if I’m going to get a salad, I want it to be a little more substantial than a $3.49 side salad. 🙁  I tried to order a shrimp fajita taco salad (not planning to eat the shell), but they couldn’t give me un-cooked onions and peppers (“It’s all together,” the waitress said.)  I prefer my veggies raw, and especially not sauteed in butter or oil, so I ended up just ordering a chicken quesadilla.  I had no idea how to count it, so I just looked it up in the calculator and chose one of the options on the higher side.  So, day 2, down and hopefully a success.

Day 3 was Saturday.  Well, first I should back up to Friday…Fridays are normally my “walk around the mall slowly” days, which I choose to do instead of the “day of rest.”  I just don’t like to NOT walk, so instead, I walk slow.  It’s always enjoyable for me…a nice break from my usual “super fast” pace.

Since I was home on Friday, I decided to use the opportunity to go for a “rest day” casual bike ride with my boys instead of my usual slow walk.  We went a total of four miles, and things were going well until we were about 100 feet from home, when I looked to my right and saw my six-year-old swerve.  It looked like he was about to go in the ditch, and in my panic to help him, I lost my balance and had a spectacular fall, in which I banged my knee.  🙁  Turns out he managed to hold his balance just fine and avoided the ditch, but I lay there in the road with my bike on top of me for a good minute, unable to move.  Eventually I did, but I found my knee was scraped up pretty well.  And it was sore, as was my elbow.

Back to Saturday morning…I had rested for the most part on Friday night, and then I debated on Saturday if I should walk.  Saturdays are normally my “haul ass” days, when I push myself in my training.  Lately I’ve been trying to go beyond 3.1 miles, at the fastest pace I can, to try to come up with a new goal.

I debated not walking, but I just didn’t want to take a day off.  I do enjoy it, and especially the way I feel afterwards.  (After I finally catch my breath, lol.)  So, I stepped outside, all dressed up, wondering how my walk would be.  I looked up at my anenometer, like I usually do before I walk down the road, and I saw something quite surprising…the two guages (one that used to work but eventually died, and one that does work, which replaced the broken one that we just never got around to taking down) were pointing in opposite directions.  That could only mean one thing…no wind at all!  (I have no idea why the “twins” point in opposite directions when there is no wind, and yet always point in the same direction when there is even the slightest wind, but that’s the way it is.)

Once I realized I was finally going to get my non-windy, sunny, moderately warm (50 degrees) morning that I had been waiting–literally–MONTHS for, I knew I HAD to walk.  And walk I did!  Unfortunately, I forgot to reset my Garmin from “biking”  back to “walking” for the first 1/3 mile, and then, more unfortunately, when I remembered to reset it, it stopped my course and restarted.  Ugh.  A third of a mile lost. 🙁  I was going to only go enough to add up to 3.3 miles, but when I got to that point, I figured what the heck, I might as well go the whole 3.1 on the current course so that I could get an accurate 5k pace without having to do the math.  So, I ended up walking close to 3 1/2 miles Saturday morning, at a very good pace (under 14 minutes!).

And truly, it was all for one purpose…THE cake.  The cake pictured at right, to be precise.  I made this cake for Easter dinner at my in-laws’, and I made sure to go very easy on the rest of dinner so I could have a FULL piece of this delightful piece of joy known as Lemon Pound Cake.  It is my favorite cake, and I make it myself from a very simple recipe that includes boxed lemon cake mix and instant lemon pudding. And it is Oh. So. Good.  I added the strawberries to pretend like it was healthy. 😉  I counted all my points for the day, ate wisely at dinner, and then I used the 7 APs I earned on my 3 1/2 mile walk to enjoy this awesome piece of lemony joy. 🙂

Then came today. Besides church, which I always love on Easter Sunday, I had a brunch to attend at my mother’s house.  I normally love brunch, but that was back before I was seriously attempting to lose weight.  Now, I hate brunch.  I will probably love it a little more when I’m on maintenance, but when losing weight, it’s pretty much one great big sabotage.   I hardly ate anything this morning, and yet, check out the damage…

Dude.  Sixteen points before noon?!  Don’t get me wrong, I believe that breakfast is an important meal, but nothing’s that important!  I only get 26 points in a day, so this was putting a serious crimp in my plan to stay OP.  I went for a walk with the boys in a nearby park to earn some APs, but it was more leisurely than fitness (what can I say, I felt the need to take pictures!), but it added a couple.  Now I’m home, I had a banana to tide me over during the long afternoon, and I just finished my favorite soup.  I have two points left for the day, which means I’ll probably go to bed soon.  Very soon.

So that was my weekend.  Sorry this is such a long post, but I’ve been writing it all weekend, kind of using it as food therapy. 😉   I’m still holding out hope that tomorrow will be the day I hit goal.  We shall see…

Thank you for reading this very long post!




5 thoughts on “Holidays and Health

  1. Amanda

    Yay! It sounds great! How far are you from your goal weight? I was on WW and spent so many months not moving on the scale that I am taking a break. But your days sound fabulous! I am so jealous of your anemometer! I definitely want one. I always think of the one in Twister that is spinning like crazy at Helen Hunt’s aunt’s house, just before the tornado arrives… Love! So glad to meet another Weather Channel fiend! 🙂

    Amanda

    Reply
  2. steph Post author

    Oh, wow, another comment! I had to think really hard to figure out how you found my blog, but then I realized it was on my Blog profile, lol!

    I’m about a pound away. The hardest pound of my life to lose, it seems. :p

    Thank you for commenting…I’m so glad to have “met” you. I squealed when you mentioned Twister…one of my alltime favorite movies, and I love that scene you mentioned!! 🙂

    Reply
  3. Jenn

    What a busy weekend, Steph! I am exhausted just reading about it. With WW, I find have good days and not as good days. I try to avoid disaster days, but sometimes that happens too.

    Reply
  4. Marilyn

    I just found your blog through runsforcookies.com. I am really enjoying all of your posts. I am currently on WW and I can relate to your story about feeling hungry, that is what I have been feeling this week. I weigh in today and I am just hoping that I have not gained. I was thinking about skipping my weigh-in today, but after reading your posts, I know I need to weigh in and just move forward know matter what the scale outcome is. Thanks!!

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      Thank you so much for the nice comments about my blog, Marilyn! I totally know where you’re coming from…it’s hard to do those weigh-ins sometimes, but just getting it done is the first step to moving on. You can do it!!!

      Reply

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