I Talk a Good Game

That’s right.  I talk a good game when it comes to taking on the holidays. But the truth must be told: I’m no more immune to the temptations than anyone else.  And let me tell you, there was much to tempt me this past weekend!

My husband was doing the Thanksgiving cooking, and I knew it was going to be a feast, so I got up early and ran nine miles—yes, nine miles!—on Thanksgiving Day.  I actually fulfilled a long-time secret wish that I’d had for a while—I ran into “town” and back.  I live in the country, and the nearest town (and I use the term loosely) is about 4. 5 miles away.  I’ve always wanted to see if I could literally run into town and back, and Thursday, I did!

 

 

It had snowed a little Thursday morning, so I took it easy and stopped whenever I felt like taking a picture, which was pretty often, ha ha!  Nine miles isn’t my normal Thursday run, but since I’m still trying to lose that last few pounds, I’m only eating half of my activity points, so unfortunately, nine miles is really more like 4.5 to me at this point. 🙁

Later that afternoon, we hosted my in-laws for Thanksgiving, and it was a fun time.  We enjoyed some family time after my husband finished cooking.

 

 

Then it was time for food—my dear, sweet husband made a true feast!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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And I didn’t even remember to get a picture of the pecan and pumpkin pie!  We allowed the kids to partake in our toast, and Daniel was giddy.

 

 

Of course, once he took a sip of the champagne, he decided he’d had enough. 😛

I’m so lucky to be married to a man who loves to cook.  The man is such a chef, it’s unreal! All I did was make the bread.

 

 

Ha! That’s such a lie. 😉  He made the bread, too.  I just posed with it in my June Cleaver apron (made by my step-mother).   I honestly didn’t do anything except make the pie crusts…everything else he did all on his own.  And it was all…so good.  Too good.  As much as I wanted to resist the urge to eat too much, well…even the 9 miles I ran didn’t cover what I ate without forcing me to dip into my extra “half” of activity points.

So, even though we were leaving early Friday for a hockey tournament,  I still got up at 6am and ran three miles before we left. Dude.  I’m either dedicated or stupid! 😉

The tournament was an hour away, but luckily for us, we were able to stay with our best friends from college who live just a mile away from the rink!  We saved on gas and hotel fees, and had a great time, too!  We relived our college days by playing euchre half the night (while all the kids were left to their own devices in the basement).  Amy and I even managed to beat our husbands, the former euchre kings of the frat house, so we were pretty excited. 😉

 

 

Of course, it was the hockey tournament that occupied the majority of our weekend.  The entire tournament revolved around a USA v Canada theme, which was fun, but…well, we all know about Canadians and hockey. 😛 Our boys played very well, but although we came in third out of 6 in our American division, those Canadians were just too good.  Still, we did tie the Canadians in one game, and most of the others were close until the end.  My son skated hard and had a good time, and I could tell he was very proud of his opportunity to represent the USA.  He even smiled a little when he saw this picture:

 

 

It was a fun weekend, but keeping on track was hard, especially since I was still trying to make up for Thanksgiving!  I ate a lot of salads, that’s for sure.  Saturday morning, since our game wasn’t until 10:30, and we had such a short drive to the rink, I had time to get a six-mile run in.  I love running in new places, so I plotted out a route that included the Clinton River Trail, a trip through downtown Rochester, and then meandered through a park on the other side of the river.  The beginning of the run, down the trail and through Rochester, was fun and quite pretty.

 

 

 

 

It was when I got into the park that things got a bit dicey.  The path was barely that…

 

 

And that was the wide part! As it got deeper into the woods, it became very narrow, and then—to my surprise—it went truly “off road”!  I ended up having to stumble up and down a rutted path around a bend in the river that was filled with big tree roots and steep inclines.  Yikes!

 

 

That ‘s actually steeper than it looks, and that wasn’t even the worst of it!  It was like an obstacle course!  And then, once I got out of the park, I had a long, slow incline back to the start.  I was damn tired when it was done!  Later, we had a break in between games, and when we stopped at a local cider mill, I was delighted to find they were still selling donuts.

 

 

I felt like I earned that sucker after my off-road run! 😉

I continued to watch what I ate for the rest of the weekend, but when we got home Sunday night, damned if there wasn’t still pie leftover. 😉  So I had another piece…and a half…*sigh*.  I do love me some pie.

I got up this morning and ran another 4 miles in an attempt to burn off last night’s pie, and later I weighed myself. At that point, I would have been happy to stay the same as last week, which was 116.8.  Instead, I saw this:

 

 

Woohoo!!  Not only did I not gain, I actually lost a little!  Even more exciting is the fact that it’s the lowest my weight has been in five months!  I’m almost back to a comfortable weight again!

I will say that, for all my complaining over not being able to get back to 113, I decided today that I’m going to set my goal weight as 116, and that will allow me to comfortably stay in the 115 range.  I definitely think I’ve added muscle with my weight training (which I’ve done faithfully, twice a week, for eight months!), and I feel pretty good right now.  I’m definitely feeling a lot better than I did in the summer. 🙂

So I’m hoping that I can go another week, maybe two, in weight loss mode, and then, once I’m between 115-116, I’ll go back to maintenance.  That’ll be a scary thing, since maintenance is a delicate balance of eating more but not too much, but for now, I’ll just stick with the plan to eat my 26 points and only half of my activity points.  Hopefully I’ll be back to goal by Christmas.  Wouldn’t that be great??

Thanks for reading!  I’ll try to keep up with twice-a-week posts for the holiday season, but there’s a lot going on, so please forgive me if I don’t.  Considering I haven’t even started a Christmas list yet, much less done any shopping—well, you’ll understand if I’m a bit absent for the next few weeks!

Have a great week, all!