A Good “Bad” Weekend

There was a lot going on in my life for the last three days!  Friday, immediately after work, I took Jamie to downtown Detroit for a political rally. It wasn’t well-timed for our schedule, but I really wanted him to go, because he had expressed an interest when I told him about it. He’s been very interested in this year’s presidential election, and we’ve had a lot of very mature discussions about it. I think it’s important for him to be an active and informed citizen, and I wanted him to have this opportunity. So although it was a real pain to get down there and get back, we attended the rally and he seemed to enjoy it. I don’t think he enjoyed the fact that I forced him to pose for a picture, though.

Who knows, maybe someday he’ll be running for president, and he’ll proudly show this picture to all of his supporters to illustrate that he was involved in politics at a very young age! 😉

The reason why it was so poorly-timed for us was because we got home fairly late, and then I had to be up at 4:45 the next morning to get my long run in before heading out for a hockey doubleheader weekend in Grand Rapids. JJ’s team has two Grand Rapids teams in their league, and our manager scheduled the two away games in one weekend so that we would only have to drive out once. So, it was like a tournament weekend, where we get to stay overnight in a hotel with our hockey friends, but with only two games. 

I managed to run 6 miles, take a shower, finish packing the truck, and then we were out the door by 7:45 AM. Unfortunately, Saturday was the day of the big Michigan-Michigan State football game, and since the game was in East Lansing, everyone in the state was traveling in the same direction we were.

That held us up quite a bit, but we did make it in time for the game, just not in time for the warm-ups. :/ 

But all’s well that ends well, especially when it ends in a win!

JJ even got an assist in that game, although he also got a penalty. 😛 However, it was a good penalty, in that he was able to chase after a kid on a breakaway, catch him, and prevent him from scoring. JJ is not normally fast, but I was really proud of him for hustling and making the play. Even his coach complimented him on his speed, while they were sitting around in the penalty box with nothing else to do for two minutes. 😉 

After the game, we went to a local bar as a team. I did my best to stay on plan by ordering a salad.

It was a Santa Fe salad, with tortilla strips and some spiced chicken. It was good! I also ordered an appetizer, pretzel bites, which I assumed I could share with my table, but they all got appetizers, too! I had three of the bites, and then I gave the rest to JJ to share with his teammates.

After lunch, we had to drive about half an hour south to our hotel, which was closer to the second arena (so we could sleep in a little for Sunday morning’s game). I tried to get a few pictures of the beautiful fall foliage on the way, but I didn’t have a lot of luck. This was probably the best one.

Back at the hotel, we hung around in the pool area while the kids swam and played mini sticks for a few hours. When it was time for dinner, I already had a plan for that: remember the Buffalo Wild Wings gift card from last Monday? I put in an online order with the Buffalo Wild Wings that was closest to the hotel and then went and picked it up. I got that same honey barbecue salad, while JJ got a plain hamburger and fries. By the time I got back, they had ordered–what else?–pizza! I was so happy that I didn’t have to eat pizza! (Before you call me picky, I want you to know there was a kid on the team whose dad went next door to the local restaurant to get him some dinner, because he doesn’t like pizza either!)

I had a few of JJ’s french fries, along with the salad. I was doing pretty well, food wise, because I had those extra almost 600 calories from my run in the morning. So, I decided to splurge and have some M&M cookies that I had bought on the way to the hotel when we stopped at Meijer for milk. I had four of them, to be exact. They were yummy! Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered that I had forgotten to track the 12 ounces of wine that I had had before dinner. Grrr. Suddenly, my eating choices didn’t look so good:

It was kind of frustrating, but there was nothing I could do but track it and move on.

Sunday was a big travel day, but it was also my one rest day (no running). I was up at 6:30 to pack us up, make my coffee and English muffin in the room, and then head out the door to the rink. The game ended up being a hard-fought tie. Our boys played a good game, and our goalie was amazing, stopping 29 of 32 shots!

From there, it was back on the road, but it wasn’t time to go home yet: JJ had a football game in Toledo! We headed out, and he asked if we could have Jimmy John’s for lunch. Because he had played well in both games, I told him he could. Unfortunately, they don’t have salads at Jimmy John’s, so that made my choices difficult. I decided to get the veggie sub, with light mayo, but then, after I got it, I looked up the calories, and was astonished to find it had 690 calories!! Seriously? For vegetables and bread?! 

I went to the website and did a quick check of the individual ingredients, and I discovered that the cheese and avocado spread had a lot of calories. So, since I had only had one bite at that point, I opened it up and took off the cheese slices, which had the avocado spread sandwiched in between them. And then I ate my bread and vegetable sandwich. :/ I was very frustrated. Sometimes I just get so sick and tired of having to deprive myself of food. I know it’s pretty much my lot in life, because I have an issue with food, but it is extremely disheartening sometimes, especially when you’re trying to make do with what you have on a tight schedule. 🙁 By that time, my attitude was getting pretty poor, and it led to a succession of bad choices for the remainder of the day.

My sweet JJ played so hard at the game. He was constantly hustling, and doing his very best, even though he was lined up against a kid who was twice his size! That is not an exaggeration; that particular sith grader was as tall as several of the coaches and the refs! 😮 He was able to pretty much just pick JJ up and move him out of his way for every play. But JJ never gave up, bless his little heart!

After the game, I was cold and tired, but I still had to go home and do all the laundry, as well as iron uniforms for my husband and my kids, and my attitude continued to get worse. I was starving, so I had a leftover granola bar on the way back home, and then when we got home, I whipped up a pasta and chicken dinner, with some frozen vegetables tossed in for color, while trying to get everything done that had gone unfinished over the weekend while I was gone. At the end of the day, my calorie log look like this:

Well, shit. :/ And then when I hit the button to mark it complete for the day, I saw this:

Nice.

So with all that as the backdrop, you can imagine I was really, really dreading my weigh-in this morning. I managed to get up and run almost 5 miles, to keep up with my 10K training, and after that, I just kept putting off stepping on the scale, because I didn’t want to see it. But although it was tempting to put it off a day or two, after having just spent an entire post extolling the virtues of sticking to once-per-week weigh-ins on Mondays, I figured I’d better just bite the bullet. And I did…

Yeah, that’s about right. I’m frustrated, but I’m more frustrated with the fact that I really don’t know that I could’ve done anything differently this weekend. I work so hard to make such good choices Saturday and even early Sunday, but by Sunday night I was just so over everything that healthy eating just wasn’t gonna happen.

So, that’s the end of that. At least there’s some comfort in knowing that now I can start fresh. But I’ll be honest, I was really hoping to lose 5 pounds by the time of my 10K on November 20, to help speed me up a little, but that’s just not in the cards. On the other hand, we did have fun this weekend, and I suppose that it could have been a lot worse than a 1.4 pound gain, right?

I hope you had a great weekend! I’ll leave you with this picture of my adorable JJ, who got a breakaway for the first time in forever during Sunday’s game.  Although he didn’t score, he tried his hardest, and it was so fun to watch! (The picture isn’t my best, but I think it’s blurry because I was just so excited for him that I couldn’t focus the camera fast enough! 😛 )

Thanks for reading!