Better Choices

I just entered week 27 of my food "lifestyle change" (I have been reminded that "diet" is just "die" with a "t" and what I'm doing isn't hard and is a permanent commitment).  I'm down 33 lbs and have 10 to go for my initial goal.

I didn't lose any weight over the past two weeks.  And I didn't gain any either.  And this is a good thing.  Here's why - both last weekend and the weekend before I was out of town, somewhat on vacation, and away from my "safety" zone of good eating.  Now I've explained that part of making a permanent change like this is realizing that in times like vacations, you do need to enjoy yourself and not miss out on certain things just to stay on some strict eating schedule.  However, part of that is also learning how to make "better" choices even when you're out of your regular schedule, and realize that you may even put on a pound or two during those times, but then get back to normal, and that's ok.  That is a situation I need to be able to handle and repeat for the rest of my life.

Did I do ok over those weekends?  Yeah.  Most of the meals had fruit and vegetables and proteins, and I was able to choose those over carbs.  I "pre-approved" the night I knew we were going out to the pizza restaurant, as that is what we were doing, it was a new and unique place, and I knew I would enjoy it.  And I did.  And the past weekend, when we were at the sports bar watching the Nebraska game, most of the food was bar food and the choices were somewhat limited (I still did as good as I could, broccoli-cheese soup and chicken fingers vs. french fries and nachos).

Could I have done better?  Yeah.  At the lake, we had two big boxes of homemade chocolate chip cookies, one box that they made and one that I made.  When we got to the lake after the 6 hour drive, I wanted a cookie.  Fine, one cookie after a long drive on a vacation is fine.  Within 2 hours I'd had 10.  Not fine.  And over the weekend, I probably had 10 more.  Not fine.  I can do better than that.  20 cookies in a weekend is like my old days.  And, to quote a famous Jedi Master, "that leads to the dark side".

So...the process continues.  But I feel pretty good about 2 weekends in a row where I was able to maintain my current weight, and then jump right back into the "normalcy" of my good eating decisions.