Recovery

I made it home from Washington D.C. All in all, it was a great trip. I had lots of fun, saw the sights, and had a great time with my mom. But it was also a wake up call for me. With the trip, combined with my 10 days of dogsitting (and whatever else I gained thanks to my period), my weight went up almost 10 pounds! 10 pounds! In a 2 week period! I thought with all the walking, surely it would help. I averaged about 6 miles per day. But it was all flat surface walking, and none of it was fast enough to break a sweat because my mom can't walk very fast. So in hindsight, I'm sure my heart rate didn't increase much. And of course, every meal is eaten out. It really proved to me that vacationing can be dangerous to the waistline.

I was thinking about Bethenny's rules for "thinking thin", and how one of the rules that's helped me at home is just knowing what something tastes like has deterred me from eating it - I know what Oreo cookies taste like, so I don't need to keep buying them. I know what chips taste like, so I don't need them. But on vacation, on a different coast, you don't really know what things taste like. I don't mean Oreos are different. But things in the restuarants. Food might taste fresher, or might be cooked differently. It makes it a lot harder to go into a restaurant on vacation and order a salad, because what if the crab cakes are better here than in LA? What if the bbq ribs or the cajun pasta is something I can't get back home? I'm not sure... maybe it's just the weak argument of a remorseful chunky girl who's heavier now than she was 3 weeks ago.

I have, since returning from my trip, worked out every single day, and some of the 10 pounds has fallen off. I only have 4 pounds to go. But from what I can tell, once I've reached my ideal weight, I will need to diet 2 weeks prior to any traveling in order to lose the 10 pounds that I will end up gaining when I am gone.

As a side note, I have incredible shoulder/neck pain from carrying my bags on the traveling days of this trip. My mom and I flew from D.C. to Atlanta, GA together, and from there I was to fly to LA and she would fly to Dallas. But our plane in D.C. took off 45 minutes late because the weather was too bad in Atlanta to land. So by the time we got to Atlanta, we had both missed our connecting flights. My mom got rebooked onto the last flight out to Dallas that night, but I had to spend the night in Atlanta and fly out to LA the next morning. If you've ever been to the airport in Atlanta, you know it's no fun. There's about 6 terminals and you have to take shuttles between them. And they are always changing the gates at the last minute. So you can be waiting for 2 hours at the scheduled gate, and 30 minutes before they are supposed to start boarding, they announce that your gate has changed and you have to go all the way to an opposite terminal for your flight. It's a nightmare. I spent the night in a sad little motel that smelled like pee and slept 2 hours before having to go back to the airport.


Week: 37
Weight: 236.4
Pounds gained: 4.0
Total pounds lost: 20.6
Size: loose 18/tight 16
Goal: 150
Pounds to go: 86.4