The Game Plan

I am lucky enough to be able to spend a nice long holiday with my parents this year, and I am so excited to go home for Christmas! And to see my awesome big brother, who I haven't seen for something like TWO YEARS. That is entirely too long! The kids are super excited, of course, and going nuts over the possibility that they might actually get to see snow this winter. (We've promised them that we'll make a trip to the mountains or something if the snow doesn't show up at Grandma's house.) So we're all looking forward to a pretty good time. The only thing I haven't been looking forward to is the fact that traveling and staying in someone else's house, especially when combined with the inevitable holiday goodies, doesn't exactly bode well for the old weight loss efforts. So I took to heart the words "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail" and came up with a game plan for my Christmas vacation. I'm really hoping to keep the weight loss going all the way through so I don't set myself back another month like I did with R&R. So here's the plan:

• Log food and exercise every day. Yes, every day. Even if there are really bad days. I've mentioned before that I use Lose It! to track my calories, but I haven't really conveyed what a crucial part of my weight loss it has been. Keeping track of how much I take in and how much I burn takes the mystery out of weight loss and makes it logical and straightforward and doable. Logging keeps me focused and keeps me disciplined, and even on days when I overeat my budget, knowing that I have to remember and record what I eat makes such a big difference. 
• Get at least 30 min of exercise, 5 days per week. This shouldn't be too much of a problem, since I will have someone to help with the kids (yay!). Although running outside in the cold will probably be a huge shock to my system! I'm also hoping to get in some fun workouts on my little bro's punching bag. 
• Always eat sitting down, with my food on a plate. This is something I'm working on lately anyway, but I think if I can stick to it over the vacation it will really help cut down on the random unnecessary snacking. Even if it's just moving something from the box to a plate and then sitting down to eat it, when you make food something that has to be prepared it makes you think about how much you really want to eat it. Do you really want it or are you just eating it because it's there and it's easy? Also, not eating out of a package forces you to choose (and see) your portion size and gives you a natural stopping point, so you are more likely to feel satisfied when you are finished.
• Don't do anything else while eating. No watching TV, surfing the web, or even reading. Talking is allowed, though. :) Focusing on really tasting and enjoying the food leads to a much greater sense of satisfaction. This is something I have totally learned from experience lately! I enjoy food so much more now than I did when I was constantly eating. It really seems to taste better! 
• As soon as possible, go shopping for my go-to foods. It will be important to keep on hand the foods that keep me on track.
• Plan for indulgences. I am not foolish enough to think I can get through Christmas without enjoying some treats, nor would I even want to try! That's part of the fun and joy of the season. But as much as I am able, I want to plan ahead for the indulgences and store up a "calorie buffer" to make room for them. I'm sure there will be a few days where I go a little over my calorie budget, buffer or not, but I want those times to be times when I made a decision instead of just got lazy.
• Keep my hands (and mind) busy. I'm planning on jumping into some knitting and/or sewing projects when I get there. When I have something to do I really don't think too much about eating.
• Offer to cook. I plan on helping out a lot with the cooking. My dad and I have already decided that we'll sit down together and plan some good healthy dinners. I've already come up with some ideas that everybody should be able to live with.
• Prepare healthy sides for Christmas dinner. I really want to enjoy all the usual stuff, but I'd also like to find some awesome healthy side dishes to fill up on too. So I don't have to feel guilty about the blackberry pie for dessert! (There will be blackberry pie, won't there Mom??)
• Keep the goodies out of sight! The saying "out of sight, out of mind" applies to nothing more than food! I generally don't walk around the house feeling like I really need to have cookies or fudge or whatever, but if there's a plate of them sitting on the counter, you betcha I'm going to feel like I can't live without some! So whatever delicious goodies show up at the house, I'll be stashing them in the cupboard every chance I get.
• 'Tis the season for forgiveness. I refuse to feel guilty and beat myself up if I don't do everything just like I've planned. I will just move on and do better the next day.

I've already talked about some of this stuff with my parents and I am happy to say that they are nothing but supportive. I know a lot of people really have to struggle with their families when they try to change their lifestyle and I can't imagine how much harder that would make things. I'm so grateful to have a family that is totally in my corner!

So what do you think? Am I crazy? Is my plan missing anything? I may not be blogging much (if at all) until the new year, so if I don't get another chance to say it... Merry Christmas, everybody!

Cardio makes me cry

Does this ever happen to anyone else? Intense cardio (mainly running, but it also happened in spin class today) totally makes me cry. And not in the "oh, this sucks so bad I want to cry" sense, but in the "all of a sudden I'm so overwhelmed with emotions I have to cry" sense. It's probably some kind of crazy brain chemistry thing triggered by the release of endorphins or whatever, but it's not something I've ever seen or heard of before. I have to say, it makes me feel pretty silly to burst into tears while I'm pounding away at the treadmill in the middle of the gym. I always sweat so much that the tears just blend in, so people probably wouldn't even notice except that I can't keep my face from contorting into crying person face. It's actually not that bad--it doesn't last very long so it's not like I'm sobbing all over the place or anything. It's a good reminder, though, how much my mental stability requires regular exercise. I think there's a lot of stress that I just don't let myself process and exercise has become the way I do that. I used to eat my stress, now I just try to outrun it.

There are so many good things to report on the weight loss front this week. You may remember from my post a few weeks ago that I was not doing so hot for a while there. I really fell into a nasty funk after Tim left and, try as I might, I couldn't seem to shake it. I was so discouraged by the weight that I'd gained and had such a hard time getting back into a groove. I don't think I considered giving up on my goal altogether, but I was definitely considering coming up with some pansy wimp-out modifications to it. But thanks to the encouragement of my awesome friends and family (you guys!!) and some good advice from other Lose It! users, I just decided to buckle down and push through it, to keep logging my food and forcing myself to work out (gym care or not!). Almost as soon as I made that decision my motivation reappeared. Just the act of deciding that I wasn't going to let a little case of the blues defeat me turned everything around. And the last week has been awesome. My workouts have been hard core, I've been eating under my calorie budget without really even trying, and my mood has done a complete 180.

Here is a taste of the awesomeness from this week:

• Yesterday and today I did the WHOLE ab workout in my fitness classes without stopping. I have NEVER in my life finished an ab workout without having to stop in the middle (usually several times)! Can I just tell you how amazing that feels?!
• I discovered that I can do 29 push-ups in a minute. Real push-ups! I could totally pass the push-up and sit-up portions of the Army PT test. (The 2 mile run still needs some serious work, though, don't get too excited.)
• I have dropped almost all of the weight I put on over R&R. I set myself back about a month on my goal, but I've made peace with that and now I'm just thrilled to be moving in the right direction again.
• Ok, this is super embarrassing, but check out the size of these quads:

I know, body builder legs, right? Yikes!

• I've also noticed some great improvements in my flexibility, posture, and energy level. Exercise really does do all the stuff they say! Imagine that.

At the end of spin class this morning the instructor told us to "own the song"-- to do whatever we wanted, but to do it as hard as we could for the whole song. So, just like she said, I put my head down, ignored the people around me, and pretty much all-out sprinted for the next five minutes. I was thinking about everything that has happened this month, and how amazed I am that I've made it to this place. I thought about what it will feel like to reach my goal, and the reasons I'm doing all of this to begin with. And I thought, "If I can do this, I can do anything. How can anything seem out of reach if I can master this?" And then I started to cry again. I just kept my head down and let it flow.

Family pics

A big thank you to our friend Sabrina for offering to take these photos for us! I love how they turned out. 

The best two weeks

So I'm finally getting around to posting about R&R, only a few weeks late. It's really hard to describe what it feels like to see the love of your life again after being apart for 7 months, so I won't really try.  And I didn't get a lot of good pictures because dang it all if I wasn't going to enjoy every minute and not from behind a camera! So this is what you get.

Waiting anxiously at the airport. The slowest half hour of our lives! It was so awesome to finally see him appear in the doorway and then just hug him and hug him. Then everybody started applauding and none of us knew what to do. So I started crying and we went home.

These two boys are as much in love as they ever were.

We did a lot of fun stuff that I didn't get pictures of--ice skating, bowling, the beach, some other stuff I can't remember because I didn't take pictures, and, unfortunately, Chuck E. Cheese. I really don't like Chuck E. Cheese, but this trip was actually pretty good.

Pizza and movie night.  (Pie and film night?)

We got all dressed up (ok, only the kids dressed up) for the Trunk or Treat.  Aren't they the most adorable kids ever? I think Forrest should just wear that cowboy costume all the time.

We shot off a rocket! Tim had been wanting to do a model rocket with the kids for a while and it was so much fun.  Luckily it didn't land on anybody's house and the MPs didn't show up to see who was shooting rockets at the helicopters flying over.

Then we got all dressed up again for real trick-or-treating. Forrest couldn't decide what he wanted to be so he got to have two costumes this year. Cuz I'm nice like that. They got a ton of candy, of course. And I stole a lot of it, of course. 

Once Halloween was over we moved right on to Christmas. We made some ornaments and put up the tree. Tim gave the kids their presents from him. I'm glad we got to share a little bit of Christmas with Daddy.

It sure was hard having to say goodbye again when the two weeks were over, but we really did have a wonderful little vacation together (key word: "little"). Just can't wait for the next homecoming! We miss you, Timmy!