Back from vacation!

And I have so many things to say, but they are all disjointed - thoughts on food, diet, noticing others' eating and fitness habits, etc. Let's hope I can remember them all eventually, as of course, I didn't write anything down as a reminder! That would take too much planning, right?

But... I'm back. it was a good vacation. A very good vacation. We saw a lot, did a lot and relaxed. My husband said this morning, and it's true. It's the first time in years that we have been able to recharge our batteries. For the last several years it's been working on fixing up our homes, moving, dealing with family, etc. But 3.5 weeks of getting away from the daily rigidity and enjoying life (for the most part) is what we needed. It was way overdue, but at least it finally happened!

We arrived home late Saturday night after traveling 17 hours. We were exhausted, and the little guy and my mother in law went to bed almost immediately (old people really do have similar schedules to young children), but I knew if I didn't get to the grocery store, we would have nothing in the morning. So, at what my body felt was 4:30 am (really 10:30 pm), I went to the grocery store for milk, juice, bread, yogurt and fruit.

We got a good night of sleep and spent all of yesterday getting back to normal. Well, I did and my mother-in-law did. I did 4 loads of laundry, went for major grocery shopping, cooked, talked with our neighbor who watched our cats/yard for us, cooked dinner, did dishes, caught up on emails for work and home, and did a walk-through of the yard to see what's making it and croaking in the yard while we were away. And, I'm proud to say, I jumped right back in to what I needed to do to get back on plan for eating and fitness.

I've dealt with this for long enough to know what works for me with kick starting weight loss. Eating to calm the "hungries" and so on. I need to return to low carb. I also braved the scale yesterday. I knew it was going to be high as a. my clothes were fitting snugger. b. I hadn't been watching what I was eating and I was eating WAY more than the 1500 that keeps me at a stable weight with little exercise.

 My worst guesstimate was 185, but I figured it would be more like 180. It was 169.6 before I left for vacation. A ten pound weight gain seemed 'probable' if it played out like similar times I've been off track for a month. And yesterday, it read 184.0. I was HOPING it was high from traveling. Today it was 181.0 and I'm pretty sure it will drop a bit more from water weight as I can feel my shoes are tight on my feet.

But even still a 10 pound weight gain in 26 days means that I ate on average an additional 1350 calories a day. And it's not like I was inactive either - we were swimming about half the days, walking/hiking on other days. Really, eating on average 1350 extra calories a day? Kind of scary how fast the weight can pile on. BUT, what's different is that I knew that I would have to buckle down and that I knew that this is normal.

No one and I mean NO ONE stays at a super stable weight year round. We all go up and down a few pounds. My fluctuations are just a bit more drastic due to so many things. One, I have to continually battle over-eating tendencies, and I probably have a slow/low metabolism, and three, I tend to hold a lot of water weight for a variety of reasons.

Most of that I can't control, but I can control how I react to weight gain. I just need to do what I know works. So, yesterday I ate about 1400 calories of GOOD food and took a walk. Today I'll eat about 1500 calories and take a longer walk. Tomorrow I'm taking a gym class and will eat well again and little by little the weight will come off as it did before. I can't sweat it. I enjoyed vacation and now I need to buckle down to work off the excesses!

Highest weight: 275 Now: 181.0