Dieting away from home

This week is actually going a little better than I anticipated in terms of eating and exercise. I've gotten at least a little exercise every day, though yesterday I was sore (shin splints and an aching back -- the former from my Thanksgiving Day walk, as walking is always worse for me than jogging, and the latter from sleeping on an unfamiliar bed) so I just did crunches, push-ups, and stretches.

Breakfasts have been hardest to eat right, because Daniel's mother always fixes something nice for breakfast, and it's generally more caloric than cereal. Today I opted for cereal anyway, because it was just little dogs (mini sausages in biscuits) and I know there's no offense given if I opt out, but I still had to eat a small piece of danish (yum). Still, it was my lowest calorie breakfast all week.

Other meals have been OK -- we've been eating casually most meals so I can pick and choose as I like. There's been Brunswick Stew offered for many meals and that's one I fix myself, and it's surprisingly low-cal, so I've eaten that. And yesterday I completely missed lunch, picked at a little turkey during the afternoon, and then went out and ate popcorn at the movies for dinner. It's not at ALL a healthy approach to eating, but at least my calories came out about right for the day.

On Thanksgiving day I ate DOUBLE my usual number of calories and possibly even a couple hundred over that. Not so good. Good thing I couldn't weigh myself yesterday. But that's only about 1500 calories extra, which is not even a half pound if my metabolism is what it's supposed to be.

We went running the day we arrived, and on Wednesday I bounced around the house for 15 minutes. On Thursday I went for an aggressive walk (hence the shin splints, as noted above) and today I'm planning to go out for a run again. Tomorrow we're on the road so unless we get away early we'll probably miss exercise altogether, but after that we'll be home and back to our routine. I am optimistic that I will have gained only a little weight or maybe even maintained on this trip. Certainly my jeans are fitting about the same as they did when we left.