I was down 6 pounds today from my last weigh in. Maybe what I should do is always be on vacation and never live real life...
OK - My theories were that I lose on vacation because I move more, I eat more regularly and I eat more calories. I was thinking that this time around I may NOT lose. We did move more than I am used to, but only two or three days were excessive. Most days we were right around 8000 steps (right Emily?). We did NOT eat regularly. We had coffee and pastries for breakfast most days, lunch only sometimes and dinners at wildly varied times. I did eat more calories than normal - because Tarte de Santiago and kaffe con leche is way more calories than two poached eggs and a piece of skinny toast. For example. We were also eating dinners for lunch and dinners for dinner. Most days I cleaned my plates too! AND - we didn't say no to dessert several times. So - lots more calories, almost NONE of them vegetable based. We did find a lovely fruit shop that we liked, we went there twice, which means that I had I think five servings - maybe four - of fruit for the WEEK! Our eating times for dinner were right up there with what I normally do. We went to bed most nights slightly later than I normally would. We drank more than I normally do also. I don't think I got more than seven hours of sleep each night. Once day I slept late (Tuesday, our lazy day) but I still think my total hours were only about 8.5 hours.
From this I conclude that I need to try moving A LOT more - like maybe three times what I do now. But I think I need to pair that with an increase to my calories. I want to try - AGAIN - to structure my meals more. I want to start eating salads again for lunch - and I want them to be interesting salads. BUT I have to start making them myself. $7-$12 for lunch daily is way more than I can afford!! I also need to pack healthy and appealing snacks. Today on my way out the door I tossed a bag of baby carrots in my lunch. I have been sitting here snacking on them. I told April it was my annual eating of carrots. I had a container of yogurt for morning snack - a sushi roll for breakfast and oatmeal for lunch (yes, in that order). I am feeling hungry now - so I will have to scrounge something up because I have a few more hours of work to go...
3 comments:
eating out is expensive and it really adds up. Michael added up my Starbucks habit for me this weekend and I was ASHAMED! ughhh! If its one thing I don't want to give up its Starbucks. I really am addicted. and I blame being on the HR team because before I transfered to this job I never gave a poo about Starbucks. Now I wake up craving it. That was the one thing that drove me crazy about being pregnant- not being able to caffeinate freely.
Yes, move more--a lot more.
I was thinking back to my younger days when it seemed I could eat anything and stay super thin and wishing I could go back to those days. But then I realized I was kidding myself--I worked out then way more than I do now! During the school year in college I'd work out for an hour and a half each morning during crew practice, then run three miles before dinner; on the off season I'd put in an hour at the gym doing circuit training. And I only ate the three meals a day at the dining hall--rarely ate in between meals (didn't keep food in my room to speak of) and I didn't like the food so I didn't eat much at all. And of course I was walking everywhere--to class, to the Metro, all over downtown. No WONDER I was so thin! Now if I run three miles in a day, that's a good workout and all I'm going to do. And sure, my metabolism was better then, but even with that the fact is when I was at my thinnest, I moved a ton more than I do now.
Of course I can't go back to that. No one is cooking my meals for me and I have to be at work for 9 hours a day and I'm responsible for more than just myself, so getting in a two hour workout each day is just not going to happen, but it was kind of a relief to know that when I really truly was thin, it was because I worked at it and not just because I was lucky. I think being relatively sedentary creeps up on us and we don't realize how much we used to move as a part of our daily activity. But I think going back to that as much as we're able to, replicating those conditions within the restrictions of our current lives, is the best hope we have for staying in shape.
Our LAZY day was 8500 steps. Our typical day was well over 10,000, going as high as 21,000 the day we got lost in A Coruña. The only days we were below 8000 we were stuck in a train all the way across the country. So moving more is definitely key.
But we had fruit twice at the good shop, and once at a less good shop -- three peaches, two oranges, and a handful of grapes was probably our total (each) for the week. By the time we got to the conference dinner I was dying for a salad (which they had, very scrumptious).
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