Today, I’m doing 67 pounds.  The same as this time last week.  However, I know I have a TON of water retained from the food I was eating, so I may have lost 1-2 pounds.

Why is this a big deal?

Because I’m on vacation.

If you look back at my posts from this time last year, prior to me starting my new life, you probably saw quite a bit of pizza porn.  I go to the in-laws every year on Long Island, NY and the food there is amazing.   I have this list of places I need to go to for pizza, breakfast sandwiches, heroes, etc.

This time….I did things a little differently.  I used to stay for 10 days.  That’s a LOT of eating out.  So, I did a few things to help:

  1. Bought some cold cuts and wraps.  Had some low cal lunches with this.
  2. Bought some fresh fruit to snack on.
  3. Made up a ton of overnight oatmeal cups and got the mother-in-law to try them.

This essentially left me one meal a day where I would indulge, a little.  I also put a cap on what I would eat of that type of food so I wouldn’t destroy my calories for the day.  So, rather than eating all of the pizza in NY, I limited myself to certain portions.  Yesterday, prior to coming home, I had a foot-long hero from a place called TJs.  LOVE THEM.  But, I also ended up eating an entire peach for dinner.  I told myself, if I was legitimately hungry, that I’d make myself up one of my prepped meals.  Didn’t get to that point.

Additionally, I took my bike and goggles.  I biked about 24 miles and swam a good 1600-2000 yards when there.  One day I was 400 under on calories, another 500 over, another spot on, another I was 1100 calories over.  1100??  Yeah, I had 5 beers.  I had 6 drinks in the past 10 months leading up to that.  So, I had a few beers.  That was, without a doubt, the worst calorie day I’ve had in 10 months.  One thing to note, in my previous life, up until about 32 or so, 5 beers in a night was an extremely light drinking night on the weekends.  I cannot even begin to comprehend the level of calories I had consumed in alcohol over the years.  Heavy nights of drinking in college would probably by 30-40 drinks over 12-16 hours.  There was also chugging, flip cups, and beer pong in there….then the bar…then late night.  My friends used to make fun of me when I’d say I drank 40 beers – like I was making it up.  Another post, another time.

Between the swimming, biking, walking  the dog 800 times, and eating mostly decent, I believe I am 1-2 pounds less than when I left.

But it gets better.

I cut my vacation short – it was so I could keep up with my training, bike here, visit relatives, and do a fuck-ton of meal prepping.  I was down to 3 prepped meals left, and I just had one for lunch.

Last night, after I got home, I went and got fresh corn, potatoes, cherries, blueberries, peaches.  Today I got 14 pounds of chicken, 2 pounds of ground bison, took the ground turkey out of the freezer, and put lima beans and black beans out to soak.  I also got ingredients to make my (lower) cal chicken parm with rigatoni.

I’m going to lay the law down.

About to make…

  • 12 overnight yogurt cups.  Going to attempt to freeze most of them.  Doing cherry, peach/nutmeg, blueberry/cinnamon, and cacao nibs/unsweetened cocoa powder/pb2/almonds.
  • chicken, rice, broccoli (mostly my favorite)
  • bison burgers, potatoes, corn, and limas
  • ground turkey, rice, black beans, diced tomatoes, onions, and peppers for burritos
  • pulled chicken, green beans, and zoodles
  • chicken parm and rigatoni

So, this type of thing takes some time, and as my wife may hate – I bought more containers that are on their way.  I’m trying to get her into the meal prepping thing, but she hates chicken.  Most of what you see above…is chicken.

Tomorrow, I have my trainer at 8:30 and a date with the pool at 9 for serious laps.  I’ve been refining my freestyle stroke and have been getting faster and faster with it.  I had hoped today to do 12-14 miles of a trail ride, but weather is pretty bad here today.  This might have to wait until Saturday.

For those of you who love adventure on vacations, I get it.  I feel I’m one year out from that, maybe a bit more.  In the meantime, vacation for me is about relaxing, reloading, decompressing, and organizing.  And…perhaps a movie or two is in my near future!