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:
- Bought some cold cuts and wraps. Had some low cal lunches with this.
- Bought some fresh fruit to snack on.
- 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!
Leave a Reply