Losing Weight on Vacation

February 23, 2012

Project 365 #361: 271211 All Aboard The Playbus! © by comedy_nose

We are leaving for 10 days of vacation, and I still want to lose weight.

We will be in hotels and with friends, sleeping in 5 places over 10 nights, and only on 3 days will I have a reasonable degree of control over the food available.

Realistic expectations

I am keeping a vision in my mind of actually losing a pound during the week, but realistically know tht just staying the same or even a couple of pounds of bloat will be quite an accomplishment. I’ll measure how I did by seeing if I can post a loss from my pre-vacation weight by the week after my vacation (not the day I get back).

Plan A

Is to

- log all my food
- walk 6 times while we are away
- keep tight control of 2 out of 3 meals and avoid snacking

Breakfast is likely to be the hardest meal for me, as in France most breakfast are carbs carbs and more carbs (fruit juice, bread and croissants, jams). For the first few days I have snacks packed that I can dig into if breakfast choices are as hard as I expect. We have a car and can hit grocery stores, and if it turns out that the snacks are working out I can restock.

I will allow myself to have galettes (crêpes) twice, but only savory ones. Other than eating from politeness at a family dinne, I will not have desserts, except my brought from home 85% chocolate.

I will keep track of how many focus meals vs whatever meals I have. I will try to remain focused only on making good choices at the single meal in front of me, and remembering that I can find any of the foods on offer again in the future. I will remind myself of how hard it’s been to lose 30 pounds in six months, and how ebay it was to gain 35 pounds in far less time than tht.

Plan B

is to use my phone app to more precisely follow the totals of calories and graph the daily Line of Reasonableness, which I have printed off to take with me

I’m looking forward to the trip, although the weight control challenge (let alone loss) will be a high hurdle!

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Rewards

February 14, 2012 Motivate

I’ve been giving myself rewards again during this focused Reasonable Diet 12 week program. I bought an arts magazine I bought a book on art that I wanted I bought myself a nice little notebook to put my daily food journal in, since the paper food journal has been working really well for me, and [...]

Read more →

Imperfect Calorie Counting

February 9, 2012 Eat

I just finished a three-week period of calorie counting. Actually, I finished three weeks of highly imperfect calorie counting. I had full permission to do it “imperfectly” and it’s a good thing, because Perfect calorie counting has a tendency to drive me bananas. In imperfect calorie counting, you take a quick glance at what perfect [...]

Read more →

Diet Self-Coaching

February 2, 2012 General

  In the weight loss coaching group that I’m in, our coach, Sandra Ahten, has a goal for us to learn to be our own diet coach. As I’ve thought about it, it’s become clear what a huge objective that really is.  There are two main components inherent in being your own diet coach – [...]

Read more →

Happiness : Counteract the Stress of Dieting

January 31, 2012 Relax

For most of us, the active weight loss phase brings some stress with it. I do my best to keep stress in my life to a minimum, but it often sneaks in regardless.  I take a low-stress approach to weight loss, trying constantly to walk the line between pushing myself to do enough to lose [...]

Read more →

Eating To The Point of Satisfaction

January 26, 2012 Eat

The Counting Calories Experiment As part of my Reasonable Diet course, I took on counting calories. Not obsessively, just to increase awareness and get real. One element of Sandra’s advice I incorporated was to keep a mindset of figuring out how many calories would satisfy me. How Many Calories Will Satisfy Me? I found it [...]

Read more →

Ongoing Attention Needed For Long Term Weight Control

January 20, 2012 Motivate

Attention and Weight Control I’m coming to accept that I will forever need to pay attention to my weight. To lose, of course I’ve accepted that. And I’ve accepted that I need to pay considerably more attention than I have paid in the past. But even after the losing is over (and it will be, [...]

Read more →

Accepting Diet Mode

January 16, 2012 My journey

This week I fully surrendered to the dieting process. I’ve accepted that I will do certain things for 12 weeks. Not forever, mind you, I think the idea of forever and for-the-rest-of-my-life is too big and at the same time too unrealistic. I’m pretty sure I will be hard-core dieting all of 2012 but even that [...]

Read more →

Rewards

January 15, 2012 Motivate

I added in another trick from my past to this week. When I was successful in losing almost a decade ago, one of the things I did was to have a weekly reward if I reached my behavior goals (diet and exercise). I didn’t tie it to weight loss, because it’s too depressing already to [...]

Read more →

The Intention To Lose Weight

January 13, 2012 Motivate

This week my main focus has been simple, and hard. Eating with the intention of losing weight. The overarching theme of the week though has mainly been about my vision, my intention. I’m really clear about where I want to get, and the reality that getting there will require doing things quite differently.  For the [...]

Read more →

Goals, And A Plan To Reach Them

January 10, 2012 My journey

A Weight Goal I have an actual goal weight in mind for myself right now.  It’s weird for me to be working towards a number, because all the visions I have for myself at “Goal” aren’t about numbers, they are about how I will feel, what I’ll be able to do, how I’ll look, what [...]

0 comments Read more →

Follow Through

January 5, 2012 Follow Through

Today I read something that resonated with me more deeply than anything I’ve come across regarding weight loss in the past year or more. That the problem with failing to meet your goals is probably not your motivation, but rather your follow through. Of course, as a person who has lost and regained many times [...]

1 comment Read more →

New Starts, Renewed Hope

January 3, 2012 General

I love new starts, because they come with renewed hope. A new year, a new month, week, day. We can create our own new starts at any time, but there is something particularly hopeful about the momentum of January, the new month in a new year, and the antidote to the weeks of holiday excesses [...]

1 comment Read more →

No Gain Holidays, 2011 Edition

December 20, 2011 Plan

My holiday weight plan for the past several years has been to hold the line.  To set a date before the holidays, weigh in and set that as the limit of what to maintain during the holiday season.  That’s my plan again this year.  I crossed over into the 100′s this past week, and my [...]

4 comments Read more →

Losing Weight Takes Attention

November 21, 2011 Low Stress Weight Loss

I’ve wished and wished that I could be someone who could manage my weight without paying much attention to it, but I’ve come to realize that’s just a wish. If I don’t pay attention, I’m actively gaining.  If I pay a little attention but not too much I can maintain without much effort, which is [...]

3 comments Read more →

← Previous Entries