What A Week!

Talk about a fitness buster!

Thank goodness I have a good, realistic attitude about all of this.

I made two trips to Houston this week. Each was a day trip. Each leg is 6 hours.

24 hours in the car.

4 meals eaten by drive-thru.

No exercise.

One of those days I got home at 4 in the morning. Just in time to get ready for work.

Breakfast that morning was Pop Tarts and coffee.

By lunch, I was starving and almost manic from the sugar and what caffeine I do get from drinking half-caff. Yes, I know - I'm supposed to have virtually eliminated caffeine from my world right now but believe me, desperate times called for desperate measures.

The last day, more Pop Tarts for breakfast as I was pretty much exhausted by then and didn't get up in time to really even fix a bowl of cereal. It was a grab-n-go kind of morning.

So, yesterday, I tried to make up for it. Now, I know that you can't undo several days of bad decisions in one day. But I walked two dogs, rode my bike, made homemade frozen yogurt and stir-fry for dinner.

It was a start, right?

Yes, I am also aware that there good choices now at the fast food places. Well, maybe "good" is not the right term but "less damaging". But I rarely pick those. I don't like vegetables so ordering a salad is out, most sandwiches come with lettuce and tomatoes and to order without those always seems to involve a wait, or pulling up past the second window so they can bring it to us. I tend to pick the chicken nuggets since they need no "adjustment". And I will confess here and now that I had one of the best chocolate shakes EVER at a Jack-in-the-Box.

Yep, you read that correctly.

It may have tasted so good because it has been so long since I had one, but ice cream is a comfort food (at least for me) and by this point in my week, I needed it and I didn't really care.

Yes, the Wii let me know this morning that I had my work cut out for me this week. But that's OK, too. Taking care of yourself means the mental as well as the physical and sometimes you have to let one take a backseat and focus on the other.

For me, the stresses of the week - work and family - had led me to a place where I just had to take care of Deanne, if only for the few minutes it took to enjoy the shake.

Guilty, not one bit. I took two years to lose the weight and have successfully maintained that loss for over a year now and I know I can't undo all of that in one week.

Vigilant, yes. I do know that I could very easily undo all of that if I were to continue that behavior. But I won't.

I'm proud of myself. Of my accomplishments. And the fact that I do have control over this aspect of my life. While my food choices were not the best, they were conscious decisions. I knew what I was ordering and why I was ordering it. I wasn't fooling myself.

So, my lessons for you are these: We're not all perfect. Even those who have reached their goals or seem to be so in control all have bad days. Days where other things are more important than worrying about what you eat or if you got in 30 minutes on the treadmill. Prioritize. Do what you need to do.

Then get right back in the saddle and continue to ride the straight and narrow path.

Right past the drive-thrus....