My family and I set off on a short Fourth of July vacation to Canton, Michigan to visit my brother-in-law.  It’s a nine hour road trip from Nashville.  I started out with the best intentions.  “I don’t want to gain any weight on this trip, I’ll be happy to just maintain” is what I told my husband.  That seemed easy enough.  Great, I had a plan in action.  I would watch what I ate, didn’t want to journal my food intake over the four days, I was going to work out every day (my brother-in-law has an elliptical trainer), and I would eat a salad for lunch each day.

Within the first two hours of being crammed into the car with bags of food surrounding my feet on the floorboard, I was already searching for something to munch on.  I wasn’t hungry, I was severely bored.  My husband likes to do all of the driving, my kids didn’t want to wear their headphones to listen to the endless supply of movies we packed, so I couldn’t listen to the radio, my cell phone bars and battery were at a bare minimum, and I had already read all about John and Kate’s impending divorce and allegations of child exploitation and saw all of the star’s fashion don’ts.  Looking out the window at corn field after corn field and some fields that I got tired of questioning and stating, “Hey, I wonder what they’re growing over there”.  I found a small bag of cashews.  Harmless enough, I ate them.

We stopped at Panera and I had a small bowl of chicken noodle soup and a salad.  I only had a small slice of pizza and two breadsticks for dinner.  We went out for ice cream and I had a few tiny bites of my husband’s.  I felt pretty proud of myself.  This vacation would be very successful.

I had a salad at the zoo the next day and packed healthy snacks.  I ate an apple while waiting in line to watch the polar bears plunge into the water.  I had a few wheat crackers here and there.  My husband burned my burger far beyond the way I like it burned, so ate a quarter of a burger with a salad.

My brother-in-law is single, so you can imagine the food that was in his house.  There were Costco size jugs of jelly beans and chocolate covered almonds, which I finally had to put out of sight.  There was no low fat or reduced calorie anything.  I had two slices of pie, one just isn’t enough sometimes.  I had ice cream with my pie, its summer time!  Even if it was only sixty degrees outside.

By Saturday, I found myself taking bites of everyone’s pie at the bakery because I opted not to get anything except water.  I was scarfing down an eight inch sub sandwich with a lot of cheese and bacon on it by that evening at the park.  Waiting four hours for fireworks with two anxious kids is a long, long time.  I ate frozen custard on a cone and then had to eat half of my husband’s because it was a long walk back to our blanket and it was melting all over me.  I was just doing my part.  I did do a lot of walking and I had run over 3 miles that morning.  I drank regular Sprite, I ate chips and I had pie after 11 PM.  I think it’s safe to say my plan kind of fell apart.  I woke up Sunday morning with a horrible stomach ache.  Sometimes that’s a good thing because I won’t want any pie for a very, very long time.  My plan didn’t fall apart until the very end, so I’m not going to beat myself up.  Ninety percent of the time I am very consistent about eating healthfully, so overindulging on occasion isn’t going to unravel everything that I have done over the last year and half.  I didn’t even get on the scale when I got home and I don’t plan to.  I decided to stay off of the scale for a month.  I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing, minus the out of control vacation eating, and focus on feeling good and on what my body is capable of doing and how far my legs can carry me in forty minutes.

Why can’t I take a compliment?  I went to a friend’s house, today for a swim in her fabulous pool.  Most of my friends there haven’t seen me in a swim suit since last summer, which I will admit is a huge difference in the appearance department.  My girlfriend said “you look great, was it fun to shop for a swim suit, this summer?”  I groaned about how it wasn’t and how I still have so far to go to be at my goal weight, etc.  Then I had to stop and just say “thank you”.  It’s amazing how my confidence is still not there.  I honestly feel like that 252 pound woman all of the time.

The only time that I don’t feel like a huge heifer is when I am working out.  I feel energized and sometimes full of myself.  I think at times I am afraid of being one of those people that loses a lot of weight and then starts wearing clothes that are too tight and inappropriate.  I don’t want to be that chic.  I remember watching “The Biggest Loser” finale this past season and this young kid looked so great.  He looked like a completely different person, but he also looked ridiculous in his low cut jeans and his clingy shirt tucked into them.  He was walking like someone had coated his pants with 10 cans of starch.

I would like to work on one other thing than living healthier and losing weight.  I would like to work on being able to gracefully accept a compliment.  It truly means a lot to me when someone commends my efforts and compliments my appearance.  It’s very sweet and I want to learn to say “thanks”.

I also hope that if I am ever wearing something that I should not be wearing that my family and friends would speak up and tell me that I may want to change.  Send me home, cover me up; whatever you have to do.  I would rather the honesty than see a photo of myself and think “why did I wear that?”

I think I have finally moved beyond my weight loss plateau.  I kept losing and gaining the same two damn pounds for a few weeks.  I was getting sick of it.  I have had to reduce my food intake a bit, which has been a bit of a challenge for me especially last week when I didn’t plan very well.  I was running my oldest daughter to summer camp, working out, picking her up at 11:30 and having to take her to a few doctors visits due to a broken arm.  Trying to pack a lunch that would stay fresh and not melt in the summer heat of the car was too much work, so we ate out just about the entire week.  I had a greek salad at a pizza place, Subway sandwich, etc.  I didn’t go overboard or eat greasey fast food, so I was able to get this two pounds off…..again.  I only had three cups of popcorn at the movie theater, yesterday, which I wanted half of my friends bucket, but I didn’t go there. It’s those days that I wish I were pregnant because then you can eat a bucket of popcorn and it’s cute and amusing. I worked out really hard this week.  It paid off.

I’m not writing much right now because I think I may have broken my right hand or wrist and I am right handed.  It was a simple task of digging out weeds where I wanted to plant a nice flower bed and I twisted or pushed on the shovel in a way that sent a major pain into my wrist.  Why can’t I ever get an injury from doing something cool?  Maybe I need to do more cool things.  My injuries are always described as, “oh I fractured my finger from hanging the towel rod in the bathroom or I tore my retina when I was seeding the lawn and a grass seed scratched my eye ball.  Not so cool.