Mission Accomplished

Good morning everyone!

It's weigh-in day and I lost 2.7 pounds this week! :)

Current weight: 293.4

I'm so excited! This week has been an unusual week for me because I went home (as you all well know). Usually when I go home I'll gain 2.7 pounds (or more, sadly) because I'll get off program, get on "vacation mode" and, frankly, eat like a crazy person. This long weekend went beautifully. That 2.7 pounds is the product of good decision-making, planning ahead, and awesome support from my friends and family. I blogged last week that I considered going home a "hurdle" in my weight loss and worried quite a bit that it would adversely affect my number on the scale. I was also worried about only being able to fit in one workout all week! I was happy to prove to myself that I CAN lose weight while "out of town" and "at home" with my family; it just takes some prep work.

Kyle's graduation was wonderful. I'm so proud of him for accomplishing this major goal of completing his master's program. I feel very blessed that I was able to be there for him during that happy time!

I have a few proud moments of the weekend that I'd like to share:

1. On Thursday night (my first night), a big group of us including Kyle, me, our moms, my sister-in-law, and our friend Brendan went to go see the Dark Knight Rises (awesome movie by the way). As usual, my mother and I decided to share popcorn at the movies. If you know me well you know that movie theatre popcorn is a HUGE weakness of mine. I still eat it almost every time I go to the movies, I just count points for it and skip adding fatty butter. My usual pattern (even when counting points) is to eat until the popcorn is gone, but this time I stopped about 1/2 way through the tub. I knew I hadn't eaten dinner yet and wanted to conserve my points so that I could eat something slightly nutritious. So I just stopped eating and put the popcorn down. I know this seems like a trivial accomplishment, but I was impressed with myself.
2. Kyle's mom made peanut butter brownies when I was home. No matter what she bakes, it's always delicious and the smell of those brownies baking almost did me in. Usually I'd eat 2-3 full size brownies with some milk when she makes them. I ended up eating about 1/2 brownie TOTAL and just stopped. That little taste was all I needed.
3. I'll talk more about this later, but I ended up getting stuck in Atlanta on my plane trip from home back to Baton Rouge. Subsequently, I had to find dinner in the airport. I decided to eat at the Chili's because I figured I could at least find some vegetables there (as opposed to the endless burger/pizza places in the terminal). So I sit down and look at the menu. I was exhausted and starving (it was almost 10 PM) because of the delay in my flight. EVERYTHING on the menu looked good and I had the first real urge to cheat on my diet. For seven weeks, I haven't had too much temptation to stray from the plan, but that night was tough. All I wanted was to order the triple appetizer plate. You know the one: fried cheese, boneless buffalo wings, and mini-cheeseburgers (at least those would have been my picks). I sat there trying to justify choosing that as my dinner.  I thought "I'm so hungry and I'm under a lot of stress." No one was there to hold me accountable for my decision. It was SO tempting. But then I thought about not losing weight last week and about all the good decisions I had made so far. Instead, I chose the salmon dinner from the "light" menu. It. was. absolutely. delicious!  I didn't regret making my decision for a second. It came with a quite large filet of seasoned salmon, a serving of seasoned rice with corn in it, and steamed broccoli. My meal came out to be 14 pointsplus.

My saving grace throughout this trip was my Complete Foods WW Points Guide, my Dining Out WW Points Guide, and my handy little points calculator.  I ate out for the majority of my meals, but kept finding awesome (and delicious) choices at each place we went!  For example, Ruby Tuesday's has a Spaghetti Squash Marinara entree (with grilled Zucchini and red peppers) that was only 6 points plus!  Pair that with their awesome salad bar and it's a pretty satisfying lunch! Chick-fil-A has grilled chicken nuggets that are 6 pointsplus for a 12-pack. And when Kyle chose an upscale chinese bistro for his celebratory graduation meal, I could order chicken and broccoli for 3 pointsplus per cup instead of sesame chicken for 10 pointsplus per cup. I did indulge myself a little, but I still stayed on program the whole time and (aside from the Chili's incident) didn't feel too tempted to cheat!

What REALLY threw me for a loop was my airport fiasco. It just goes to show you that no matter HOW well you think you have things planned, life can throw your a curveball and knock those plans out of whack and THAT'S when you get to be resourceful. My mother, brother, and husband took me to the airport in Charlotte for my flight to Atlanta. I get there on time and decide to wait to eat dinner (even though it is already dinnertime) until I get in Atlanta because I'd have more choices and more time. We board the plane and then get the message that Atlanta is having bad weather and all flights to and from ATL have been temporarily grounded until the storm passes. And then we wait. For over an hour. By this point, I'm starving and luckily I had packed a Luna bar and a Lara bar in my bag and was able to eat those to tide me over. When we finally get to Atlanta (over an hour and 1/2 after we were supposed to), my flight to Baton Rouge had already left and there were no more flights until the next day. Delta gave me a hotel voucher, two meal vouchers, and a boarding pass for the following afternoon.

At this point it's almost 10 PM and once I had informed my family that I'd be staying overnight in Atlanta and told my supervisor that I wouldn't be at work the next day, I decided to eat at Chili's.  Luckily, Delta put in a pretty nice hotel room, so I got a good night's sleep and headed to the airport around lunchtime the next day to grab lunch and wait on my flight. Once I get to my concourse, I realized that my only three choices for lunch were Sbarro, Cinnabon, or Burger King (unless I wanted a Starbucks baked good for lunch). Burger King was (of course) "out" of their new veggie burgers, so I consulted my points guide and settled for chicken nuggets and fries at Burger King.  I was very relieved to FINALLY get back to Baton Rouge and go grocery shopping for food that I enjoy and that is also healthy for me.

So that was my crazy weekend in a nutshell. If I had to choose some take-away messages from my experience it would be the old mottos "fail to plan and you plan to fail" and "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade (with Splenda)." Planning is SUPER important in weight loss and, in my opinion, crucial to success. However, sometimes circumstances negate your plans and you just have to use your noggin and make smart choices in the moment.

Also, another piece of good news is that I'm FINALLY able to wear my cute new cropped dress pants that I bought for work!  I bought two pairs over 2 months ago when they were on sale and they sadly did not fit at the time. :(  I've been trying them on sporadically just to see and this morning I was able to wear them comfortably! Happy day!

Until next time,
BK