I did it! Be Sure to Read to the End...

Day 18 - June 30, 2010

We arrived home late yesterday afternoon and discovered that the Texas heat was only in the 90's.  Maybe we brought some of Colorado back with us!

For me, vacation usually means a suspension of my normal eating habits, and indulging in foods that I normally would not eat (dessert at dinner, for example).  But I made a great discovery on this trip - I did not want those high calorie food items!  My cravings for carbohydrates and sugar are gone, because I have shifted from fat storage to fat burning.  Because I no longer crave those items, it was easy to tell the waitress that "we did not have room for dessert"!

I have had time to assess my choices while on vacation and I realized several things.  When you are on the Take Shape for Life program, please feel free to refer back to this list for guidance and support:

1. It is essential to plan for the time spent traveling.  I tend to eat mindlessly while I am sitting in the car or on an airplane, mostly because I am bored.  The food choices at a gas station, convenience store or even in the airport are not conducive to healthy eating! (I challenge you to find a protein snack at a gas station, that does not contain high fructose corn syrup.)  Before you leave on your trip, make sure you have enough Medifast snacks (cheese puffs, pretzels, etc.)  That way, even if you overeat on those snacks, you are not taking in high carbohydrates or high fructose corn syrup... you are only consuming about 100 calories per bag!
2. Make snacks that you can take with you.  We discovered that our usual snack of a brownie in the afternoon is difficult to enjoy when you are miles from a microwave!  If I had thought about it ahead of time, I would have made several brownies for the trip to snack on while the miles flew under the tires.  Other snacks I could have made would have been cookies made out of oatmeal, and pudding chilled and stored in a small cooler.
3. Bring a microwavable bowl with you.  The hotels we stayed in had microwaves in the room, but there were no microwavable bowls available to make soup or oatmeal.  It would have been so much easier to make a quick Medifast meal, but I forgot the bowl!
4. Eating out was easier than I expected.  Usually, we ate our "lean and green meal" at dinner time.  I had to be creative in my food selection, because several of the restaurants did not offer much in the way of low calorie, high protein meals.  But if you know what to look for, you can find it!  For example, we went to a steak place in Dumas, Texas. They offered fried catfish, but they were happy to grill it.  Simple, and very delicious!  
5. You can still do your exercise program.  We set a goal of hiking every day. Of course, that was easy to accomplish because we were in Colorado! But even when we spent the night in Dumas (definitely NOT Colorado), we still walked.  It is just a matter of your intention.

Hopefully, these tips are helpful to you in maintaining a healthy diet while away from home. Now that I know what I need while traveling, I will be much more prepared next time.

I saved the best part of this post for the last...

I braved the scale this morning, just to see what the damage was.  GUESS WHAT!!!  I have lost 8 pounds!!!  But the best part is that I have lost inches - I can now wear clothes that I thought I would never wear again.  I feel great in a pair of shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, because I have lost a significant amount of skin (i.e., fat) in my arms and legs! I was on the verge of getting "Granny arms" but now that is history. WHOOOHOOOO!  I feel like I am 40 years old again - how is that for a fringe benefit?

If  you are feeling tired, sluggish and think you are getting old, there is a solution.  Get on the Take Shape for Life Program, learn the Habits of Health, and turn your  body into a fat burning machine.  You will feel like you have found the Fountain of Youth!

To get started, please visit EmpoweredWay.com or send me an email.

Living well, beautifully!