Post holiday plan of attack

Okay, now that we're both well again and the shock of a cruddy holiday has worn off a bit, let's get to the nitty gritty...holiday weight gain.  We bit the bullet and finally weighed in last Saturday.  I was a pound over my guesstimate which is 7 lbs higher than I was before the madness set in.  I wasn't super happy but we all know our bodies and the way they hang.  I have a divot to the right of my belly button that is pretty pronounced when I stand up under normal circumstances and it's only been slightly visible in the past week.  So yeah, I knew I was still up.  The Mr is also up and he got pretty depressed about it.

I knew things were bad when he started looking at fitness products on a road we've already traveled and I wanted him to know we're on the same page even if I'm not shouting it from the rooftops.  I saw Fitness Blender came out with their new 8 week Fat Loss Round 2 program.   For $15, they will tell us what workouts to do as well as throw some new ones in there and we don't have to keep doing the same things and I don't have to hear the Mr sigh in discontent when I grab a WATP or Turbo Fire he feels like we've just done.  (Even if we haven't.)  He said he was glad I did that as a show of support and I was thinking about it anyway but his mood kind of pushed me in the right direction.

I'll be honest, we both said eff it over the holidays.  We ate anything and everything all in the name of "it's that time of year."  I want to say it'll be different this year but we say that every year.  Actually since we'll be out of town over Christmas, maybe it will be different who knows.  But I know my biggest failure over the holidays came from a few things that all came together to set up the perfect weight gain storm.

1)  I ate like crap.  I ate cookies for meals 3 days in a row and not because I necessarily wanted them (okay, I did) but more because I just didn't have time to stop.  Or I'd notice I hadn't eaten and knew I only had an hour or two until the Mr came home so there was no sense in stopping to do a full meal.  Stupid?  Yep.  But in that moment, I didn't care even though I knew I'd pay for it.  Same with a stocking full of candy.  You get that mentality of "get it out of the house" and that should mean give it away to the dingoes at work, not eat it all and consider it out of the house.

2)  I didn't drink water.  When I say I didn't drink water, I mean I was lucky to get even half a water bottle in compared to the three I shoot for.  Do you know what no water in your system does well, to your system?  It ain't pretty.

3)  I stopped taking my probiotics.  There was no good reason for this.  I don't care how busy I was, there was just no reason to stop doing that as I saw them every day other than I was just rebelling against everything in my normal routine.  System problems compounded.

4)  I got sick.  I'd say I couldn't have helped that but I didn't manage my stress so that's what I get coupled with no probiotics to help the immune system and water to flush out the crud, so yeah, taking full responsibility for the cold.

The only thing I did right?  We only skipped one workout because one night I was so friggin' exhausted it was physically impossible for me to do so.  But yes, even when I was sick, I worked out even if it was at a lower intensity most times.  I shutter to think how much worse it'd be if I hadn't.

The only problem was when I felt better, I didn't have that rah rah kind of motivation to get back to business.  Not like I wasn't going to but it just felt like "ugh, back to the grind."  But seeing the way it affected the Mr made me want to do what I could to get us back in the right mindset.  So buying that program and giving him the variety he needs workout wise, was the first step in doing that.

Plan of attack:

I suggested we try upping our water not to pre-holiday levels but at least 2 bottles for me and at least one more for him.

Workout earlier.  He gets off early 3 days a week so he can come home to workout but we usually lazy around, he decompresses by reading crap online and we usually start our workouts around 6-6:30pm when we could be starting at 4:30pm.  So if we shower right after and then I make dinner, we're talking eating between 7:15-8pm depending on the day.  I know there will be some adjustments because we're going to start to get hungry toward bed time but we'll just have to deal with it or make sure we're eating enough so it carries us over.

Tracking.  We stopped tracking the week of Christmas because we had like 3 different holiday gatherings and figured why bother.  The rest of the tracking, we just didn't want to see how shitty we were doing so we didn't.  (He's not a great tracker to begin with but we're going to change that this year.)  I've got my meals planned for this week and I feel in control again

For now those are the changes we're making and it feels good to have "day 1" (even though it's not but you know what I mean) under our belts.  I ate some yummy schtuff...

Lunch was open faced tuna fish with spinach and a pickle slice and my freggies and light string cheese.

Dinner was mahi with an jalapeno tomatillo orange glaze over Trader Joe's quinoa duo.

I got in two full water bottles and my bladder let me hear it but it needs to adjust because I plan to keep it up for 2 weeks and increase it back to pre-holiday levels.

Looking forward to another successful day!

How did you fare in the holiday weight gain department?

====================
Like this post? Don't miss another one...subscribe via email or RSS feed. (Or you can follow me on Facebook )