Please don't hate me...

...but I'm going on a trip with my husband. For a week. With no children. And we're going far enough away that we have to fly there. This is the first time I will have ever been on a plane with him with no kids. This is also the longest we've ever gone away together (breaking our previous record of 4 days, which broke our previous record of 24 hours. What can I say? We don't get out much).

I am really excited about this trip, but there's something about traveling that I really hate: the unknown. I mean, I just don't know what I'm going to do with myself when I have a whole week without having to break up any Polly Pocket-related fights or get excited about anybody's excrement (did I mention that Sam is potty training?), and I'm really afraid that I'm going to sleep all morning every day. Oh, I'm just kidding (mostly), the unknown that I hate is all the stuff that goes with trying to lose weight. I don't know what kind of food I'm going to have access to, don't know when or where I'm going to exercise, don't know how much water I can drink and when (since I don't know when I'll find a bathroom)(or what condition it will be in, for that matter).

So all I can do is plan the best I can. I'm bringing along some portable snacks, exercise clothes, running shoes, and an exercise tube. In my favor is the fact that I never have to talk my husband into exercising (in fact, usually I have to talk him into leaving me alone about exercising already), and with the shoes and the tubing, I'll be able to get walks and modified strength training in, with bodyweight cardio moves to use in case other forms of exercise aren't feasible. I'm also going to try to get some fruit and water to keep in the rental car so that along with the snack I bring, we'll have healthy options available. As for the bathroom thing, I'm thinking I'm just going to have to hope for the best :)

What about you? What do you do when you're traveling? How do you make sure you get your exercise in and have access to healthy food you can eat? Is anybody traveling for the holidays and needs some help formulating a plan to get you through it with your goals in tact? Give me your best healthy-living-whilst-not-at-home tip! Also, do me a favor and try to work the word "whilst" into conversation today.

A peek inside our twisted little brains

This is the transcript of an IM conversation Holly and I had earlier this year. It made me laugh, so I saved it. The only thing I changed about it was substituting our real IM monikers for the ingenious (and virtually uncrackable) code of "H" for Holly and "S" for me.

For a little context, we had been chatting earlier about me going out to lunch with some friends at a restaurant I'd never been to before, so I had been whining to her about not knowing what to get, and this is the conversation we had after I got home. She is so lucky to be my best friend!

Anyway, please enjoy:

H [4:39 P.M.]: how was lunch?
S [4:40 P.M.]: yum-o
S [4:40 P.M.]: I got "Chicken Delight"
S [4:40 P.M.]: which is like Turkish Delight I guess
S [4:40 P.M.]: but not gross
H [4:41 P.M.]: I'm going to start calling all my dinner recipes Something Delight
H [4:41 P.M.]: Chicken Delight
H [4:41 P.M.]: Tuna Delight
S [4:41 P.M.]: lol
H [4:41 P.M.]: Ramen Delight
H [4:41 P.M.]: McDelight
S [4:41 P.M.]: Eggs Weiners and Rice Delight
H [4:41 P.M.]: yep
H [4:41 P.M.]: Get Your Own Delight
S [4:41 P.M.]: Make Your Own Dang Delight
H [4:42 P.M.]: Leave Me Alone This Chapter is Really Good Delight
S [4:42 P.M.]: I Fed You Yesterday Delight
S [4:42 P.M.]: Your Hands Ain't Broke Delight
H [4:43 P.M.]: The Toaster's Over There Delight
S [4:43 P.M.]: What Do You Think They Invented Pizza Delivery For Delight
H [4:43 P.M.]: There's No End to Mama's Lack of Interest in Your Well-Being Delight
S [4:44 P.M.]: Cry Me A River Delight
S [4:44 P.M.]: You Don't Look Like You're Starving Delight
H [4:44 P.M.]: Tell Your Dad to Get off His Butt Delight
H [4:44 P.M.]: except then
H [4:45 P.M.]: it has Butt and Delight right next to each other
H [4:45 P.M.]: and I don't think that will do
S [4:45 P.M.]: ew
S [4:45 P.M.]: and lol
S [4:45 P.M.]: How about "You Have Two Parents Y'know Delight"
H [4:46 P.M.]: That's better
H [4:46 P.M.]: not so gross
S [4:46 P.M.]: yes
S [4:46 P.M.]: not quite as funny though
H [4:47 P.M.]: no
S [4:47 P.M.]: sigh
H [4:47 P.M.]: as much as it pains me
S [4:47 P.M.]: humor isn't everything
S [4:47 P.M.]: in theory
H [4:48 P.M.]: are you quite sure?
S [4:48 P.M.]: no

Healthy living is a pain in my rear

Word to the wise:

If you set yourself a goal that you will drink a certain amount of water every day and said amount is 100 ounces and you have this great little chart that you don't want to miss a day of putting an X on because you didn't drink all your water that day, maybe don't wait until 7pm to start drinking said water.

Otherwise when you are inevitably getting up in the middle of the night to use the facilities, you might run into the exercise bike at the end of your bed, and this maybe will cause you to twist all funny and wrench your hip all weird, and then perhaps you may just end up with a wicked pain deep in your posterior. Possibly.










My butt hurts.

(But I got my X.)

Something Else I Have in Common with a Kindergartener

Besides a short attention span and a love of snack time, that is.

I wish I could remember the website I found this idea on, but I can't, and so I totally thought of it on my own! Totally. I am very smart.

One of my biggest problems with getting and keeping weight off has always been consistency. More specifically, my lack thereof. Whether its exercising or eating well, I tend to start off strong and then peter out with a vengeance. See also: August. But about seven weeks ago, I found, er, thought up this really great idea--its called "Don't Break the Chain." It was originally intended as a motivational tool to help kids get their chores done, but I'm finding it's working almost embarrassingly well to keep me exercising. Well, it originally started with exercise and then when that worked so well, I branched out to food tracking (I just added water consumption, too, and I'm hopeful this will work, too).

So here's the dope: I downloaded a 12-week calendar from here. Then, each day that I've exercised, I've X-ed out the day. The idea is to create a "chain" of X's over time, and thus the motivation lies in not wanting to mess up this chain by missing a day. I also like to write in the box what it was I did for exercise that day, just cuz it makes me happy.

Helpful example here:
Don't I look lovely? That's thanks to last night's (when I took the picture) workout, which reads "80 min. walk."
Here's a close-up:
I am now six weeks into the 12 weeks covered by the calendar and feelin' pretty darn good about it. I do take a rest day every week, but I let myself earn an X for it if I use that day to plan out the upcoming week's exercise. So far so good.

About three weeks in, I started keeping track of days that I track my food, too. I use a thin pink (my favorite color) pen and make another X over the day (notice that I didn't say I have to be perfect with my food; I just have to write it down to earn the X). Yesterday I started in with water (if I meet the ounces goal I set, I get me another X), and for that I use a thin blue (cuz that's what color water is, duh) pen. I'm sure I could get quite the rainbow going, but I'm going to stick with those three for the time being, as those are the things I need to be the most consistent about in order to control my weight.

Like I said, I'm almost embarrassed by how well this has motivated me. What's next? Gold stars? Getting to be Line Leader? But as Paul Simon so wisely said, who am I to blow against the wind. It's working, so I'm just going with it.

Please feel free to steal, er, think this idea up entirely on you're own. I hear you are very smart.

Addendum

So I apparently didn't take into account another aspect of the Africa diet: a case of Pharaoh's Curse.

More than once over the last few days I've been reminded of that line from The Devil Wears Prada: "I'm only one stomach flu away from my goal weight!"

Ok, it's not quite like that, but it sure felt like it at times. I'm feeling almost better now, thank you.

The "Hey! I Live in Africa!" Diet

Here's all you need:

A 17-hour plane trip, to include a non-existent layover because you spent it all sitting on the runway waiting for a gate to open up. This means you get no real meal for the day.

A 10-minute sprint through JFK to make up for aforementioned lack of a layover.

No place to put your carry-on bag except in the overhead compartment, leading to not being all that willing to get it out and get to your snacks very often.

Get picked up at the airport and virtually whisked away, taking away any chance of eating there either.

Have someone else do your initial grocery shop so that there's food already waiting for you and your family (yay!), most of it being food I like but don't looove, therefore making it easy to eat alone.

Four words: tiny bowls and spoons. Seriously, this hotel has the tiniest bowls I've ever seen (aside from Ikea's children's bowls, which these are about the size of), and the spoon choices are huge (almost serving spoon size) and teeny. So I go with teeny, resulting in way less cereal being eaten. For me, this is really great (cereal has always been my go-to binge food, even cereal I'm not that fond of).

Sweet sweet jet lag. Ok, really there's nothing sweet about it, but since I have it and it doesn't seem to being going away all that soon, I figured I might as well embrace it. Usually being bone tired all the time makes me stuff my face with sweet sweet carbohydrates (for real sweet, not the sarcastic kind), but this time it seems to be leading to very little eating. Of course, the elven-sized dishes don't hurt these efforts either.

Here's a big one: don't speak the language, so you know there's no chance you're heading out on your own to get food.

Another biggie: don't have a car. Then, even when your husband is home who does speak the language, you can only go as far as you're willing to walk (i.e. the length of time you have patience for listening to your children tell you they're hot, i.e., not that far).

And last but not least, be sure to have the heaviest flow day of your period start midway through your transatlantic flight and continue right on through your first day fighting jet lag.

Result? 3.5 pounds down in 48 hours!

Now for the real plan: this afternoon a guy we just met is taking my husband to the store to do some grocery shopping, so my main task today (if I can stay awake long enough), is to make a menu and shopping list. One of the great things about this move that I'm choosing to focus on is that I get to start from scratch when it comes to our pantry and menus. You know how no matter how much you say you're going to re-vamp you eating, you just can't seem to get away from the ol' stand-bys? Especially when you have kids? Well, since I have a completely empty pantry (and technically, not even a real house yet, since we're still waiting to get into our apartment), I get to say what goes in it. Of course I'll still have food my kids like, but my husband and I have decided that we want to use this opportunity to move our family's eating towards the less-processed side of the spectrum. As in, stop relying on convenience foods and try to make our meals as well-rounded as possible. Our kids are on the "fair-to-middling" side of adventurous when it comes to food (Little Miss Sunshine ate a carrot last night! Alert the media!), we are optimistic that if we are patient, we can make some good changes this year. Feel free to laugh your tails off at us if, three weeks from now, I tell you we're eating mac 'n' cheese and hamburger helper everyday.

As for exercise, I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to get my cardio in until we get our household shipments (one of which contains my recumbent bike), but I have exercise bands, and, jet lag or no (I vote "no"), I can still do some toning exercises. Plus I can do body-weight circuits.

And, if all else fails, I can always try sweating of the weight. It's certainly hot enough outside. Just ask my kids.

Stop!

Now, if you're me, the next thoughts that cross your mind will be of this ilk:
...In the name of love...
...Oh yeah, wait a minute, Mr. Postman...
...Collaborate and listen...
...Hammertime...

And if that's the case, then poor poor you.

But random song lyrics aside, I wanted to share this article I found today on sparkpeople.

3 Ways to Stop Negative Thinking
Don't Let Negative Thoughts Sabotage Your Efforts
-- By Dean Anderson, Behavioral Psychology Expert

You’ve gone over your calories for the day or eaten something on your “forbidden” list. You figure that since you've blown your diet, you might as well keep on eating and start over tomorrow. You keep eating, but despise yourself for it.

You’ve done well all week, but the scale says you’ve gained a pound. You panic, feeling certain that you’re doomed to be fat forever.

You set the alarm an hour early to exercise, but hit snooze. Feeling like a lazy slug, you wonder if you have any willpower to do what you know you need to.

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar to you?

The tendency to leap from minor, trivial problems to overblown, unrealistic conclusions is something that everyone struggles with to some degree. This type of negative thinking is one of the biggest reasons that people have difficulty sticking to their weight loss plan—and why small problems can cause stress and misery that is often avoidable.

Of course, there are dozens of deep, psychological reasons why individuals get caught up in this negativity. But you don’t have to know why you do it to stop being negative. All you have to do is to take a close look at what you are actually doing and decide to stop doing it for that moment. Here are three techniques you can use to stop all those negative thoughts before they stop you:

1. Look for Hidden Thoughts and Assumptions

The process of moving from an event (like going over your daily calories) to a conclusion about the meaning of that event (I’ve blown my diet) and what you should do about it (keep eating, start over later), typically involves several more mental steps that you probably aren’t aware of. Psychologists call these intermediate steps automatic thoughts because they are habitual, happen quickly, and feel so “right” to us that we don’t even notice them.

Although you can’t completely prevent automatic thoughts from occurring (after all, they naturally help us make good decisions in a hurry), these thoughts are not always accurate. Chronic negativity about yourself or your situation is a good sign that your automatic thoughts are inaccurate.

Luckily, it’s not difficult to learn how to identify your automatic thoughts, figure out if they make sense, and change the ones that aren’t working for you. The first step is to develop the habit of asking yourself: "What would have to be true in order for the negative conclusion I reached to be justified?"

For example, what would have to be true in order for going over your calorie limit to mean that you've “blown” your diet? Wouldn’t it have to be true that your diet is a one-day event that requires a perfect performance on your part? You know that's not the case.

2. Learn to Argue with Yourself

Once you recognize some of your automatic thoughts, you can inspect them and, if necessary, argue with them. The flaw in the above example is pretty obvious: Permanent weight loss is not a short-term project, and doesn’t require perfection. But sometimes the flaw or assumption won’t be as obvious. If that's the case, then you may need to do some investigating.

Before you jump to conclusions or attack your own character, ask yourself a few basic questions:

If someone I respect did exactly what I did, would I come to the same conclusion about them that I’m coming to about myself?
If someone came to me asking for advice about how to deal with this problem, what would I say to them? Would I tell them it’s a lost cause?
How does my conclusion help solve the problem? Does deciding that I’m a "lazy slug" without willpower empower me or enable me to do better next time? What thoughts would do that?
Is this a problem that lots of people have or am I the only one facing it? What do other people think or do when they run into this problem?
Is this problem a general pattern in my life or am I blowing one incident out of proportion? Are there times when I do well at things that clearly require willpower and self-discipline—like going to work every day and taking care of my family?
Have I put the same amount of time and effort into thinking about solutions as I have into listing the problems?
The more of these questions that you ask yourself, the more easily you’ll be able to spot—and correct—your negative automatic thoughts that are lurking underneath your tendency to assume the worst whenever things don’t go the way you planned.

3. Do What Doesn't Come Naturally

One reason that negative thoughts become so automatic and pervasive in our minds is that they are consistent with our typical feelings. If you find yourself jumping to negative conclusions about yourself, your abilities, and your options and opportunities, it’s probably because that feels “right” and comfortable to you.

This doesn't mean you have to figure out why it feels "right" to feel bad about yourself. Again, you'll simply respond better to doing things differently, rather than spending hours rooting through emotional baggage.

Changing those negative thoughts and judgments into realistic and reasonable ones is going to feel uncomfortable and unnatural. In fact, feeling uncomfortable is probably a good sign that this is exactly what you need to be doing to get past your problems.

So when you're unsure about what the problem is, your best bet is to do what doesn’t come naturally. When you find yourself arriving at a negative conclusion about you or your situation, stop thinking that and start thinking the exact opposite. If you’re thinking that there’s something fundamentally wrong with you, tell yourself the problem is in the situation—not in you—and look for ways to change the situation. If you think you’re "doomed to be fat forever," tell yourself that success is unavoidable if you want it; if you’re feeling like a "lazy slug," tell yourself that your “true self” really does want to exercise. You get the idea.


No matter how big, bad or scary the problem seems, you're always just one thought away from turning it into an opportunity for change, growth and progress. All you have to do is find that thought.

Lose 10 pounds in 10 seconds!

I am a horrible huncher. You could practically call me Igor (that's "EYE-gor") somedays the way I hunch over when I'm sitting, standing, walking, you name it. Hunch hunch hunch. Ok, so it's not a good thing to do, but it is a fun word to say. But I digress. I know Holly shares this vice with me (ask her about her mom's efforts to correct it when she was a teenager, if you're so inclined). But a couple of years ago (during one of my skinnier phases), I discovered that if I stood up really straight, not only did my back and shoulders feel better, but my tummy pooch practically disappeared! I don't know why I didn't learn this earlier--it could have saved me so many crunches! Oh, I kid. Crunches still necessary (boo), but standing up straight makes them even more effective (yay!).

Please enjoy a helpful diagram:

A helpful tip I learned a long time ago was to hold your arms straight out to the sides from your shoulders, making your body into a "T" as if you were going to start flying around like an airplane (can you tell I spend a lot of time with small children?) (don't answer that). Then when everything has settled where it needs to be, lower your arms back down, and you should be set, posture-wise. If your intention really was to start pretending to fly, well then, I can't help you.

Another idea I stole and would be particularly helpful if you spend a lot of time at a desk is to set a timer to go of every hour or so (you choose the time interval; goodness, I can't do everything for you!) and when it goes off, have a "posture check." Are you sitting up straight? Are your shoulders where they need to be? What about your gut? Don't have a gut? Then go away. Again, I kid! Don't go away. But no braggin' either. Unless you're me. I fully intend to brag when I no longer have a gut. And I have a feeling that paying more attention to how straight my dear ol' spine is will help along that dream.