Vermont

This weekend, a group of friends and I went up to Vermont for a weekend getaway. Huge ridiculous log-cabin-mansion-place, beautiful country mountain views, a hot tub, and lots of good food and drink.

Our bedroom balcony and mountain view outside

Our dining room with vaulted ceilings and floor to ceiling windows.

Our dining room had a balcony. Not shown: the second, smaller balcony above this balcony. How many balconies does a dining room need to have? The answer is two.

It was awesome to just hang out away from real life for a couple days. And I got to see some old high school friends I hadn't seen in a long time. Win win!

Going into the weekend, I knew that there was going to be a lot of eating going on, and I was fine with that. I've been "on track" so to speak for a solid two+ weeks, so I wasn't too concerned about being a bit more lax for a couple days.

(Side note: I hate the word "cheating" when it comes to eating and diet. It has this weird, negative, secretive vibe to it. Sonya Cole's post from last year says it well: "The connotation is that choosing to eat something that is outside your day-to-day diet (and by diet I mean the food you eat, not a fad) you are doing something ‘bad’ which, no matter how much of a conscious decision you think you made to eat that food, by linking cheat to it will inevitably cause guilt, whether consciously or sub-consciously and that does not create a positive experience or association." Somewhat of a run-on sentence, but it gets the point across.)

I guess my general mantra going into the weekend was: enjoy yourself, don't stress out about it, don't eat like it's your last meal ever.

Cookie Monster Beast Mode activate in 3....2....

How did I do? I'd say pretty good, but not great. I definitely enjoyed myself, I didn't stress out about it, and I ate fairly okay - I put bacon on my grilled burger but didn't add a bun, I ate a few small cookies but stayed away from the gigantic ones, I stayed up and noshed on late-night chips and goldfish the first night, but went to bed somewhat early the next. Could I have been a lot more strict with myself? Sure, but then the first two parts of my mantra would have suffered. It's all in the balance.

When we got home on Sunday, we hosted a super bowl party. I had this short lived fantasy of going to the gym beforehand, steadfastedly refusing snacks, and eating celery or something like that. Yeah, no. Can we say.... pizza dip? Yeah. DELICIOUS. Worth it. Not to mention the guacamole, mac n cheese, pulled pork, and pizza, all home made.

GWERCERMERLER. PERLED PERK. MERC N CHERZZZZ

Weigh-in this morning: 155.0. I know for a fact I haven't gained a legitimate 4 pounds in one weekend, so this number is inflated due to salt/water weight I'm sure. I'm not going to put too much weight into it (ha! pun intended!), and we'll see where the number lies next week. If I can be back down around 152 next week, I'll be pretty pleased, despite that being a bit of a gain from last week.

Goals for this week:

1. Make my gym sessions count. I'm not able to get there tomorrow, which means I'll have had almost a full week off. UNACCEPTABLE! I'm going to up my cardio to 40 minutes, and do more weights, planks, etc. I'm planning on going Wednesday through Sunday. Beast mode.

2. Drink a lot of water and tea. I've been on a tea kick, and while I was in VT I bought some loose tea from this awesome hippy tea store.

3. Eat more vegetables. Something I definitely didn't get enough of this weekend.

Did anyone do anything fun for the weekend? What are your goals for this upcoming week?