Monday Weigh In

Another week of the #NOEXCUSES Spring Break Challenge is complete. I have completed 2 weeks and have 6 more to go. As of today I have completed 9 Living Lean workouts as well as continued walking/running on days off. Last week I did learn a hard lesson though and realized that I have to take at least one day completely off to let my body rest and heal.

Week 2 went well. I realized towards the end of this week that I had not eaten out at ALL for 15 days. You all have no idea how huge that is for me. I did get Chipotle on that day because I could easily fit it in my plan and felt really good about eating home the majority of 2 weeks.

My lunch

Then, on Sunday I faced my first real challenge in regards to food. We met the in-laws for lunch. We went to a steak place which was nice because I've been eating low carb so theoretically a steak place should give me plenty of options. I sat at the table and watched my entire family eat their yeast rolls with honey butter while I just waited for my food. I did not even take a single bite of anybody's roll.

I decided on the steak medallion salad with the dressing on the side. It was a good salad; although the steak was a little smoky for my taste. It was very nicely done on the inside, but the outside was quite charred (as you can see), which gave it a little too smoky of a taste for my liking.

Mary's lunch

Anyway, I was surrounded by my family and their fries. I would say one of my biggest weaknesses is my love of fries. I can proudly report that I did not even steal one BITE of anybody's fries.

But do you want to know the absolute best part of all of this?!?! I actually didn't even really mind. I wasn't mad. Don't get me wrong - I NOTICED it. I noticed that I would have absolutely had one of those rolls as well as my own fries if I wasn't doing this challenge (even if I was counting calories, I would have "planned" for a higher calorie day).

I finally seem to have it in my head that this is a CHOICE I am making and I can get those rolls or fries any time I want. I just don't want them right now. I am in CONTROL of what I put in my mouth and there is no reason for it to make me mad because I am the one controlling it.

I've always been a control freak and it often would drive me crazy that that would never carry over into HEALTHY eating. To me, controlling my food always meant eating what I want when I want (which most of the time wasn't going to be veggies and such).

Perhaps this time I'm able to embrace it because I'm not putting the pressure on  myself to make this change "forever". I am looking at 8 weeks and that's it. I think when I get bogged down with "lifestyle changes" I think that means I can't (or perhaps shouldn't) eat that roll and fries at lunch EVER. Or I feel like I will never know how to choose when to make those less than stellar choices (and I'll go back to wanting to make them ALL the time).

Just a random pic of me and my beautiful daughter from lunch on Sunday. 

The fact of the matter is I did a pretty damn good job of maintaining my weight (within 5lbs) from May 2017 until November/December 2017 (right until the last 2 weeks of the year 😒). I couldn't have done that if I'm not making some sort of lifestyle change throughout this process. Obviously I'm not ready to be maintaining my weight, but maybe I'm making progress towards figuring out how to keep the scale moving in the right direction while learning the balance required to maintain the loss once I get there.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention my weigh in: Week 3 weigh-in = down 1.6 lbs for a total of 7.6 lbs. I am hoping that my consistency will continue to pay off. I have not been this consistent with my diet since when we did the Whole30 in 2014! We are going on 19 days without a single slip up. That number will just continue to grow. On to the next week of the #NOEXCUSES Spring Break Challenge!