Monthly Archives: June 2024
So I doubt I will make this post public, but I’ve got to get it out of my head.
In the span of the last month, we have taken two small vacations and I have treated both like a fat kid in a candy shop with unlimited money.
The first was my birthday trip to Solvang/SLO that was mostly centered around eating anyway. I anticipated gaining a good chunk during that trip. It was my 50th birthday and I’d been so good for so long that I didn’t care.
What I didn’t take into much consideration is that I hadn’t really allowed myself enough time to lose the weight that I gained before heading straight into another vacation.
The Laughlin trip was booked simply because we got such a great deal on it. At $350 total for the two of us for four nights, hotel and airfare included it seemed too good to be true so we booked it right away. The problem was that the dates were immovable. I didn’t much care at the time of booking because we hadn’t had our Solvang trip yet and I was still very much in vacation anticipation mode.
Having said that, three weeks was really not enough time in between vacations to either lose the weight I gained in the first trip, or really build up enough excitement for the second trip.
While we had a good time, it felt forced.
I was looking forward to not having to go to work, but since we had just come off a fantastic trip a couple weeks prior, I knew it wasn’t going to be matched.
Because I have been on a diet for so long now, my vacation mindset is to just eat like a crazy person the entire time I am there. It wasn’t always that way. In fact, we had a few trips to Vegas where I embraced the challenge of eating within maintenance calories and working out daily — coming home from a couple trips having lost a half a pound! I still had a great time and indulged in thing I wouldn’t normally, but in moderation, like you are supposed to.
I’m not sure exactly when the switch flipped for me but at some point vacations turned into “eat all the things, as much and as often as you can” and it has really kind of taken over the whole vacation mentality. Instead of planning things to do, I plan things to eat.
Don’t get me wrong, we still do things, but once the plans are in place it all becomes about the food that can be obtained in those settings. I know it’s not healthy and I know that it stems from depriving myself for so long, but I’m not quite sure how to stop it either.
When I said it felt forced in Laughlin, part of that was the food. As dumb as it sounds I felt like I was forcing myself to eat all the “bad” things as much as possible. Even if I was craving a salad, I ordered fish n chips. At Starbucks I wanted an oat milk shaken espresso but instead I got a white chocolate frap with extra drizzle on top and lined in the cup. At one point in the little cafe by the pool I couldn’t get an iced decaf latte (they had a machine that made the lattes from beans and had no decaf beans, just grounds for drip coffee) so instead of asking for a regular drip decaf poured over ice and making my own, I got a large milkshake with extra whipped cream. These things that I ordered where not what I wanted, but my brain screamed at me that I had to get the “bad” items because I wouldn’t be able to get them when I get back from vacation.
This is a form of self sabotage, yes. However, it’s coming from a deeper issue and that is that by being in a caloric deficit for so long, I have set something off in my brain so that it no longer knows how to do things in moderation. That’s not true…it knows, it just doesn’t want to.
We got back yesterday and since we were still technically on vacation, I was forcing myself to eat all the things we had leftover from my snacklebox and the room snacks. I was so full I really could have skipped dinner but instead I had the dinner and then a big bowl of ice cream too!
I got on the scale this morning since Saturday morning, I have gained 13 pounds. Now I am aware that a lot of that is water, however, I am also aware that none of my clothes are fitting properly. I gained 13.8 pounds during the Solvang trip and only managed to lose about 8 of that before setting off on this trip and gaining more.
My size two jeans are way too tight to wear and I feel so very puffy and gross.
The good news is that I have no other trips on the horizon right now. Rob is talking about a short trip to Santa Cruz but that’s not until September, so I have quite a bit of time to buckle down and start shedding what I gained but to what end?
Putting myself back into a significant deficit is only going to make my head that much worse isn’t it? If I don’t though, won’t I just keep gaining?
The thought of getting fat again scares the living shit out of me.
I was doing pretty good at the reverse dieting thing before the Solvang trip so I know that I can do that again once I get back down to where I was. I just need to remember that the deficit is not forever. I can raise my calories again and will, once I get the rest of this off.
But whatever I do, I cannot let this weight gain get away from me. I will NOT let myself spiral out of control and gain all my weight back!!
Ugh, I hate this.
