Pressing on

Just finished my delicious and reasonable spaghetti and meatballs dinner and it's time to share my weekly reflection. I didn't indulge at the wedding, just as planned, but I slept in the following morning and skipped breakfast (something I never do). I was so hungry by lunch-time that I talked myself into going to the Chinese buffet.

I knew I was walking into danger territory, but it has been a long time since I've had Chinese and I personally think the buffet there has the best chicken teriyaki and spare ribs of any other place I've been. I kept my head, ate slowly and listened to my hunger signals. When I decided I was satisfied, I stopped. I didn't go back and get some donuts, cream puffs and ice cream like I previously had so many times. I just put down my fork, paid my bill and left. In fact, I only had one plate of a small portion of each of my favorite dishes. I didn't go back 4 times or fill up the plate to overflowing proportions. My body knew it, too.

Whereas I normally would have walked away stuffed to the gills, almost feeling sick to my stomach and sluggish for the remainder of the day, I just felt like I'd satisfied a craving without overdoing it. I was really happy with that experience. I did my best to track my points for the day and determined that I didn't have more than 30 points (1500 Calories) at that meal. Awesome.

After the weekend, I got back to the gym. I won't lie, it was ridiculously challenging after being out of it for so long. I had a stitch in my side and a pain in my shoulder that were very distracting, but I pressed on and did a full hour on the elliptical, burning about 1000 Calories. Then, I climbed on the recumbent bike for an additional 30 minutes. The next day, things got easier, but by no means back to the level I was out say... 4 months ago. Wednesday, I couldn't find the motivation to go and today I rationalized that working out would have negatively influenced weigh-in. Altogether, I am nowhere near where I need to be with the exercise, but my food continues to be very solid, enough so to pick up the slack.

The scale was kind, showing 3.8 for the week, bringing me to 99.8 overall. Just shy of that hundie I fought so hard to get last spring. I'm now 23.6 down since the big gain. Just 16.6 to go before I'm back in the black.

This week: continue rocking the food choices and put in no less than 6 hours at the gym. Starting tomorrow.