Mele Kalikimaka

My vacation to Hawaii was everything I thought it would be, and infinitely more. I knew I needed it, but I had no idea how much. It was so amazing to be able to have a week with my husband, by ourselves, to have time to reconnect and just focus on each other. To be able to pull myself out of the every day things and rediscover myself (if you will) was absolutely what the doctor ordered. I had several defining moments that have changed me for the better in so many ways. It was amazing.

I tried hard not to flip the switch over to vacation mentality right away. Actually, it's more like I tried to have nothing to do with "vacation mentality" as far as eating goes. There's a new mentality in town, and that is that you can still make awesome choices even in the face of a vacation. You don't have to throw all your new good habits right out the window. And I'm happy to say that for the first (more than) half of the trip, I was a superstar. In the mall at the food court when my husband got stromboli, breadsticks and root beer, I went for Subway and drank water. In fact, for the entire week I drank nothing but water--except on the very last night I had a virgin pina colada, which I'm sure had way more sugar than I even want to know. But at every restaurant, it was "I'll just have water." I'm really very happy to say that soda just doesn't tempt me at all. I don't like it any more, and I am genuinely happy to just have water. I love water. I love Subway. When my husband ate taco bell, I ate Subway.

We had fruit for breakfast every morning. First, we were randomly selected by the hotel staff to receive a really nice fruit basket, so that took care of the first few breakfasts. Beyond that, we went down to a little cafe and got a banana every day. One day I went ahead and got a bagel too, which probably wasn't the best idea, especially with the full fat cream cheese I spread on it. But that was the exception to the rule, and it was a vacation (there's that stinkin' mentality trying to get me down!) so it's not like I bought a whole pack of bagels and a full size tub of cream cheese or anything. So anyway.

I was sugar free the entire vacation, until Saturday night when we went out for my husband's birthday. They gave us both free cupcakes (2 mini-cupcakes each) which we ate. Then on Monday we went to Cheesecake Factory for lunch and had Mexican food, which I ate less than half of. But we did get some cheesecake, which I did eat, and it made me feel so yuck. It was way too rich, and way too sweet. But I ate it anyway, and then left being less fond of cheesecake than I thought I was.

Monday night was a dinner cruise, which turned out to be all authentic Hawaiian food, which I absolutely don't like, so it was okay--no over eating there, for sure! Tuesday was the killer, because I was on the plane. I had hoped to find a Subway in the airport so I could get a sandwich to take with me, but all they had was Quiznos so I got that instead. Note to self: Subway is much better tasting, and a lot healthier. I still drank water, but I also had trail mix AND pistachios, so that probably wasn't very good.

But the awesome, AWESOME thing was the Koko Head hike. I'm still kind of in a half disbelief that I did it. Since I already blogged it on my other blog, I didn't want to type it all up and load all the pictures again. That takes forever! But there's that link, so you can see how it went. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, probably, when it comes to physical stuff. But it was amazing. The next day we did the Diamond Head hike, so you can check out the pictures from that one as well  if you click on the link.

Seriously, the old me would have never in a million years even considered using vacation time to do hikes like that. Never. I mean, isn't a Hawaiian vacation for sitting on the beach and sipping drink after drink with the little umbrellas in them? Really? But those hikes are a huge part of what made it the best vacation ever.

Another good thing to report is that I did really good with my exercise. I did 30 minutes of aerobics and 30-40 minutes of strength training/toning in the hotel room before I went down to the gym. Then at the gym I did 30 on the treadmill, and 30 on the elliptical. It was great. The treadmill was the best, because I did 90% of it without holding on, and I did a lot of running intervals. I know it's not a lot, but at one point I ran for two whole minutes without stopping or holding on. I was only at a speed of 4.0 most of the time, I did get up to 4.2 for a little bit, and an incline of 4. So for me that was good--my best yet on a treadmill. The elliptical was also great because it had an aerobics mode that had me doing different things, and it was a good challenge and a fabulous workout.

So I did that exercise scenario the first 2 days, then Koko Head was my workout for Saturday. Diamond Head was Sunday, but it wasn't that much of a workout--but it was Sunday, so I think that was appropriate. The bad news is that somewhere along the Koko Head hike I messed up my left quad. I guess it's a muscle strain, I don't know. My left leg kept trying to give out on me on the way down, and then it hurt to go up and down stairs. Walking was a little hard, too, I had to keep my knee locked. It was quite annoying. I pushed through it a lot and didn't let it get in my way. Once I got warmed up and got the momentum going on Diamond Head, it was okay. It still hurt, but it was fine. And it was fun. But then when I mentioned going down to the gym on Monday, my husband kindly suggested that he really thought I needed to give my leg a break. I had to admit he was probably right. So there was no exercising on Monday or Tuesday.

I flew home on Tuesday, and only got 3 hours of sleep that night. So--you guessed it, no exercise Wednesday either. I've been using some icy hot ever since I got home, and I think that by tomorrow (Friday) I'll be up early doing some step aerobics. I hope so anyway, I really need to get back on track.

BUT,

When it all comes down to it, I clearly still have sweet tooth issues I have to deal with. The bad news is that I'm having a difficult time getting back into healthy mode. That really is the bare bones truth of the matter. The good news is that I haven't completely lost my mind or gone off the deep end. There's still a lot of fight in me, and I've been fighting a good fight. I've won some battles, I've lost some battles. The worst of it is that this morning I weighed 195. That makes me sick to my stomach. The good news is that I know that yesterday was perhaps my worst day of all (and it was a full day of being at home, so that's a little bit ridiculous). One last day to allow myself some treats before I have to go into the post-vacation fight, I guess, which is a completely distructive mentality and one that I know doesn't do anybody any good. In the end, my very worst "vacation" day was my first full day home. I hate that I do this sometimes, but I have to just learn from it and use it to try and get to the root of what exactly my personal issues are so that I can fix them and move on.

Today is re-focus day. My sister is leaving today, and I'll be able to get back into my groove of how I do things. I need to get back to my own routine, the things that I am used to and that I know will work for me.

And guess who doesn't have to bake anything else, at all, this whole year? Me. No more pies, no more cookies, no birthdays, no nothing. I am working out the details of a small scale challenge I want to set for myself for the rest of the month and into the new year. Nothing with crazy exercise or anything--possibly nothing but a sugar free thing again. I really like being sugar free. I am thinking of something I can do with a bodybugg as a reward, because I really want one. And I think I want to do something fabulous to earn it, instead of deciding to just buy it. So we'll see. I don't know if I can work it into the budget, but I really want it. So maybe that's it, maybe I'll just pledge to be sugar free from now until I move in February and see how that goes.