Need Another Weekend For My Weekend

 calories, Dinner, Family, fitness, food, Food update, Free Weights, lunch, Memories, Michael, Restaurants, Review, Road Trips, Seattle, sunny day, traveling, Vacation, waterfront, Wedding, Weekend Update, weight training, weights  12 Responses »
May 072013
 

Do you ever have those weekends where you feel like you need another weekend to recover from your weekend? Yeah, that was this past weekend. Not that I’m complaining, but it was really busy.

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Saturday morning I got up super early and started Phase 2 of Suzanne’s program, which I will write more about later because I’m REALLY excited about it! Then Michael and  I drove to Seattle. We were going up there for my cousin’s wedding. It ended up feeling like we spent the entire weekend in the car. The good thing about driving to Seattle on a nice day is the view of the mountains! Hello Mount St.Helens and Mount Rainier! You’re gorgeous!

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We stopped at Red Lobster in the middle of nowhere for lunch on Saturday. While I’m not usually a fan of chain restaurants, the Red Lobster is pretty much the best option in the middle of nowhere (i.e. the monotonous ride from Portland to Seattle). I do like that Red Lobster has a lot of low calorie options.

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It’s a great choice for someone watching their weight. I ended up getting the grilled garlic shrimp and fried scallops. You can choose your side dish, which I got steamed broccoli. I also asked the waitress to only bring ONE of the cheesy biscuits. :)

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I was kind of bummed the scallops were breaded and fried. I was expecting them seared. But lunch was tasty and low in calories. We got back on the road and got to my parent’s house in the nick of time. Then my mom drove us to Camano Island for the wedding (another 1.5 hours in the car!).

Camano Island was a gorgeous place. The island was covered in lush forest and the water lapped on secluded beaches that looked out at the Cascade Range. The wedding was in a state park and the ceremony was in the Cama Center. What a picturesque place to get married!

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I loved the way it smelled there, like pine trees and salt water. The wedding was a really nice event and it was so good to see my dad’s side of the family after so long.

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The wedding was short and sweet and the food was really good! There was coleslaw, green salad, potato salad, lots of fresh fruit, mac n’ cheese, shredded pork and chicken skewers.

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I loaded up on salad, had one scoop of potato salad and mac n’cheese, some pork and 1 chicken skewer. It was all really delicious and good wedding fare. There was a champagne toast and then the cake was cut. They also had cookies and brownies. I had one brownie and then Michael and I split a piece of the cake.

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The cake was vanilla key lime! I loved the flavors. The cake was so tall, though, that the lady cut a piece that was big enough to feed four people. I had four bites, Michael had two and we called it good. It was just too rich to eat much of.

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The wedding was over and the sun was just starting to set over the mountains as we drove back to Seattle. The orange and red sky was beautiful.

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The original plan for Sunday was to have breakfast with my Grandma, Helen. I wanted to take her out and she picked her favorite place to go to near her house. Unfortunately, the plans changed. Saturday night when we were driving home from Camano Island, my mom got a call from her cousin with the news that her uncle had had a heart attack.

My grandma’s brother was 88. My grandma’s history is pretty fascinating–her dad was a settler in the High Desert in Bend, Oregon. He was a sheep farmer and rancher back at the turn of the century. She had 6 siblings and now there are only two left. Her brother Fritz was a Marine in World War II and was stationed in the South Pacific. About a month ago her revealed to his family that he had been a POW by the Japanese for over a year. No one had known. He was told not to tell anyone. They had sliced both of his achilles tendons and as a result always had a strange walk (and no one knew the reason!).

Anyway, my mom took Grandma to the hospital Sunday morning to say goodbye to Fritz so we didn’t go to breakfast together. Instead, I got to catch up with her a little when they got back to the house. I’m glad she got to see Fritz, he passed away Sunday night, and I’m glad I got to see her for a little while before Michael and I headed home.

It was a nice visit, despite the change of plans and the sad news. When we got back to Portland I went for a quick swim and then we went to our friend’s house for a BBQ. Like I said, it was an exhausting weekend and I really needed one more day to just relax and decompress!

How was your weekend?

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Because You Want to or You Have To?

 fitness, Losing weight, Motivation, relationship with exercise, staying motivated, weight loss, Weight Loss Support  20 Responses »
Apr 232013
 

Do you work out because you want to or because you have to?

Mental Health and Fitness
Do you work out because you want to, or because you have to?

What a loaded question, huh? But I pose it to you because it’s an important question. It can most definitely be both. Don’t we all have those days/weeks? Those days where we drag our lazy butts to the gym even though we’d rather just relax at home?

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Because I Want To

Even when I was overweight and eventually obese, I DID go through phases where I was way into the gym. I remember distinctly when I was still living at home around 18 years old, just out of high-school and I joined the nearby 24HR Fitness. It was a small gym, no pool, but it was close to my parent’s house and it was also right near where I worked. I would go to the gym a few times a week but it was also followed by eating a footlong sub from Subway or one of those personal sized pizzas from Pizza Hut for dinner. I was undoing everything I did in the gym with a poor diet. But I was 18 and didn’t know any better and certainly wasn’t counting my calories then!

I enjoyed going to the gym even though I didn’t see any results (again, poor diet). I definitely went through very inactive phases (sometimes lasting years at a time) and that is when I put on the most weight. The image of an obese person hating exercise wasn’t necessarily accurate for me. I was just lazy. I didn’t see results when I did work out, so why bother? (AGAIN! Diet!)

When I resolved to lose 100 pounds, I started swimming a few days a week and then eventually added some gym sessions to that too. I found that I really really liked it. It was such a good stress reliever! The more I worked out, the fitter I got, the more I LOVED how I felt. I felt healthy, I was losing weight, I was getting stronger.

I loved seeing results and I loved the happy endorphins I was getting. Because of that I’ve grown addicted to that feeling. It makes me happy, it relieves stress, it gives me “ME” time, I see results and I found that I loved doing things like biking, running, hiking and swimming. If I take too many days off from working out, my body doesn’t feel good. I feel lethargic, I start to feel moody and certain parts of my body start to ache (usually my hips).

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Because I Have To

For me, this is the sticky part. It’s complicated. I definitely have emotional scars and issues related to being obese and losing 100 pounds. There is definitely a fear in the back of my mind that says if I ever stop working out, I will gain back 100 pounds. Is that realistic? Probably not. Is it a valid fear? I think so! I don’t want to go back to where I was so unhappy. I don’t want to lose everything I worked so hard for.

There are days when I DO work out “because I have to.” For me that means “it’s on my calender, it’s a gym day, I have to work out.” Lately I’ve been getting much better at taking an extra rest day if my body or my mind needs it. Sometimes taking 1 extra rest day is the reset I need and when I return to the gym I feel refreshed and excited again. We all burn out sometimes; that’s natural. Switch things up!

If more and more of your workouts are done “Because I Have To”, maybe it’s time reevaluate what you’re doing. Maybe you need to find something else to do that you ENJOY and look forward to it. Check out some of these old posts:

Maintenance 101: Fitness Should Be Fun

Why Wednesday – Why You Need a Break Sometimes

Why I Dislike Fitness Classes

You Are Stronger Than You Think

I touched on this issue a lot in the “Fitness Should Be Fun” post. It should be. It may be hard, it might be exhausting, but if you look forward to it and feel accomplished after it, you’re on the right track!

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