Without “constant vigilance,” as “Mad-eye Moody” liked to say, in my health habits, it’s easy to fall backwards in a hurry.
July is the month we usually find ourselves traveling for family reasons. It’s not my preferred month – April through August is our busy season at work, and driving through Death Valley and Vegas in July is few people’s idea of a good time – but that’s typically when everyone else finds it easiest. School is out and Independence Day holiday is a natural anchor for vacations for the employed.
This year my family met in Utah the weekend after July 4 for a baby blessing (christening), and again in southern California the following Thursday for my last grandmother’s funeral. My wife wasn’t at the latter; her dad was put in hospice about the same time as my grandmother, and her sister’s commencement and niece’s birthday made a longer family trip a good idea, and helped her get cheaper flights.
Long story short: weeks before the planned trip to Utah, hospice on both sides of our family complicated our July lives. Added stress, longer work days, and a commensurate decline in the habits that had led to success.
Long story shorter: a month after reaching a low of 411, I weighed in this morning at 432.
There’s a reason I’ve spent so much of my adult life in the 400s. If I’m not actively fighting my default state – desk job, couch potato, vending machine food, fast food – entropy tends to win. The sugar addiction wastes little time reasserting itself. The T25 workouts become ever easier to go from “not today” to “when was my last workout again?”
Days of car travel. (I did manage a workout at the hotel on the way up). Multiple family gatherings that featured 99.8% processed carbs (the first couple of those, I ate absolutely nothing just to be safe, but it didn’t last). Several days of hosting brothers, Days off from work followed by long nights playing catch-up, also inhibiting workouts.
The excuses will ALWAYS be there. Last year, when I was still enjoying consistent losses following the Clinic, I lost 10 pounds on vacation. Not this year.
of that 20 gained pounds, at least ten had been gained before the traveling began. And I was at 429.x yesterday, so there’s some fluctuation in water retention. We worked out last night, and I woke up very sore with obvious leg swelling.
But I know my calorie intake and burn account for a lot of those gained pounds.
Time for a “reset.” There’s one more holiday tomorrow (Pioneer Day) and then on Sunday, I’m going to start a three day Shakeology reboot. That should help on the nutritional end. Planning to workout today and tomorrow, stretch on Sunday, and then back to a restart of T25 Alpha.
Back to the things that work: eating clean and exercising vigorously.