Recap

Well, I have my house back to myself, and had a lovely visit with my in-laws. They truely are fantastic people whom I respect very much. We just don't happen to see eye to eye when it comes to food.

Some of my strategies worked quite well - especially the idea of having an HMR Shake as my drink during a meal. Another new strategie for me that I will keep is freezing a shake to grab as I leave the house. I was shy about running the blender alot, so I ran it once a day and made 6 shakes at once. I drank some, and put the rest in blender bottles in the fridge or freezer and they were perfect grab and go solutions. I usually cook a lot of my entrees in the oven, and it was a challenge trying to cook for everyone else and me at the same time, so I ended up making a lot of my meals the night before (bulk recipes rock!) and then just heating them up right before meal time.

I did have to stretch my comfort zone on a few occaisions. I ended up doing a workout with weights in front of everyone while we were watching tv one night. I did some heavy duty yardwork, much to my father-in-law's chagrin - he didn't feel it was a girl's place to be lugging heavy bags of mulch around and that he should have been the one to do it - but when I told him that moving the mulch would get me out of having to do pushups as he was trying to watch baseball on tv that night he changed his tune! I didn't always feel great about leaving everybody to go walk the dog - but, well, he does need to get walked and by doing that I was able to get to over 2600pa calories for the week. I was just shooting for 2000 so it felt really good to get that higher number in there.

We did end up eating out on the spur of the moment one night. Let me just say, I don't do spur of the moment well. I need time to plan what I'm going to eat ahead of time - usually by looking up the menu online. I also pack fat-free sour cream and salad dressing to bring with me. None of that happened this time. Thank goodness I'd already had 10 fruits and vegetables by that time, 5 shakes and an entree, so I wasn't really "starving". Had I only had a few fruits and veggies and a shake and entree that day, I probably would have had to rely a lot more on will-power to order something healthy.

This experience had helped me to realize how truely important your home environment is when you are trying to make healthy food choices. I had lots of fruits and vegetables in the house, but because there were also options that I enjoy (the pumpkin bread was my downfall! :) I nibbled here and there, and it showed on the scale. I gained a pound and a half over the two week period and was down on myself. Nancy, my health coach helped me to put it in perspective by showing me how much I'd gained over the same amount of time when I'd been the visiting my in-laws' farm. 8 lbs then vs 1.5 lbs this time. That showed me that I'd learned from my mistakes at the farm, had adapted old stragegies and adopted new ones and have seen great improvement in being able to manage my weight. Oh, and by the way, as soon as my guests left, I walked around the house with a garbarge bag and got rid off all the temptations (much to my husband's dismay! :). Ahhh, much easier to make a good choice, now that only good choices are available.