My Weekend in California!

First off I would like to say that I only gained .4 pounds over my vacation. And I don't know how I pulled that off, considering all I did was lounge in a car and snack on cookies, pretty much. Also, all the stress leading up to the performance was probably not very good for burning calories. Doesn't cortisol and all that force your body to store fat?

Don't quote me on that. I haven't done any research about that.

Anyway, this weekend went awesome! Headed out very early Friday morning and picked everyone up. We were officially on the road around 7 am. A couple stops, ate a Subway six-inch for lunch and two Arby's JR roast beefs and a large Jamocha shake for dinner. Arrived at the hotel at 5:45 pm. Decided to grab drinks at Chevy's. Ate a quarter of a huge plate of nachos and drank one blood orange margarita. Went to Wal-Mart and walked around for a half-hour and then walked home.

Next day, walked back to the mall next to the Wal-Mart and had a Subway six-inch plus chips for lunch. Left my Mountain Dew at the hotel accidentally so didn't drink that until later. Went to the festival and walked all around and sat to watch dancers, and danced for ten minutes in open dance at one point, climbed up and down stairs, etc. Went back to the hotel to get ready for performance. Spent the entire time curling my hair. Went back to the festival where we ate dinner, I had a pita sandwich with fallafel and tahini sauce. Watched more dancers and almost left my purse in the audience. Then went backstage to get dressed for dancing!

Doing our performance after so much anticipation was awesome! Nobody did anything wrong, and afterward we received so many compliments! Got lost on the way home, but thanks to one members' smart phone we made it back to the hotel in one piece! Korin ordered pizza while we went to my Mom's room to watch our DVD of the performance, which was mind-blowing!!! and then I had three slices of very cheesy pizza and a mountain dew before going to bed.

We woke up early, and even had to deal with a lost hour of sleep for daylight saving, got everything packed up and was out of the hotel at 8 am. Snacked on my cookies and pudding and bought myself a diet Dr. Pepper. We went through a crazy rain storm mid-Oregon but came through it alright. We dropped everyone off and at 7 pm I got to hold my baby for the first time in days! My mom and Jeri and Dino all used my bathroom before heading out again, and that was the official end of our vacation.

I was happy with everything. No major issues with the ladies in our car or room, and we had a lot of laughs.

Time to weigh myself today and see if I have lost that .4 yet!

...Nope. I didn't. I didn't lose anything. But I didn't gain either! That's wonderful news :) I just have to dig deep, do my Zumba with as much passion as I can muster and continue to make good meal choices like I did yesterday.

Yesterday for breakfast I had one bowl raisin bran with 1/2 cup whole milk. Brunch I had one egg cooked over medium with 1 T shredded cheese over a toasted sourdough English muffin and 1/2 T smart balance butter. I had a cup of coffee with 1/4 cup creamer. For lunch I had 5 pieces breaded chicken with 1/4 cup orange sauce and 1/2 cup cooked jasmine rice. For dinner I had a cup of chicken noodle soup, and I bought myself a diet Dr. Pepper. I did the Zumba sculpt and tone DVD, and worked up a good sweat!

I don't know how many calories in and out I logged, but in my book the day was a success!

Hopefully the work shows up on the scale soon. Saqra's showcase is April 30th and I am scheduled to perform twice! That gives me 6 weeks to lose at least five pounds, hopefully closer to ten. My goal is to Zumba five times a week, drink 6-8 ounces of water before every meal, start running again (set date to start soon!), avoid eating out like it's the plague, and prepare myself good food here at home. If I want to lose 5 pounds in the next three weeks, I can't go over 1500 calories per day.

That isn't difficult if I stay away from fast food. And I've resigned myself to dig deep and keep my eyes on the prize! I'll probably restart my food journal - it helped keep me accountable!

More later, I read an article this week about "True Grit" and I want to discuss how this personality trait could help anyone trying to lose weight.