san francisco cheat weekend

If you haven't read the book BossyPants by Tina Fey, I would encourage you to drop what you're doing, purchase it (as an added bonus, if you go purchase it at borders bookstore you may even see snarky signs like "no bathrooms, try amazon"), let it sit on your night stand like all those other books you buy fully intentioned to read but never get around to. Or you could read it and have a few laughs as I did on the plane home from San Francisco (few things are as depressing as landing in Houston when traveling from San Francisco. If you thought Houston weather was bad, just visit places with a nice cool 70 degrees year round, then come back to 95 and 150% humidity, yikes.) Tina Fey's humor is about as aligned with mine as could be, which is to say sarcastic, degrading and sometimes crude. I don't know what I would pay to be able to read her thoughts and see how she sees the world, but its a whole bunch of money. If you're looking for a non-captivating or non-wild-at-heart-living-in-a-shack-something-about-love-tatooed-dragon book to read, I recommend this one if only for the pictures.

Also if you can't tell by now, sometimes I will write paragraphs that have absolutely nothing to do with the theme of this blog, which is "me trying to get in shape and everyone else getting to laugh at me", but like I said in an earlier post, this blog is a living, changing thing and might include some non fitness related material from time to time. Sorry, I'm not sorry.

As I mentioned previously I traveled to San Francisco over this memorial day weekend, probably my favorite city in the United States. The trip was for a buddy's bachelor party, but I really do look for any excuse to get out to San Francisco. The shocking part of this trip, is that my blog WASNT the thing everyone was talking about which tells me a few things 1) I'm not yet "there" with my fitness goals because people weren't asking me "how did you do it??" and 2) the few in SF that actually read this aren't spreading the word, which is okay by me, because they are too busy eating brunch and wearing half zip fleeces, vans, and fancy jeans to be talking about me.

I knew going into this trip that eating healthy was going to be problematic which was confirmed as our first stop was at In-N-Out. By the way, I think In-N-Out is good, but not waiting for an hour to get my food good (people of dallas, what the heck???). I was good about ONE thing during the trip, I maintained myself gluten free (sans ONE beer, but it was a good one). This wasn't easy at all as one of the guys freakin whipped up stuffed french toast for breakfast and I had to sit there in complete awe (this was honestly one of the few times I've just wanted to give up and eat gluten since the experiment started , french toast and I have a long complicated history, it just gets me). I definitely wasn't perfect, as I learned that setting 7 layer dip and corn tortilla chips in front of me will cause me to go into robot mode and eat until the dip has been eliminated, but remembered the wise words of Everyday Paleo, and that is if you're going to cheat just make sure its not with gluten.

Also I drank WAY too much soda, (yes occasionally (often) mixed with whiskey, and sometimes at 10am) but even in the airport on the way home I had difficulty switching back to water. On the airplane I ordered my coke zero just like old times. Within a span of 4 days it went from "cheating" with a soda to "this is natural". I'm now beginning to sympathize and understand how hard it can be to quit smoking and how just a couple bad decisions (one smoke with a friend, etc) can turn "cheating" into "2 packs a day" (though the real question in my mind is why do people ever start, but thats not a question we're going to delve into in this blog).

We managed a few items of physical activity, but nothing as vigorous as a typical crossfit workout. To sum up the weekend, I didn't eat great and was pretty lazy. I really came away from the weekend confused as to if I did "well" or if I really let my body down. I avoided gluten, didn't eat cake but definitely didn't stay paleo, and hadn't gotten to workout since thursday (my gym was closed today, which BTW Charlie if you ever stumble upon this, umm its tuesday after memorial day, everyone else had to go back to work, whats the deal?), surely I must've gained 4 lbs back.

174 on the dot. This was great news to me as I thought I had surely set myself back a few weeks (not saying I didn't set myself back, but at least not in weight). The moral of this story is, setbacks in diet and exercise are going to happen, but as long as you don't feel sorry for yourself they won't prevent you from achieving your goals.

So goals for this week:

*Get back into paleo - with more vegetables. I purchased some broccoli and butternut squash (I know, my life is a little TOO exciting for this online space) and will hopefully turn them into something tasty

*Drink only water - need to help flush my body of all the soda I drank. I really felt it on my run this afternoon (tried to go 4 miles), just felt sluggish, of course maybe that was the fact I'm running in Houston and the humidity makes it feel like I'm running in a swimming pool

Those are my only two goals. I'm hoping I can build on those small but big changes next week.

Also, (not sure why I said 'also' as this has nothing to do with the previous paragraph) I officially switched Crossfit Gyms to the Midtown location called PinUp. Factoring in my new work location, and the only reason I have to go north of westheimer is Church on sundays. I'm already loving (and in my mind spending) the savings on my gas bill. The best part of pinup is they don't have very many people, I might honestly be the only one in my T/TH class, so please if you're interested you should definitely come join me. It'll be all the benefits of personal coaching without the intimidating big guys there (unless I can get my hands on some steroids).

So there you have it, proof that cheating isn't the end of the world (just don't let it become a habit).