A December Recap

As regular readers know, I had a rather unusual December. For the first three weeks, I was on work travel for a class, and I flew home on December 22. It was going to be a strange Christmas no matter what, but I didn't know what I had in store.

Let's go back to early December when I got to my new hotel home for three weeks. I knew a Wal Mart was close, but I didn't know it was THAT close. I got to the hotel, and meticulously unpacked, to see if I forgot anything, then embarked on my three minute walk across the parking lot to Wal Mart.

My hotel room had a full size refrigerator, two burners, and a microwave, so there was no excuse to stick to my normal eating routines. The first week I cooked up a pound of ground beef, and the second week was a kielbasa. The third week got a little more into convenience foods and leftovers. But more on that later.

The hotel gym left something to be desired. There was one elliptical, two treadmills, a weight station that would do for a shorter trip, and a single barbell. One. Luckily, there was a gym across the street that was used to people coming in for a few weeks at a time, so they had a good deal. The gym offered recorded classes, which I surprisingly enjoyed, as all of the materials were right there, as compared to doing it at home and making do with replacement items. They also offered live classes.

At the actual class site, there were a lot of places to go for healthy walks during lunch, and I did that nearly every day. I hit my 10,000 steps nearly every day and I hope to maintain that.

A few things I learned:

Don't be shy about what you've been through. We were sitting in a large seminar with over 100 people, broken up into class. So I sat next to this guy who would be in my class. We got to talking, and we ended up not just in the same class, but at the same table. When it came out later in the day that I had had WLS, he said "Oh yea, I noticed your Medical ID when I was talking to you this morning." He is a volunteer EMT and it warmed me to know that he noticed this. Quick plug for an awesome husband, he got me a new ID to go onto my FitBit so I only have to wear one bracelet.

People are super understanding and want to learn. In the first week, we went out for German food. We were warned by locals that they had massive servings, and several people in the class told me to not order anything and I could have some of theirs.

Not weighing yourself daily for a period can be healthy. I vowed to not get on the scale while I was gone and some of the most unexpected things happening. First of all, I lost five pounds while I was gone. Second, instead of getting on the scale after a heavy lift day and being discouraged even though I knew why the scale went up, I did a workout that my body wanted to. I did Yoga a couple of times, a live bootcamp class, running, walking, and LOTS of kettlebell workouts. If I was weighing myself, I would have probably done more of the same instead of realizing Yoga is a heck of a lot easier when you're down over 100 pounds and kettlebell workouts are killer.

Take the stairs. For some reason I didn't really take stairs if an elevator was around. But I started taking the stairs out there and I haven't stopped.