So I’m back from my vacation from Dallas.  It was a pretty good time and I was glad to be away from work.  We had some good food and it was special in that it was my first trip since Florida last year.  I wasn’t sure how it was going to be since I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to being out of my normal pattern.

Let me preface that I did think about the advice from Marty Gallagher that taking time off from the gym is not a bad thing and that he recommends training hard before vacation and then during that time don’t worry about training, exercise, or what you eat; essentially just take a break.  I did keep this in mind, but I decided to only partially take his advice.

For my own purposes I decided that while I was in Dallas I wanted to see if there was a gym that would allow me to have a guest pass for a fairly inexpensive price.  My Dad decided to take up this task and he found one that cut me a break and so I took up the offer and trained at a local L.A. Fitness for 3 days that I was there.  In referencing last week’s episode about Non-scale victories I count that as being a definite victory.  I also was able to get in a good amount of walking several days either outside around my parents’ neighborhood or when we went to Great Wolf Lodge and played MagiQuest.

As for food and diet this is where I decided to take Marty’s advice and chill out a little bit.  Now there were occasions where I cut back on food or made smarter choices, but for the most part I relaxed on what I ate.  I had everything from burgers, to breakfast burritos, to baked salmon; and all-in-all I feel pretty good about my choices.  Sure, I’ll probably see a gain in the weight when I measure myself on Thursday, but I’d rather gain a few pounds than drive myself nuts while on vacation trying to be “good”.

Now that I’m back I’m doing my best to get back into the swing of things.  It’s hard getting up at 3:30AM after being able to sleep in until 6:30AM Central, which is 7:30AM Eastern (where I live).  But I am back in the gym and it feels good.  I’ll be starting up a new cycle in my program which means increasing the weight in some of my exercises, reducing the repetitions, and building it back up over time.  It also means getting back into the habit of recording my food which will probably be the biggest challenge of all.

Oh, and one last thing that I’d like to mention as far as non-scale victories go.  This was the first time in a very long time where I was able to get on a plane and fit in the seat.  I didn’t have to worry about my hips pushing the arm of the chair out into the aisle or ask for a set belt extender.  Of course we also were able to upgrade to First Class which also allowed for some additional comfort, but I’m going to pretty much tag that as a “win” on my part.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my weight loss journey it’s that there is no one solid answer.  There is no one  supplement that will make you skinny, there is no one exercise that will tone your body, there is no one food that will  help you lose weight, and so on and so forth.  Of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways of doing things correctly.  There are a ton of fad diets, charlatan products, and horrible exercises that will at best produce little to no results and at worst injure you.  But that doesn’t mean that every now and again we shouldn’t stop and take stock of what we are doing and assess what we need to change and what we should keep on doing when it comes to:

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• Exercise
  
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  • Time of day
    
  • Our form
    
  • Routine
    
  • Types of exercises
    
  • Equipment
    
  
  
  
• Nutrition
  
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  • Supplements
    
  • Diet
    
  
  
  
• Motivation
  
• Rewards
  
• Mental state
  

However, let me stress once again that you should always be aware of charlatans and inaccurate information.  Always consult your doctor first.

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