Vacation dieting

I was on vacation the past two weeks and thus away from my routine. My plan for the trip was to:

1. avoid tracking my calories because it would drive me crazy, and
2. not gain any weight.

Instead, I was going to focus on eating normal-sized portions and limiting my alcohol intake to "special occasions". And by that I mean, not drinking heavily every day. I was on vacation after-all and vacation means boozing.

I got back Sunday night and the verdict is...I'm down 1 pound!

That's honestly shocking because I only exercised once last week, drank a BUNCH of margaritas, ate double portions of fish tacos, and spent the rest of the time sitting under a palapa on the beach. So I didn't move much and consumed a lot, which is not conducive to not gaining weight.

Granted, the first week of vacation was very exercise-heavy (2 hill runs and a 3-mile run in California, and then 12-miles of running during Tough Mudder in Vegas) so maybe that evened things out a bit. But I'm still kind of shocked by the loss.

The Roommie and I next to my second favorite palapa, a day after finishing Tough Mudder in Las Vegas

When I weighed myself out of curiosity on Sunday night after getting home, I was up to 201.0 lbs, which is 7 pounds more than my weight when I left. I was really bummed about that because that's an insane amount of poundage to gain in 14 days. And I didn't think I had strayed from my plan all that much. All the anxiety I've been having about not being able to maintain a normal calorie intake to stay at a lower weight came roaring back. It was disconcerting.

Monday morning had me at ~196 and today I weighed in at 193.5 lbs. I discounted Monday's weigh-in because I was only three days removed from drinking (my weight is all over the place within three days of alcohol) so the "official" post-vacation weight remains at 193.5 lbs.

We'll see if this downward trend continues once I weigh-in tomorrow but regardless of what the scale shows, I'm really proud of myself for eating normally enough while on vacation without feeling deprived at all. Actually, I could've had a few more beers on the beach but I stayed away because a) I was getting sick and didn't need to impede my immune system's work by consuming alcohol, and b) I get super dehydrated after even one drink these days (I'm getting old) and didn't want to spend my vacation hungover on top of already being sick.

In short, it appears that living a life without needing to calorie count all the time is totally doable for me. There are still things I need to tweak and learn about my body before I can go into legitimate maintenance mode (and lose about 50 more pounds) but it's reassuring to know that I can count on myself to know when to stop eating.