Day 158

My chosen mantra

And so it continues...

We recently came back from a great vacation in Orlando.  Vacations seem to be the hardest time to stay on track, granted we walk more overall but the days are filled with yummy snacks and glorious meals.  Let's face it, we like to eat and if we are going on vacation for enjoyment then eating will happen!  Popcorn, my main snack weakness, is always in abundance on vacations - you can't walk around a park without some.  As are peanut butter crackers, chocolate and ice cream.  We seemed to do ok with the ice cream this time around, as Stinkles and Brian have taken a liking to froyo.  The popcorn and glorious meals were another issue.  However I am happy to report that Brian and I made it through vacation only gaining 2 pounds each!  And to make the story even better we both lost those two pounds, and then some, within 3 days of being home!

On day 158 I have decided to, like always, reflect on how this journey is going.  I am 20 days away from half a year.  Now if you had asked me half a year ago if I would be 50 pounds lighter and feel good about how it was coming off I would have scoffed at you.  Not that I didn't want to lose the weight, but I had pretty much decided nothing would work for me.  I am happy to say I was wrong.  This vacation just proves how different our lives are now.  We no longer come home from a full day at a park BONE TIRED and collapsing on the couch.  We walk faster, eat less, and crave a good workout - which just happened to be a nightly occurrence of swimming laps.  Instead of gorging on fried foods (others, not me - never have liked fried foods all that much) we had a cooler bag full of fresh strawberries, cucumbers, oranges and of course Stinkles's pepperoni.  We FIT on rides that, last year, there would have been no possibility - we were able to bring Stinkles on kid roller coasters!  We were actually able to buy souvenir shirts!  I know these might not seem like big things to some people, but it is all compounding into great things for us!

As for the numbers:  Brian and I have lost OVER 120 pounds together.  THAT BLOWS MY MIND.  Brian, being a guy and working hard, has completely blown by me in his losing.  He is currently down 69.1 pounds.  WAY TO GO HUN!  I have slowed down considerably but am still moving in the right direction.  I am currently down 51.4 pounds.  So, the numbers break down as follows:  51.4 pounds lost in 158 days.  That is about 0.33 pounds lost per day, 2.28 pounds lost per week, and 9.18 pounds lost per week.  As you can see the numbers have gone down significantly but I am not going to dwell on that right now.  I am still moving in the right direction so I will be happy and keep on trucking.

Finally I will leave you with some picture. (This is a big treat as I am not a fan of pictures of myself!)

This is Brian and I at the Mexican Pavilion in Epcot in January of 2009.

And here we are at the China Pavilion in January of 2013!!

Stinkles and I at Seaworld in January of 2012...

Here I am at our condo in FL in January 2013!

Here is Brian is 2009 at the UK Pavilion...

and Brian at the Italy Pavilion in 2013!!

Just for fun, here is Stinkles enjoying one of the MANY popcorns on the trip!  Can you tell he is a little Star Wars obsessed at the moment?

Finally, Epcot is our favorite park.  It can be a "journey" nightmare if you let it - i.e. food from ever country pavilion and let's not forget the wonderful food coming out of the Land Pavilion as well - but it is also the park that guarantees the most walking.  My fit bit logged we in for 26,393 steps the day we visited Epcot and it was a short day.  We got to Epcot around 12 and left at about 8 (we did go to Magic Kingdom in the morning, but that is NOT a park for a lot of walking).









UPDATE:  I apparently should have waited until day 159 for my journey update as both Brian and myself officially weighed in this morning.  Brian is currently down 69.8 pounds and I am down 52.9.... that is 122.7 total!