Vacation weight-loss, or lack thereof

I just got back from a week in Mexico and it was an amazing seven days of gluttony and sloth.

I knew that trying to count calories would be impossible when I wasn't the one preparing most of my meals. Also, I didn't want to stress or worry or even have to think about approximating things. I knew my calorie intake would not be pretty so I went with the head-in-the-sand technique of ignoring weight-loss altogether that week, and it worked out well for my mental health.

Instead of worrying about everything I put in my mouth, I made a concerted effort to drink less beer and eat fewer chips. I didn't completely abstain from either of those things but I only had them when I REALLY wanted them. So in a sense, I did eat less than I normally would, which is the bare bones goal I've set for myself for the rest of this calendar year.

I haven't weighed myself yet so I don't know the real damage done, because I'm waiting for the alcohol water weight to fully wear off. But whatever it ends up being, it was totally worth it (seriously). I needed that week to relax and worrying about my weight was not the way to do it.

Now it's back to the real world, complete with work meetings, calorie counting, and adapting my workouts to the weather.

By the way, the lawn chair on the left in the shade of the palapa is where I spent most of the last seven days:

Bridesmaids dresses

A good friend of mine is getting married in June and she's asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. I'm honored and excited, but kind of perplexed about the dress situation.

We're getting this awesome dress that can be converted into 15 different dresses depending on how you style the top. So it's going to be a keeper. The problem is it comes in two different sizes: A and B. Size A is for people sized 0 - 14, and B is for 16 - 24, with a recommendation to get A if you're a 12 - 14 (for comfort).

In general, I've tried to stay away from buying clothes that "I can wear when I lose weight" because then I don't have anything to wear right now. When I do finally get down to a size where my clothes no longer fit (for a good reason) I've finally realized that the cheapskate in me will be replaced by proud me. And getting new clothes will be a great non-food reward for losing all this weight. Or at least I'll have a good reason to justify overhauling my wardrobe.

Anywhos, this dress situation throws that entire way of thinking out the window. I really like this dress and I really do plan on keeping it for a while because it's so convertible. But I also want to be able to enjoy this dress now and not be uncomfortable for the wedding. A solution could be ordering the larger size and getting it tailored when I eventually slim down. But I think that might be too expensive. So that leaves me with getting thinner and doing it quickly (by my standards).

In order for me to fit a size A comfortably, I would have to lose about 55 pounds between now and then, which is approximately 7 months and comes out to between 1.5 and 2 lbs a week. It's theoretically possible but I'm not sure I can do it because I suck at willpower and sticking to strict schedules. Things usually take me longer to accomplish than I anticipate and this weight-loss thing is already a massive undertaking.

On the other hand, it's nice to have a set goal.

Honestly, I don't know what to do. I've been pretty committed to weight-loss lately, but it's only been a couple weeks so it's hard to gauge my progress and it's around this time-frame that I give up entirely because I become overwhelmed. I'm going to see how I do between now and when we have to order the dress and make the decision closer to that date. But the dress has to be ordered by the end of the year, not leaving me much time to assess the feasibility of losing that much weight.

So for now I will fret and stress and over-think losing weight, which will probably result in me giving up on this entirely as I have in years past. I do much better when I go through this process at my own pace. I've been fat for so long that an extra year won't make that much of a difference. At least that's how I justify taking my time to lose weight.

But with this dress and wedding, I don't have that convenience and I'm worried I'll crash and burn and not fit into my bridesmaids dress. That'll be a double whamy of failure.

Any suggestions for what I should do? Get the next size up and do things on my own terms (and not have a dress for later)? Or go for broke and try to get skinny by June?

Current weight: 215.5

Exercise partner fail

I'd been meeting up with a couple people to run hills and stairs for the past month or so. Originally we did Tuesdays at noon and then one week we added Thursdays at 8 am. That was my suggestion because I just can't do lunch runs on Thursdays and my friends agreed.

I'm kind of pissed off about this because even though I specifically told them to let me know if the plan changes, no one did. I understand we don't see each other every day and some days lately I haven't been able to make it for a variety of reasons. But I've always let them know well in advance that I'd be missing. So a little courtesy text that they won't be there would've been nice.

I also don't exactly like the hills and stairs because I truly don't see any progress I'm making. Technically it's probably easier for me to do more reps but I don't notice it. And that's frustrating for me. I like to see the fruits of my labor and these exercises aren't cutting it.

So I think the solution is to do the C210k program three days a week and add hills on Tuesdays with the group. Whenever it's nice enough to ride my bike I'll do that instead and just push back my C210k plan back a day. I'm not on any sort of schedule so this should be the least stressful way to go about exercising and getting fit.

And now that The Roomie's rugby season is over, we had planned to use the time she usually had practice to go to the gym to lift. Except she scheduled herself to work tonight instead. Awesome.

That pretty much leaves me to my own devices and will-power, which have never been my strong suit. Oh well.