Monday, December 17, 2007

Post-Weekend Trip

Sleep
Well, I guess it's been at least 4 nights since I had a good night's sleep. :-( I did not sleep well on our trip. The hotel pillows were too big and firm, believe it or not. Usually they are too small and squishy. Besides that, we played a lot of "musical beds" with the girls. I slept a lot on the drive home, which meant that I couldn't fall asleep once we got home! Aargh! Gotta focus on getting better sleep this week.

Water
I feel very dehydrated from the trip, so I made sure to fill my pitcher of water today and am happy to be drinking it. My lips are peeling, and the skin on my face feels rough. I'd say that the hardest thing about drinking a lot of water consistently is that my body adjusts to having a lot of water, so I feel dehydrated easily if I cut out the water for a few days. Fortunately, it's easy to make up for it too and get back on track.

Eating
Surprisingly, we hardly ate any fast food on the trip. We stopped at Subway for lunch on the way down, which is pretty healthy, as far as fast food goes. We did make an emergency pit stop at a Del Taco in L.A. where I ate a chicken burrito, but that was the only fast food we ate! Otherwise, Saturday breaky was at the hotel, which had a pretty extensive continental breaky. I ate a hard-boiled egg, banana, waffle dipped in yogurt (instead of syrup), juice, and coffee. For lunch, at a nice food court, I ate a chicken breast and salad, which, incidentally, Maya selected! I did eat some Christmas cookies as a snack at an afternoon party, which certainly was not healthy. Then, dinner was a simple party spread with sandwiches, veggie platter, fruit, cheeses, mini-quiches, wine, and a variety of desserts. So, I'd say I ate too many sweets, but they were party-sweets, rather than sitting-around-the-house-sweets.

Exercise
I generally haven't been exercising as much in the past few weeks as I had been previously. I had actually gotten to the point where I felt I was over-exercising, even though I wasn't exercising all that much (30-60 min, 5x/wk). However, now, after a few weeks of inconsistent exercise, I've started feeling like a blob. I miss the lean, healthy feeling I had when I exercised consistently. I haven't gained weight, but I think I've lost some tone. I wasn't really planning to exercise on our trip although I had expected to take some walks to see Christmas decorations in various places. Well, that didn't happen. Saturday morning, after so much sitting in the car the day before, I had to do something, so I did my "hotel" exercise routine in the hotel room. I hadn't brought a resistance band with me, but I could improvise exercises for every major muscle group, except my biceps, without any equipment. It felt good to use my body. With young kids with us, we ended up watching them run around a lot, rather than us adults doing any running around. Little kids just don't make much distance when they run around.

Tranquility
I certainly had a lot of tranquility this past weekend. The purpose of the trip was to visit my family for Christmas because I'll be with my in-laws for Christmas & Christmas Eve this year. We also went to see the Boat Parade. We did all of that and had a great time. We went with our friends, in their car, all 8 of us! Nick didn't like being dependent on others for transportation, but I enjoyed having extra time with people because they were giving us rides.

How do I feel?
I need to get more sleep, drink more water, and exercise more consistently. I mostly feel I need to be more serious again about getting consistent exercise. I just feel better about myself when I do. Also, I'm remembering one great benefit of exercising first thing in the morning: I don't have to think about it again the rest of the day. If I plan to exercise when the girls nap, and one of them doesn't nap, then it gets more complicated to exercise. Also, cardio in the house while my girls nap definitely feels like exercise just for the sake of exercise, whereas I used to run on the beach, which I enjoy much more. It's also a bit time-consuming to shower in the morning, then again in the middle of the afternoon. Right now is the middle of the day and my girls just went down for their naps, so now is the time for me to do it!

No comments:

Post a Comment