Thoughs on travel from a vet.

Feb 27, 2013

I didn't write this, but I wanted to save it here so I can read it again before I go out of town and think more about how i'm handling food while I'm away.

I had to go to a restaurant when I was less than a week out from surgery because it was my son's birthday and that's our family tradition. I brought a shaker bottle with protein powder and ordered a glass of milk and made a protein shake. I wasn't even embarrassed because it was a medical necessity to be on liquids.

Then came the "party season" with Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and I was less than 3 months out at Thanksgiving and we drove down to SD to visit relatives one of whom I know thinks WLS is the "easy way out" even if she's too polite to say it and I could barely eat anything. I just dealt with it the best I could. I brought my snacks and I ate what I could of their food and filled in the rest with my snacks and I didn't worry about it too much. Yes, I had some pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. I knew I would, so I planned for it. IMO to plan not to go off plan in such a situation is to plan to fail.

At the Holiday Party at work, I made a rule for myself: I could have 1 bite of anything that looked good and I could finish what was on my plate if it tasted as good as it looked. Yes, I had a piece of chocolate candy! It was good too. 

And I put it all in MFP (or rather The Daily Plate because I hadn't found MFP yet) and I didn't go over my calorie goals most of these days and some days I didn't even go over my carb goals but some days I did, but every day was a learning experience about what I could and couldn't do and about what I did and didn't like to eat. Yes, my WL was a bit slow in Dec. compared to the other months but mostly that was because I slowed down on the exercise more so than the eating.

Keep in mind, if you are eating less than 1200 calories a day, that's hardly anything. Definitely if you eat less than 800 most days, you are going to lose weight. You are going to lose weight at a tremendously fast clip, in fact. This is true even if you go over once in a while. Eating that little, combined with exercise means you have leeway to screw up once in a while. Not every day and not even one day a week. But a couple of days here and there because you are traveling isn't going to make a big difference in the greater scheme of things. Instead of beating yourself up for "going off plan", I say plan to go off plan but have rules for how you'll do it and then it's not even really "going off plan" because you are still following some rules.

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