Oops.

I did not have the best weekend.

I mean, from the perspective of “was it an enjoyable weekend?” it was quite nice. But from a fitness and healthy eating perspective … ugh.

Friday night I met up with some friends for happy hour, and we ended up staying for dinner. Luckily we were at an Asian fusion restaurant, so I was able to have sushi for dinner. I didn’t drink much and I stayed on plan using a few flex points. It was all-good on Friday … my healthy eating halo remained untarnished.

But then Saturday came along.

To stay on plan, I would have needed to do my couch to 5k run on Saturday, and I’d need to eat reasonably but not impeccably on Saturday and Sunday … I had about 20 flex-points left. Completely doable, right?

Apparently not.

Remember late last week when I was saying that I needed to go to the grocery store? By Saturday morning, it was a desperate situation. If you opened the cabinet door, moths flew out.* Anyway, I got up Saturday morning, did some cleaning and organizing, and then got ready to head out of the house. My plan was to go visit a friend in the hospital, then go grocery shopping, then go to the gym, then go home and have dinner with my husband. Unfortunately, by the time I got out of the house on the road, I was RAVENOUS. I’d eaten a little something, but not much. And when I get to the point where I’m so hungry I could gnaw my arm off, I don’t make good choices.

And then I saw those golden arches. And as I was driving by, somehow a quarter pounder with cheese and a large order of fries jumped through the window and into my mouth. It happened just like that, I swear! Damn you, combo #3!

Ugh. That was definitely the largest single misstep on the eating side of things. But it all just snowballed … I got back from seeing my friend hours after I expected, making my grocery trip much later than expected (yay! We have healthy food again!), making going to the gym before dinner not an option, and the Saturday gym hours making a post-dinner gym visit impossible … ugh. That meant no weekend workout, since I didn’t want to do my couch to 5k run on Sunday because I knew I’d be doing couch to 5k and strength training tonight.**

Add a couple late-Saturday and Sunday not-horrible-but-not-the-best-choice-ever food choices to the Mickey D’s fiasco, and by the end of the weekend … well, let’s just say that by the end of the weekend my points balance was waaaaaaaaaaaay into the negative range.

All I can do after a weekend like this one is get up, brush the crumbs off my sweater, and move on. I’m trying to look back and learn from the weekend, and not beat myself up about it.

What went wrong? Looking back, it boils down to priorities. Not going grocery shopping did me in. I should have jumped out of bed Saturday morning and gone straight to the grocery store rather than doing cleaning/organizing. I’ve been trying to do some de-cluttering every weekend, but the de-cluttering should have been a lower priority than the grocery shopping trip. I shouldn’t have let myself get into the position of being that hungry, because I get irrational. I don’t give a rat’s ass about healthy eating when I get that hungry.

Also, I hate to admit it, but I should have gotten up earlier on Saturday. Beauty sleep be damned - there just wasn’t enough time in the day. If I’d gotten my arse out of bed there would have been more time. If I’d shifted the hospital visit to earlier in the day, there would have been time for the workout before dinner.

All in all, though, it’s not the end of the world. The scale is up, but it will go down again. I made some bad eating decisions, but I also made good eating decisions. My “bad weekend” was nowhere near as bad as the weekends I had before I was being health-aware.

I’m not having a terribly hard time getting over the food mistakes. I’m more annoyed with myself about not doing my couch to 5k run. Not doing the couch to 5k run has set my 5k training plan back; the missed run shifts the workouts I’ll be doing for the next 6 weeks. Since I’ve got my sights set on a specific 5k to run, now I have a tad less flexibility when it comes to repeating days or weeks as the running gets more intense.

Oh well. Time to move on. Tonight, the gym and I will get reacquainted. Sorry I blew you off Saturday, gym!



* Even though I suspect moths are a low-point choice, I'm not eating moths. Period. I ate a stir-fried silkworm pupa once when I was overseas ... I'm not eating bugs again. Blech.
** Remember, Monday is always workout night - I meet up with my husband, a friend, and a trainer.