I Cheated!

I’ll be the first to admit it. I cheated from late December until this past Sunday on my health. I knew better, but for the sake of convenience I made a poor decisions. It was a very challenging month, as it usually is with the holidays. This year more so than year’s past because my wife went into surgery on December 26 and was hospitalized for another 5 days due to complications from surgery. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, we moved into a new home, which put further stress on my life to try and get as much accomplished before my wife arrived to her new home in order to rest and recuperate.

I got into the “I’ll do it tomorrow” mindset when it came to the gym. Time being valuable, I had to make he most of it in order to get the old house cleared out and all the belongings into the new house. By the time 3 or 4 pm rolled around, the last thing I wanted to do was work out. Time probably could have been made, but I chose not to go.

Before I knew it the weeks started to roll by and it was just about 1 month before I got back into my routine and started back at the gym this past Monday. In the confusion of moving and the stress of my wife’s surgery/recovery eating because quick and convenient. I began to frequent Chipotle and their veggie burrito offering knowing full well it was NOT a healthy option. Using the Chipotle Fan nutritional calculator my veggie burrito (brown rice, black beans, hot salsa, corn, guacamole and lettuce tipped the nutritional scale at 805 calories, of which 260 (or 29 g) were fat calories! To make matters worse, the sodium content was pushing 2200mg!

As I posted on the McDougall Group on Facebook, I also took to the bottle, making Stella (Artois) my best friend. Again, not the smart decision, but it was a difficult time, still it was nothing more than an excuse on my part to start drinking beer.

Until now I had been very good when it comes to watching what I ate. I was faithfully tracking my food daily, as well as weighing myself in the morning. It was part of my daily routine. I stopped all that completely the past 31 days because of everything going on. What surprised me even more was when I finally did weigh myself this past Monday I was 174.7 pounds, which was about 4 pounds down from where I last weighed myself in December.

Today was my first day back to work after 31 days off, one which was a vacation week and the other 3 weeks were covered by FMLA to care for my wife after back surgery. I resolved to stop frequenting Chipotle as regularly as I was (nearly daily!) and I tipped my last 2 Stellas yesterday. While it was not tough making the decision to get back to the gym, I have been twice this week with some pain in returning after such a layoff, but it’s a good pain.

With the setback in December and to start the year I will have to review the 8 week gym plan I had. There is no possible way I will make up the shortcoming on what I had planned to do. Not really a problem as I will just make adjustments to my plan. In fact I will start looking towards the end of my first year working out in the gym, which happens at the end of October. Those goals are more important than these short, 8 weeks goals that helped get me started.

February is also quickly approaching and that means it will be another 4 month interval since my last body fat test (hydrostatic testing). While I would like to go get a DXA Scan in San Jose, CA, not sure I am ready to part with the price tag to get it done. Keeping it consistent, I will probably pay the $39 for a retest in about 4 weeks and see where I am when it comes to body composition. I had made great strides forward in the past 8 weeks. Hopefully the December setback hasn’t derailed my attempt to a point that I take a step back.

So the moral of my story, many may fail or cheat at some point with this way of eating, much like I did. Some might fail worse than others or for longer periods. Just remember tomorrow is a good day to start and no time is it every too late to make a change in your health.