The Weekend of the World As We Know It

Something profoundly disturbing happened to me this weekend.  My husband who I will refer to as "The H" and I spent a day together on Saturday. (That's not the disturbing thing).  I had previously informed him that I was back to blogging and trying to lose weight.  Because he wants to lose a little weight too, we decided to walk from our house in uptown New Orleans down to the French Quarter and back. It's about a 5 mile round trip.  Of course, we would be making booze pit-stops the entire way....the idea being that the walking-calories would somewhat cancel out the boozing-calories and we'd both drunkenly stumble along our merry ways to weight-loss victory.  I am going to call this activity Schwalking....or schwasted-walking.

So anyway, we were about 4 cocktails and 3 miles into Schwalking when I glanced over at The H from my barstool.  And that's when I saw it.   At first I thought he was just innocuously playing with his phone: checking texts, checking us in on Facebook, perhaps playing a round of Words With Friends.  But, no.  Right there, gleaming back at me from the screen in all its luminous pink glory: my blog.

I must admit it never really dawned on me that The H might be reading my blog.  In fact, I recall while I was doing the Bridal Beauty Regimen blog getting angry at him for his lack of interest in this little hobby of mine.

But there he was. Following along as voraciously as a Harry Potter fan at a midnight book release.

Or maybe he was skimming.  Whatever.

Anyway, he looked over at me and said, "You know what I hate about this blog?  It puts way too much pressure on you to lose weight every single day.  You have to completely change your lifestyle to do it....and I think that's why we've both failed in our diets before.  We're way too focused on changing every. single. thing....and that doesn't work in the long run."

Mind.  Blown.

He was completely right.  It's so simple....but so brilliant.  

The key to success is not to stick to 1300 calories a day, every day, with almost frightening rigidity.  The key has to flexibility! Not spending every single moment worried about having 1 too many ounces of chicken!  Not, literally, hate-blogging myself when I have an upward fluctuation. Not hating life!  Not getting hysterical about a 0.5 pound fluctuation!

And at that moment, I put down the raw veggies I had been hate-munching all morning and decided to go enjoy some shrimp and filet hibachi   And, full disclosure, the next morning I did have an upward fluctuation. 

But then Sunday I jumped right back into the program  And today:

Success!!   An incredibly fun weekend including a day of indulgence and still a small loss.  Yay! 

This weekend's diet plan basically involved:

1) Stocking up on glorious healthy snacks to eat when the mood strikes

Lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, artichoke, hearts of palm, pepperocinis, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, heirloom tomato, cherry tomato, and Zatarain's (160 calories a cup!)

 2) Activities that don't involve just sitting around and eating:

Mine is the one on the right.  It deviated slightly from the photo....

 3) Schwalking

4) The terrifying thought that The H is reading this blog and could be fact-checking me for accuracy....

5) Winning.