Merry Christmas Eve!!!

Christmas is a time filled with traditions: the lights, the family events, the songs, the movies and the food and drinks. Unfortunately, some of my favorite Christmas traditions are big threats to Operation Melt.

• I love egg nog (150+ calories) particularly spiked with bourbon or spiced rum (100 calories).
• I enjoy Christmas cookies (70-100+ calories) and candy like buckeyes (75+ calories).
• On Christmas Eve, we do a by-invitation only lunch at one of our favorite restaurants that includes delicious cony dogs (250-350 calories) and fried clam strips (300 calories) – amazingly fun event with friends!
• Christmas beers are a fun accompaniment to holiday meals but their higher ABV and spiced flavorings put them in the 250 calorie range for a pint.
• Then, there is all of the savory meals on chilly nights featuring meat, potatoes, wine and such.
• There are the work and friend happy hours.
• There is hot chocolate while looking at the Christmas lights.
• There are the night caps of sipping a drink (100-300 calories) by the fire.

All of these calorie-filled traditions add up very quickly when my daily calorie target is 2,036. Combine this Christmas calorie bomb with the gym being closed and it being too cold to workout outdoors and you could easily have a recipe for disaster. This Christmas I really need the gift of willpower most of all.

In fact, somebody told me this week “you shouldn’t worry about how much you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas, just worry about your habits between Christmas and Thanksgiving”. I completely disagree with this point of view. Health and fitness matters every day and one month of ignoring it can become a huge setback in a journey like this. It reminds me of a quote that I saw “I didn’t come this far just to come this far.”

As a result of all of the snacking and drinks and such, my daily weight fluctuations are more frequent and that is slightly discouraging. Plus, I had a cold this week and that made my workouts more difficult and I just felt sluggish when running. Plus, my stress level this week was very high related to lots of events at work and that led to a bit of stress eating.

Overall, it was a fairly discouraging week from a results perspective.  But, there were some things that made it better.  First, I got lots of positive feedback from people based on the website, blog and my overall appearance.  This time of the year is particularly great because I see people that I don’t see very often at all and they haven’t watched my gradual transition and they get the shock of the change and react accordingly.  The feedback and positive reinforcement really helps and is a great motivator to keep going.  Also, I had some other notable accomplishments in my journey this week.

• I have officially reset all of my apps to a new interim goal weight past the 75-pound mark. I have set my next goal as 235 pounds which will be 90 total pounds lost in the journey. I am hoping to be there by the end of February. It will leave me just 10 pounds short of my overall goal.
• My pants that I bought in September to mark my 50-pound loss achievement are now too big on me. This means that I am about to buy new pants that are the same size as when I was a junior in high school!!
• I am starting to see real improvements in muscle tone in my biceps just like in my legs and thighs. Before you know it, I am going to be a model of fitness!
• I also am seeing some additional improvements in my cardio fitness. My heart rate during my workouts is starting to decrease. The down-side of this is that it takes more effort to get the same calorie burn from my workouts. So, I am going to need to take my workouts to a new level soon and I am not quite sure what that means yet. I will probably want to start joining some classes or consider alternative workouts.

So, all-in, I guess this was an overall ok week for my Operation Melt journey and there is just one more week left for this year.

Next step… new years resolutions!

Last week’s stats:
Distance walked/run: 31.4 miles
Total calories burnt: 27,306
Total calories consumed: 12,752
Weight change: 1.2 pounds lost