"Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure. "

Okay, I'm going to do a little rant and rave with this post. Its not going to be about me but more about a “friend” I have. A friend who came to me months ago and asked me to how I was losing weight and wanted my advice. So, I helped her out and gave her all the advice I could. I even offered to take her to the gym with me and show her how to work out. I even went as far as to taking her to the grocery store and picking out foods and dinners for her and showing her how to read the labels. I put a lot of time into helping her out and sitting down and creating recipes for her. The recipes part wasn't easy either and she is, or should I say I am, very luck that I am a great cook with a lot of knowledge and can put anything together that is yummy. She doesn't eat veggies and she doesn't like to cook chicken.

Well, after simplifying inexpensive recipes for her she gave it a shot. It lasted about 2 meals and she gave up. I got a text message from her one day saying, “I had a salad and a wrap from McDonald's...is that okay?” Is that okay? I giggled a little. I wanted to be like “do you think that's okay?!!!!” But, I kept it in and didn't reply. I figured as long as she was eating little meals and exercising regularly it would be okay.

The day came when I asked her to go to the gym with me. She was very into the idea of going and I was into the idea of having someone to work out with. It makes time go by faster and I find I can spend more time on the treadmill. Well, that dream was short lived, too. She never went with me to the gym. I cared at first but its hard to keep caring about someone who doesn't care about themselves and only makes excuses. Sometimes I just with people would tell the truth rather than lie.

Anyway, it irritates me so much now to see posts from her online about how she is getting in shape and wants to be skinny but a day later there is something posted about how she is eating pnut butter cups or cake. Really, how naive can someone be to think that 1 hour of exercise a few days a week help get you into shape and lose weight when all you are eating is junk food and sugar?

"No vacation goes unpunished."

There is nothing like a good vacation to ruin an even better healthy lifestyle. How many times have you started a great diet plan and exercise routine only for it to be ruined by a holiday or vacation? I will admit, its kind of hard to stay on track when you are having so much fun, and these past two weeks I did fall off the horse a little bit.
With a family of three, which is really a family of 5 with the way my husband likes to eat, its expensive to eat at restraunts on an 8 hour road trip. We easily spend $20 each time we stop at any fast food place and at-least $10 at coffee shops. So, we tend to migrate to cheaper places when we travel, such as Taco Bell. Yes, I ate Taco Bell at-least 4 times on this trip and I definitely met Karma after doing so. My tummy hurt so much that I thought I was going to die!
I did get in a good hike one day on our trip and I did try to move around a little more than I normally would on a vacation. The hike was a 10 mile hike through the blue ridge mountains and was really nice. I will post pics in a later post. We also made a few mall trips so we could walk around and get out.
I am getting better on my vacations than I used to be. We used to eat out every chance we got and would put half and half in our coffee's. We used to also sit around and do nothing on our trips. The most exercise I would get is walking to the car. So, even though we still do bad things, we have found ways to improve them to make them a little better. Instead of eating a huge burrito or cheeseburger with a large french fry, I'm eating grilled chicken sandwiches with no sauce or a fresco taco (cutting out dairy products). Also, a huge change is using skim milk instead of half and half each cup of coffee I drink. You may not think this is much of a change at all but I drink a lot of coffee which results in a lot of creamer. I would say on average, I probably use about 2 cups of “creamer” a day. I'm also finding things to get me out of the house. Such as the hike (site seeing), going to the mall and window shopping, going to the park and playing tennis, and walking around the city. We are also going to the grocery store and buying things instead of going out to eat when we get to our destination. So, not only is our vacation “health” getting better but our budget is too!