Holiday Hangover

Woof.  Holidays.

How I can fly half way across the country and still manage to stick to a relatively healthy eating schedule and maintain all workouts, yet make it home to my mom’s house for a week and feel like a slug is beyond me.

Not really.  But sort’ve.

Last week I spent the week enjoying the comforts of home.  This week, I’m looking back on how I spent it.  My eating habits and lifestyle habits are relatively healthy compared to most, so I can’t say that I was “bad” for the whole week – but if I were to sit back and compare my extremely clean diet and workout schedule of the past few months to just a week of going back to how I used to be, I learned a few things.  So, instead of wallowing in the “I wish I had”s, I’ll share.

Happily, a week of not being on a high intensity workout schedule and super clean diet (we’re talking, minimal sugar, carb cycling, loads of protein and whole food style eating) didn’t have an “immediate” change on my outward appearance.  I may have felt a little softer, a big jigglier, but in actuality, my weight didn’t fluctuate at all.    What it DID have an effect on however, was my mentality and emotions.  I THOUGHT I was all of those things, I was down on myself and felt lazy.  And not the good kind of lazy where you think “I deserve this break”.  I felt sluggish and frustrated from a lack of workouts, dehydrated from not drinking enough water and most interestingly to me, I couldn’t for the life of me get a handle on my eating schedule and my body did NOT react well.

I eat about 5-6 smaller healthy meals a day, am a water weekdays warrior (alcohol on the weekends only) and I try to drink 1-2 liters of water each day too.  But that schedule is pretty hard to maintain when you’re home away from home and out with friends and family that you haven’t seen every night.   You have a beer to be social, you eat out almost every night.   I tried to stick with healthier options, salads for lunch and dinners out, fresh fruit at breakfast (love a crisp cold apple fresh from the farmers market), but even a salad can start to feel heavy when you’re eating out.  And I missed my clean protein sources.  That was my biggest issue – I made some protein bars to bring along, but even they started to feel heavy after awhile.  Sugar was EVERYWHERE and I ended up with more than a few sugar headaches.  And the absolute worst I felt, was after my Thanksgiving meal.

First off – let me just say that anyone who thinks Vegans have to go hungry at Thanksgiving, you are officially invited to our house next year – SO much food on my plate.  I think my plate was piled higher than most of the table.  I made a vegan lentil loaf and a mushroom and leek seitan roulade that was to DIE for.   There were also brussel sprouts, green beans and some of my mom’s stuffing that she very sweetly has veganized for me, sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow cooked sweet little onions (we’re talking 18 hrs here kids)  cooked in some red wine, crazy number of homemade cranberry sauces. So. Much. Food.  The problem though, was that being used to eating the number of smaller meals in a day, having a small breakfast and then one LARGE meal in the afternoon that basically covered all of my caloric intake for the week had me feeling awful.  I ended up in bed early with a migraine and what felt like impending doom of sickness.  Luckily (and far less dramatically), I was fine the next morning.

I can say that although I wasn’t “working out” persay, I was fairly active for the majority of the week and even made it out to peruse some of the stores on Friday.   Which leads me to another post for another day – but is anyone else starting to be a little tired of the extreme consumerism these days?  Buying gifts because they flash the brightest and honk the loudest instead of finding a special gift and embracing the spirit, etc etc.

But for now – I’m back home.  Sleep deprived (why is it that my first few nights back on a real and deliciously comfortable bed I sleep AWFULLY), but slowly getting back into the swing of workouts and healthy eating.  I’m back to my small meals and got myself moving last night with some circuit style lifting and moderate cardio.    Just in time for the Christmas festivities to start!  We have our Christmas lights up on the house and are planning out our Christmas tree strategy/decorating.  I’m determined to enjoy each holiday this year as much as I can.  Because we should.

Hope everyone else has recovered from the holidays and maybe even had a healthier go of it than I did!

xo