Patio oh patio how I missed you...

It's summertime and the patio is calling my name. Friends are barbecuing, its finally warm outside and my outdoor social life is about to take off. I started off the season with a bang: enjoying the sunshine with friends, food and wine. Then I stepped on the scale a week later and the results of all that socializing were on full numeric display. Was all that fun worth the weight gain and feeling bloated? One week of fun was one thing, but I know my body and that if I keep this up, I'm going to have to move up a clothing size and THAT is not in my budget right now.

I went on full militia mode and decided not to drink alcohol or eat out for a month. Day one was a piece of cake. On day two a friend asked me to go out. I suggested a run instead, and needless to say he did not want to meet up with me LOL. Later that week we were hosting a BBQ with friends at my house, I had a networking event that I was attending with alumni colleagues and then of course wine with my hubby outside when the kids finally go to bed. I do NOT want to be that person nibbling on lettuce and drinking water while everyone is enjoying food and cocktails. I mean, who am I kidding, I don't have the discipline to be that person, and I like fun and food way too much! So out goes the militia diet plan. I choose the other extreme and chug a bottle of wine, order chicken wings and wolf down my friend's fries. Of course I wake up the next day feeling terrible and as a result skip my workout and eat greasy food to make myself feel better. I work my ass off the next week to undo the debauchery, see progress on the scale and in the mirror just to set my self back more over the weekend. From here on in, I need to figure out how to balance my social summer life with my fitness and food plan.

So here's the plan: I'm going to track my food intake, commit to working out everyday and create a social eating / drinking plan so that I don't end up overtime it every time I let loose and go out. I have a friend who joined Weight Watchers, which uses a "point system". She explained each food equates a number of points, and that you have a total number of points a day and also a total number of points per week. I don't love this particular system since it kind of prioritizes calories over the type and quality of food you eat, but I think tracking your the daily/weekly caloric intake is a good way to stay on track of any fitness/diet plan. I am going also planning to add more cardio into my weekly workout plan and cut out night-eating (my biggest weakness). Social outings will be the toughest. My plan is to stick to lower calorie white wine and snack on healthy food instead of overindulging in everything at once and needing a full week to get back to where I was.

THE NUMBERS: I am going to reduce my daily calorie intake to 1500 and then allow 1,400 calories a week for going out. if you don't track your food, 1,400 calories sounds awesome but this really doesn't go far with bar food and alcohol. That could be 9 glasses of wine a week, but a kale and grilled chicken salad at Cactus Club, for example, is 500 calories so I can really only have two salads and three glasses of wine a week. I think this is a reasonable plan that I could actually stick to, one week at a time. Wish me luck this week and I will check in with how I did.

#fitness #dietplan #womenwholift #rockinbody