An Unexpected Souvenir

Last week, I went to the Jersey shore with my boyfriend and enjoyed a few beautiful days at the beach. We did very little shopping, but we both returned home with more than we left with. Unfortunately, I'm not just talking about all the sand that accumulated in our luggage and in the car. Despite spending hours in the ocean and "walking the boards", we both put on 5 pounds. That's not exactly the kind of souvenir we had hoped to bring home with us.

In the grand scheme of things, 5 pounds is a drop in the bucket and we'll both probably lose it right away now that we're back to eating homemade meals. While we both made an effort to eat balanced meals, from time to time we splurged on a few things we normally don't eat like funnel cake and fried crab cakes.

It's easy to get depressed about gaining a few pounds and feel like I've taken a terrible step backward in my weight loss efforts. First of all, 5 pounds is not the end of the world, but I got into this situation because I gained a little bit here and there until suddenly all those small gains added up. Second of all, the effort it takes to lose 5 pounds is far greater than the amount of effort that it took to gain the weight. But I have to apply a little sanity and logic here. I can't let a few pounds ruin my optimism and destroy my motivation.

So instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself, I got up and went to the gym this morning. And I plan to go to tomorrow, Wednesday, and every day for the rest of the week. It's the only logical way to approach this.

Sometimes when I gain weight, I end up feeling terrible. And for some odd reason, when I feel discouraged, I want to eat junk food. It's completely counter to what I should be doing but at the time, it seems to make sense. I guess that's why they call it "comfort food."