An Outdoor Wedding and other life events...

My last blog was about establishing support networks for your weight loss and fitness goals within SparkPeople. But there are other support networks for other parts of your life that are just as important to your mental health and yes, your physical well being. Those things are friends and family. Friends and family support you very well in most aspects of your life but they seem to come up a little short when it deals with things like weight loss and fitness. I'm not sure why that is, but it certainly helps to underscore the importance of SparkBuddies and the support network here.

I've been told that I compartmentalize very well, that is keeping parts of my life distinct and apart from the other parts. I suppose there is truth to that, but I'm going to break open part of the compartment and talk about keeping on track when other parts of your life get in the way.

I read enough blogs to know that many of you tend to shut down fitness and calorie maintenance when the least little thing interferes with your life. Tisk, Tisk... (is that even a word!) "My uncle Bob was in town this week and I just never got around to working out..." or "The kids were over and I just ate everything in sight..." You've all read stories similar in nature in some of the blogs around here, as if putting them in writing somehow makes it okay. I would rather read the "I fell off the wagon last Tuesday but here's what I did to get back on track" kind of stories. Truly, I read the 'fell off the wagon' parts but I don't see enough of the 'I fixed it' parts. (That's a hint for some of you).

Life events happen! But how you handle life events speaks volumes. For example, one of my sons (I have three - see, I can mix separate parts of my life on occasion) got married a couple of days before Christmas... Sunday, in fact. It was a gorgeous outdoor wedding.

Yes, Virginia, in Texas we can do outdoor weddings on December 23rd! It's a good thing it wasn't on December 25th because that day started off with lightning and thunder (Texas, remember?) which progressed to sleet, hail, and eventually SNOW. But we had a great time. My son married a great girl, my other sons were in attendance, and everybody had a great time. I had one glass of champagne to toast the newly married kids and followed that up with (mostly) water at the reception.

The reception was grand! We went to one of the best Mexican Food restaurants in the area, Joe T Garcias (joets.com). The first time I went there, the place was so small everybody had to walk through the kitchen, and there were a couple of well known Hollywood folks inside at a nearby table. It's the place where Presidents go when they hit town. But with all the food and drink (I only had 1/2 of a margarita with a few glasses of water) and celebration, I still monitored my calories for the day. To be sure, I was at the upper limit of the range but even if I had gone over a little, the train would not have derailed because I would have been right back on track the next day, not wondering if the event would put me on the wrong road for the next several weeks!

The newlyweds were around for a couple of days and have now gone to warmer climes. Yeah them! After temps in the low 20s the last couple of mornings, I'm thinking I should have gone with them. But with the wedding and Christmas, I missed a lot of SparkTime on the computer. Many of the blogs I normally read and comment on were missed. My workouts continued (shorter, yes) as did the calorie tracking. So for those of you who didn't see me comment on your blogs for a couple of days, life got in the way, but it didn't throw me off course! I'm still here and still sticking to the program. For those who fell off the horse, it's time to get back on now - don't wait for the mystical New Year and fake resolutions to get back on track. Do it now, it will only be harder next week! Get your SparkBuddies and beef up the support networks and make this the greatest time of your life!

If you haven't looked at my virtual map, go to
http://goo.gl/maps/UClce
It's a plot of my daily workout mileage on a map of the USA.