Back to Reality

  

This is the room I stayed in at Disney's Port Orleans Riverside resort. It's called a Royal Guest Room because of the Princess theme. Due to COVID, beds no longer have comforters or the pillow roll, housekeeping only comes in every other day and they do not make your bed for you. It's a nice quiet place to stay but pretty expensive and really more luxury than I needed.

“Being positive won't guarantee

you'll succeed, but being negative

will guarantee you won't."

~ Jon Gordon ~

I've decided it's time to stop counting days. I started Nutrisystem on January 4, 2019 and I remain committed to the program. I reached my goal weight on July 23, 2021. After taking a break from exercise to focus on work I gained a bit of weight back. On December 28, 2021 I started working on getting back to my goal weight. The next milestone in this paragraph will be the day I get back to 150 or less pounds.

For the next little bit my blog will focus on happy things ... namely my vacation to Disneyworld !! I'm only going to write about one day at a time, so you'll have to keep reading ! 

With departure scheduled for February 1st, I took January 31st off to finish my packing and get my cats settled at their temporary home. I didn't leave everything for the last minute so I had plenty of time to make sure I had everything I needed. After the cats were settled It was an early night as I had a 5:15 am flight and planned to get up at 3 am ! I got a couple hours sleep and trudged to the airport at 4 am despite the fact that my flight had been delayed an hour. Arrived at JFK around 8 am and due to more delays I was stuck there for hours. I did have a nice breakfast in the airport and walked a lot to help pass the time. Finally landed in Orlando around 5 pm. Although I was exhausted I had dinner reservations at California Grill so I checked in to the Port Orleans Riverside resort, freshened up, dressed for dinner and hopped on a bus to the Magic Kingdom. From there I walked to the Contemporary resort, which is where the restaurant is located. It was cold (low 60's) and I was definitely not dressed warmly enough, so I froze. I did have a nice hugely overpriced dinner at what was supposed to be a "fancy" restaurant. Well, plenty of guests were in shorts and sneaks amongst those in dresses and dinner jackets, so I guess they didn't get the message about appropriate attire or just didn't care. I wore a new dress and I'm sad that I got no pictures of myself in it ! The restaurant was serving a special 50th anniversary meal that consisted of an appetizer, an entree and a dessert for $89 a person. You could not order anything else. There were 6 appetizers, 7 entrees and 5 desserts to choose from. My appetizer was braised beef short rib wontons, my entree was oak-fired filet of beef and my dessert was valrhona chocolate torte. I ordered a $48 bottle of wine, which was a very good La Perlina Moscato. Sounds like a fancy and expensive Italian wine, doesn't it ? Well, a quick Google search indicates it retails for $15 or less ! So I got ripped off there. The food was very good and I'm not ashamed to admit I had 2 big glasses of wine and cleaned every plate ! I needed the energy for the walk back to the Magic Kingdom and the wait for a bus back to the resort ! After an exhausting 21 hour day I settled into an amazingly comfortable bed near midnight. Needless to say, I had no trouble sleeping. Next up: my day at Epcot !

Back to the present. I got home from vacation around midnight Monday so I had yesterday off. I retrieved my cats and got them settled back home and then headed out to grocery shop. I went to Christmas Tree Shops to restock my sugar free coffee syrups and then headed to Wegmans to restock my produce and dairy items. I was craving a slice of their pizza but all they had was a sad dried up piece of pepperoni and a couple of equally sad looking cheese slices. Hard pass ! From there I decided to go to DQ, who has a new menu and what you order doesn't match what you get. I ended up with a 2 patty sandwich instead of a single. Not gonna lie - it was delicious and I ate every bite. It included small fries which are 100 times better than McDonald's. I also got a choco strawberry blizzard - somehow ended up with a medium instead of the tiny one I usually get.  Yeah .. I ate it all. Call it the last hurrah. After that I went to Walmart to pick up a few things. Cat food shortage continues - shelves were bare so I'll be placing another Amazon order. I don't understand why Amazon has the food but Walmart does not. Once I put all the groceries away I spent time unpacking and trying on all the Disney apparel I bought. Everything fit great so I was happy about that ! You couldn't try anything on due to COVID so I had to eyeball sizes. I will say that much more apparel was available in Plus sizes !  Today it was back to work. The day flew right on by because I have so much to catch up on and can't work any extra hours. I did what I could in 8 hours and called it a day. I got in a quick workout during lunch. When I say quick, I mean quick - it was less than 15 minutes because I started the new Tommy Rivs series, which they call The Road to Recovery. It's a very slow pace and the walks are short because, in Tommy's words, it's as fast as he can go. I wanted to increase the speed but I didn't. I decided I would walk this journey side by side with Tommy, while thanking him for the fact that I have the ability to go faster. It hurt to see him struggle with his breathing as he walked and told you about the location (Cancun, Mexico) and the plan for the workouts ahead. If you met him on the street today you would have no idea how much cancer has changed his life. He looks and sounds like the "old Tommy" .. until you realize he is breathless during a slow paced (2.2 mph) walk. I though back to my first few iFit workouts where I only lasted 8 minutes at a similar pace. I thought about his jogging and running series where he blasts through at 5-6 mph - speeds I will never attain. He also did some amazing cycling series for the advanced cyclists. It's sad to see him struggle now but at the same time it's amazing that he is not only here but he is fighting to get his fitness back. I hope to draw some motivation and inspiration from this series as I've been struggling to get my exercise program back on track. Vacation didn't help but it's not like I laid in a beach chair drinking margaritas ! So I will stroll along with Tommy and silently encourage him to never give up the fight.

After work I went out and cleaned up the snow at the edges of my driveway and on my front steps. Unfortunately there is no sun in the forecast anytime soon, so what is left out there isn't going anywhere. I had dinner when I came in and I'll be heading for bed soon as I'm tired !

I didn't quite settle back into Nutrisystem today. I had my usual pancakes with sugar free syrup and a yogurt for breakfast. I drank half of my protein shake for my morning snack. Lunch was the usual pepperoni pizza melt (which Nutrisystem had discontinued and I'm so sad) with a chef salad. After lunch I ate a salted caramel cornflake cookie that I got at Sprinkles in Disney Springs Monday. I paid $4.50 for it and that baby wasn't going to waste ! It was good. I never got around to my afternoon snack but I had some cottage cheese before I went outside to shovel. Dinner was beef stew over cauliflower that I pureed into mashed. Evening snack was a Valentines sugar cookie I bought at Wegmans yesterday.