Very sad Tuesday weigh-in

I have surely been enjoying this Hawaiian vacation, but today I have to go back to reality. It's Tuesday, so first thing this morning I went up to the scale in the ship's gym to weigh in. YIKES. It's even worse than I feared. In one week, I gained 10, that's TEN, pounds. I went from 206 to 216.

I did indeed eat whatever I wanted, and I was counting on all the walking to mitigate that. Didn't work! I also drank at least one, and sometimes several, drinks a day. I started drinking the frozen delicious things like daiquiris and pina coladas that I love so much instead of limiting myself to one whiskey on the rocks. Plus this week included the bourbon tasting, the luau, several very nice restaurant meals on shore, and way more desserts than necessary. YIKES.

So today it has to end. We are heading back to San Diego, with a brief four hour stop in Ensenada, Mexico on Saturday night. Mark and I don't plan to even get off the ship for that one since we have three stops in Mexico on the next cruise. Now I need to change my mind-set from "I deserve to have a good time like everyone else around me is having" to "I need to stick to my food plan." I need to remember that I probably did not eat like everyone else around me; I probably ate more. I also need to remember that even if I do eat like everyone else around me, I gain weight faster than them. It's not fair, but it is a fact.

So today I have already written down what I'm going to eat to try to stick to a more reasonable 1200 to 1400 calories. I'm about to go up to the buffet and get two hard-boiled eggs (140) and a yogurt (90). For lunch I plan to make a salad with just a little bit of parmesan sprinkled on it and some form of protein, either some cheese or nuts, or some fish, depending on what's up there today. For dinner in the main dining room, grilled salmon, broccoli, and green beans is always a choice. I just haven't always picked it, or worse, I picked it and surrounded it with two appetizers, bread, two drinks, and two desserts. I need to leave all that out and just take the main dish. At night for late night snacking, I need to go back to the banana and maybe an apple in the middle of the day as a snack instead of the pizza and ice cream I've been having. I also should have plenty of time to walk on deck today. I'll let you know how this goes!

Mark also gained weight, five pounds. That's awesome for him, and he's pretty excited about it. Of course, he hasn't checked his blood sugar to see what's happening there.

Weighing in on the Ship

We are on our third day at sea, and as the captain said last night, "We feed you sixteen meals a day." He's only half joking. I'm trying to choose healthy fish and vegetarian options, but the ice cream and desserts keep jumping off the buffet right on to my plate sometimes. They do have a scale in the gym, in fact there are two scales. The usual digital type of scale is next to useless because the ship doesn't stand still long enough for it to find the reading. It's pretty funny really. They also have a large old balance type scale which does work more or less. I weighed myself on it the first morning as a baseline. I got some better numbers than I expected, but it's hard to know how that scale would compare to my home scale. Sunday morning I got a 202, a 205, and a 208. All of those would be super great considering what I have been eating. This morning was Tuesday, so I went up to the 10th floor first thing in the morning for my official weigh-in. It was 206. I hope that the scale is close to our home scale.

As for exercise, there is a jogging track on the 11th deck. Three times around the track is one kilometer. On Sunday we walked 6 times around it in the cold with high winds blowing us. We stayed far from the railing out of fear! On Monday we walked around it 8 times in sunny but windy weather. Today we hit the jackpot! There was almost no wind, and it was finally warm and sunny. We walked 12 times around, 4K. My goal is to make that 5K tomorrow morning. I have not done a 5K in many months, so I'm excited to think that I can make it tomorrow. Mark did it, too, and that's also very exciting for him.

I have learned how to type the blog entry in the cabin without being logged in. Then I can copy and paste it into the blog in just a few quick minutes once I've logged on. It's good to have Mark to teach me these tricks! I will be checking my emails at least every other day, but I may not always have enough minutes to answer all of them. I hope all of you are doing well.

Farewell to San Diego

It's the day to say good-bye to San Diego because we will board the Celebrity Constellation at 1 p.m today. Since we turned in the rental car last evening, we are just hanging out at the hotel until the shuttle takes us to the ship.

Yesterday was Mark's birthday! I hope he had a good one. I bought him a fabulous lunch at Anthony's Fish Grotto, San Diego's original seafood restaurant, right at the Port of San Diego. I had a fish called Mexican Baquetta from the Sea of Cortez. I never heard of it before, but it seemed similar to a halibut or a sea bass, white and firm. I had it blackened with a special cole slaw with pineapple dressing and steamed vegetables. YUM. Mark had Red Snapper Ranchero with the same sides. We told them not to bring the bread basket, but we did have drinks. I had a peach daiquiri. That used to be my regular drink, but I have not had one in over a year since it's pretty high in calories. Oh, boy, did it taste good! Then I mentioned it was Mark's birthday so they brought us a complimentary Mud Pie dessert. We completely finished the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure I had two-thirds of it myself. Sigh.

The only redemption is that once again there was a lot of walking around. We walked hours and hours yesterday at Old Town and over an hour on the beach at Torrey Pines. Today we walked hours and hours around the Maritime Museum and on the USS Midway. I can only hope that all the walking is helping to use up all these calories. At least dinner was just a Subway salad and two pieces of fruit for a late night snack.

The hotel will provide us breakfast one more time, then we are hoping to have lunch onboard the Constellation. Even though we couldn't get the shuttle scheduled to leave here until 1 p.m., boarding is until 3 p.m., so we are hoping the lunch buffet is open all of that time.

Once we leave the hotel, we will have no internet access for a month! We do plan to buy a four-hour internet package onboard for this first cruise which will give us about 8 minutes each day for each of us to use. Hopefully it will be enough to upload and mail out pictures and maybe scan my emails briefly. I will probably not try to use any of that time for blogging. Sorry loyal bloggers. If anyone who reads this who does NOT currently receive the picture links in an email but would LIKE to have picture links in an email, please email me with that request or leave a comment here. I will be checking this blog and my email one more time today before I pack up the laptop. That should be about 12:30 local San Diego time.

If there is a scale onboard the ship in the spa or the gym, I will be using it and there WILL be a brief report on that. If it's really bad, I'm sure you'll hear the screaming even from the middle of the Pacific Ocean!

Awesome Zoo

Our day at the San Diego Zoo was wonderful. It's a really huge and amazing place; it certainly lived up too all the hype and hyperbole that describes it. We walked and walked up and down hills and stairs for over five hours.

I followed my eating plan yesterday pretty well. After the hotel breakfast that I described in yesterday's post (and will eat again this morning), we had a grilled salmon salad at the zoo's sit-down restaurant and the usual Denny's dinner. With all that walking, I can't help but feel it was a good day.

Today's plan is to go to Old Town and learn about San Diego's history, and if there is enough time, we'll also go up to La Jolla State Park to walk along the beach and dip our toes or fingers into the Pacific Ocean. I've been on the west coast only 6 times in my life, but I've never gone into the water. It's really too cold to swim, but I could touch the wave's edge at least.

Meals today should include the hotel breakfast and a Denny's dinner like yesterday. We plan to find lunch in a restaurant in Old Town. I am really hoping that I can find a scale on board the ship because I'm so worried about the weight that I am probably gaining.

Fabulous Mexican Food in Beautiful San Diego

We had a great day yesterday, and it all went just as planned. The rental car, a Dodge Avenger, is quite nice making the drive south to San Diego very comfortable. I had the same Fitness Omelet breakfast as yesterday morning at Mimi's before we left and a Subway salad in San Diego after we checked into the Comfort Inn. Dinner was another story. We abandoned the plan to eat at Denny's in favor of a Mexican dinner at Zocalo in Old Town San Diego. Mark found Zocalo listed as a AAA recommended restaurant, plus it turned out to be just a few blocks walk from the Trolley Tour stop.

We ordered vegetarian empanadas as an appetizer. We each ate two. Hmm...Hmm...good! Unfortunately they provided a big basket of fresh tortilla chips with a spicy salsa and a creamy jalapeno dip. I ate the majority of all of that. Sigh. Our main dish was grilled salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and cumin-spiced vegetables. Cumin is one of my favorite spices, so I could NOT pass up this entree! I had a white peach sangria along with that while Mark sipped an expensive tequilla on the rocks. Then the finale was chocolate empanadas with vanilla ice cream. Soooo decadent! I ate one of the three empanadas and half the ice cream. Mark had one empanada, then we actually let the other one go and watched the the rest of the ice cream melt. It breaks my heart to see good food go to waste, but I am trying to learn to let it go.

I bought a new t-shirt at one of the Old Town shops. It said "feel me" on it, so I did. It said it was peach fuzz. It's really very soft and nice, not the usual t-shirt material at all. It says San Diego on it, and I needed a t-shirt for the trip. I did not pack enough t-shirts as it turns out. We did three loads of laundry last night in the hotel, which took forever because even though there were three washers and three dryers, two of the dryers didn't work! We were exhausted last night trying to wait up for everything to get done. We finally gave up and just hung up some of the clothes around the room to dry.

I started off talking about the t-shirt because of the size of it. I bought a 1X shirt, and it fits perfectly. In fact, I'm wearing it right now, and I love it. This is significant for two reasons. First, it means I can't possibly have gained TOO much weight yet because the 1X t-shirt is fitting fine and I'm also wearing my 1X pair of knit pants. The second reason is that I bought the Disneyland hoodie in a 2X. It's HUGE. When I was in the Disneyland store, I didn't even try on the 1X. My mind was in the mode of being big, I guess, because I felt I had been eating so much. I was excited to see a 2X on the rack, tried it on, felt that it fit, and bought it. Later, I realized it's really too big for me! I still have serious issues with body image/perception apparently.

I had the complimentary hotel breakfast this morning: two hard-boiled eggs, a small yogurt, and a half bowl of Raisin Bran with a very small amount of 2% milk. Today we are spending the whole day at the world famous San Diego Zoo. We hope to catch a lunch at the zoo and dinner at Denny's. It's not a long drive from our hotel, and there will be plenty of opportunity to walk off calories. The only glitch in this plan is that although it's sunny outside, it's very windy again and not going out of the 50s. Mark and I are putting on four layers of clothes: t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweater, hoodie. Hopefully that will allow us to adjust to day's vagaries in temperature and wind conditions as we walk around the zoo.

I hope you have a great day, too, whoever and wherever you are!!

No Weigh-in this Tuesday

Today is my "official" weigh-in day, Tuesday; however, there is no scale anywhere. I am a little nervous about how much I must weigh after this first week of the trip. Unlike last year's big summer vacation where we ate at Subway and Denny's the majority of the time, we have been eating large meals with lots of carbs at most every meal so far. Ouch. That's a bad combination.

Yesterday we had breakfast at the restaurant next door called Mimi's. Apparently it is a chain and there is one near us in Maryland, but I had never heard of them. They have a Fitness menu plus the calories, carbs, and other nutritional info for every item was listed in the back of their cocktails menu. (Is that weird or is it just me? Who looks there? Oh, yeah, for some reason I did.) Anyway I ordered the Fit Omelette: an omelette of three egg whites, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and broccoli, sliced tomatoes on lettuce on the side, two slices of whole wheat toast (no butter on it or served with it), cranberry juice. This was listed as 505 calories. Two cups of black coffee and two tiny containers of strawberry jam on the toast completed the meal. That was probably one of the best choices on the menu calorie-wise, yet it was still over twice the calories of my usual breakfast at home.

Lunch was Vegetarian Gumbo in New Orleans Square. That might have been an excellent choice except that I ate virtually all of the bread bowl. I looked around and noticed almost no one else doing that, not even the lid portion on the side. Why is that? The bread part was just spectacular! Who wouldn't want to eat that?

Dinner was back in New Orleans Square at Cafe Orleans. I ordered Creole Ratatouille which was spicy, full of veggies, and served with two large triangles of corn cake sitting on top of it, some shaved cheese, and two stalks of asparagus. I'm hoping that wasn't too high in calories; it was sure high in flavor!

I had nothing else to eat all day, and I walked my feet off. There are finally some small blisters showing up after all this walking.

Today we plan to hit Mimi's for breakfast again, rent the car, and drive to San Diego. There's no reason why we can't eat at Subway and Denny's most of the time in San Diego. We'll try.

Mickey Walk

Yesterday I bought a Mickey shaped pedometer. Today I'm going to wear it all day and see how many steps I take. I'm not sure that it's very accurate. Does anyone know if these things really count accurately? I'm going to try to test it out on our walk to breakfast.

I think I ate about 2400 calories yesterday, but I also walked a LOT. Our legs were very tired on the walk back to the hotel last night.

We had an awesome day in Disneyland yesterday and there will be pictures online soon. I'll post a link here that you can copy and paste into your browser if you want. Today we are going to do the Park Hopper thing by starting in California Adventure and then going back to Disneyland; we'll finish by going to the movie at Downtown Disney. A trifecta of fun!

Sunday in the Park, with Mickey

Today our plan is to go to Disneyland for the whole day. It opens at 8 a.m. and closes at midnight. I would not be surprised if we were there that entire time. It's been eight years since we have been here, and we do love Walt's original park! This will be my fifth trip into the park and Mark's 8th trip.

Yesterday I ended the day with several miles of walking and 1500 calories at the most, a good day finally. It really did feel good to eat right, especially after a week of eating 3000 and UP calories every day with virtually no walking. I have been maintaining my weight around 208 for over a month. I was sort of hoping for at least some loss on this trip, but after the train ride, I'll be happy if I get home and still weigh 208.

It doesn't look like this hotel has a fitness room or scale anywhere, so on Tuesday I will not be able to have an official weigh-in day for the first time in over a year. Sad. Maybe the hotel in San Diego will have a scale. If not, I'm counting on the ship to have one in the spa/fitness area. Otherwise, I could be in for a big surprise when I get home! Ouch.

This morning we will be having breakfast at the River Belle Terrace restaurant in the park. We had gone to that restaurant in 1987 when we brought the kids, then aged 8 and four months, to Disneyland for their first time. I took a picture of Lowell and Mark eating breakfast at an outdoor table; Mark was holding infant Evey on his lap. When we returned the next time, the kids were 14 and 6. We ate there again and I took a picture of Evey sitting on his lap. The last time we came was 8 years ago. Lowell couldn't come and Evey was 15, I think. Still we went to the River Belle Terrace and I made Evey sit on Mark's lap! Gee, whose going to sit on his lap this morning? I guess there are three choices: no one, me, or some stranger's little girl! Oops, probably seem too weird to ask some stranger to let their little girl sit on the old geezer's lap. LOL

Shabbat in Anaheim

It actually feels good to eat right today. Since it is Shabbat, we do not spend money, so Mark and I went to the hotel gift shop/convenience store yesterday before going to the park and bought our breakfast supplies. This morning I had a 100 calorie box of Cheerios, which I ate dry out of the box, and two slices of American cheese. The room has a coffee maker, so I had two cups. That was it.

We spent the rest of the morning reading the newspaper, playing online, and taking pictures of the hotel grounds. When it was time for lunch, we walked about a mile (18 minutes) down the street to the closest Subway. I had my usual double meat turkey salad for 190 calories. I also had a 35 calories bag of apple slices left over from yesterday's mozzarella stick order in the park.

We plan to walk to Denny's for our usual senior tilapia dinner (about 750 calories all together) and then walk around Downtown Disney and go to the new Alice in Wonderland movie with Johnny Depp.

It will be a day full of eating right and walking a lot. This is always a great combination for me, but it's going to take a lot more than one day to undo the damage of the last week. OY! I hope there is a scale on the ship so that I can see what's happening. I'm sort of regretting my decision not to find a way to get that scale in the luggage!

In California

We made it to California this morning. After checking in to the Howard Johnsons across the street from the parks, we were in Disney's California Adventure park by 11 a.m. What a great time.

I have three Picasa photo albums online from the train trip. If you want to see the pictures and captions describing the trip, here are the links to the albums:
First Leg of the Journey: Washington to Chicago http://picasaweb.google.com/RMSilverstein/FirstLegOfTheTripWashingtonToChicago?authkey=Gv1sRgCPyIlIzD0uecrQE#

The Second Leg of the Journey: Chicago to LA http://picasaweb.google.com/RMSilverstein/TheSecondLegChicagoToLA?authkey=Gv1sRgCNLUgIiFudK9-wE#

California Here We Come! http://picasaweb.google.com/RMSilverstein/CaliforniaHereWeCome?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ7m0aeO6cWW0AE#

It is really hard to stay on my diet plan while on the trip. The food choices were delicious, but limited, and there was virtually no opportunity for any exercise. I also had dessert at most dinners and way too many fat and carb calories. I did not take my scale because there was no room to pack it, but I'm a little scared about what has been happening. I'm pretty sure I can feel weight creeping back on.

Today I walked a lot all day at the park. We had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and eat breakfast at 5:15 a.m. on the train. We had a veggie burger and fries lunch at 11:30 a.m., mozzarella sticks and wine at 4 p.m., then vegetarian chili in a sourdough bread bowl at 6 p.m. Yummy but mostly carbs. I don't know if the walking can undo those calories. I'm hoping there will be a scale on the ship next week. I'm a little scared.

Heading Out.

We have spent the morning taking care of last minute packing and odds and ends. I also had a nail salon appointment to get ready for the trip. Wow! It's happening.

The agent and the contractor stopped by for some last minute details, and my cleaning lady is here making the place squeaky clean for the potential buyers.

I weighed 208 this morning to start the trip. Sadly, that is up over two pounds for the week. I'm really in a maintenance phase now because I have not changed significantly for two months. I guess that's not too terrible right now considering all the stress I've been under. I am not taking my scale, so I hope I'll be able to check my weight on the ship if there is a scale in the spa. I'm counting on lots of walking in Disneyland, San Diego, and the promenade deck on the ship to keep my weight at least constant so that I can enjoy some food. We'll see.

I will not have internet again until Friday, so I'll blog again then. Take care!

It's for sale.

Sunday was a busy but wonderful day. Mark and I worked hard to finish tidying up the house; Joel came over to take some more stuff out to his house for potential sales; Lowell came to check out the house and have lunch with us; and the real estate agent came to have us sign all the papers for listing the house. It is now officially for sale with Jan Adams of Long and Foster Realtors for $292,900. Now we can just hope for a buyer.

If you would like to see pictures of the house, here is the link to the Picasa Web Album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/RMSilverstein/HouseWork?authkey=Gv1sRgCJqtuuGp_aKcQw#

To celebrate, and because it was still Purim, Mark and I went out to dinner at Applebee's. We both had our usual Weight Watchers Cajun Lime Tilapia dinner, but we added a couple of extra drinks. Delicious.

Today was yet another busy day of non-stop errands in preparation for the trip. The biggest one was getting the two large suitcases on the train out of Union Station. We had a tip from a baggage handler in Orlando that on such a long train trip involving three different trains, it's a good idea to send the checked luggage ahead a day early. So we packed those bags last night and sent them on their way this morning. Hopefully they will be happily waiting for us in Anaheim on Friday. We also tied up a lot of other loose ends including a cardiology appointment.

The echocardiogram that Mark had on Friday apparently worked out better than in the hospital and showed no BULGING. That's great news. He has been cleared to go on the trip with the admonition not to overdo anything too much. He cannot lift weights, soak in a hot tub, or do anything too strenuous. He can walk as much as he wants, swim gently, and generally ease himself back into his normal routines. He has another followup appointment after we return.

That was welcome news!

Tomorrow the agent returns to pick up two sets of keys to the house. My cleaning lady is coming to do some more cleaning since there is still an awful lot of dust on everything. I have a nail salon appointment; some things just are way too important to skip! My brother is coming to put the rebuilt drawer back in the kitchen and drive us to BWI where we will take a thirty minute train ride to Union Station. We'll have an hour wait before the Capitol Limited whisks us away to Chicago on the first big leg of this odyssey. After a five hour layover on Wednesday, we will take the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles and then the Pacific Surfliner to Anaheim. We have a sleeping car the whole way, which I've never had before, so I'm very excited about that.

Once we are on the train, there will be no internet service until Friday. So, my loyal followers, do not panic when you see no blog posts for awhile. I will be relaxing on the train and enjoying the scenery. I'll post again sometime on Friday from Anaheim, California.