I have a very exciting week coming up: I’ll be spending the weekend in Buffalo with my family and then on Monday morning, I’ll be flying out with a friend to El Paso. There, we’ll meet up with another friend and – over the course of 5 days – will make our way back up to Buffalo. By car.

This should be a very fun vacation: I love driving and being in the car. (Hopefully I’ll still be saying that at the end of the trip!) The girls I’m traveling with have been friends of mine since high school, though we haven’t been able to spend long periods of time together since then. Geography will do that to you.

Here’s the thing: This trip has the potential to be detrimental to my weight-loss efforts if I’m not careful!

Therefore, I’ve made a plan. We’re spreading out the driving so that we can spend the evenings in neat cities (Austin, New Orleans and Nashville), meaning we won’t be in the car non-stop. I’ve already spoken with my travel companions – both of whom are fit, health-conscious people (that’ll help!) – and told them that I want to work out while we’re away. They both quickly said that they are up for that as well. This might mean running outside on new city streets, taking advantage of hotel gym equipment, doing some fitness videos in the room – or all three!

I’m actually really looking forward to running outside in other places. I imagine it will be quite a different experience to run in a different climate and landscape than what I am used to. It’ll also be interesting to run with my friends – I hope I can keep up!

The other big thing is food, of course. This might be more tricky. As I’ve mentioned before when discussing holiday eating, when I’m on vacation, I will eat the local cuisine because I’ll feel like I “missed out” otherwise. So I’m going to do that, and not feel guilty… ideally.

However, we’ll also be on the road a lot, and that means we’ll likely be stopping for quick lunches every day. Mark my words: I will not waste calories on crap food from McDonald’s! Every fast food place has some decent options, so I will stick to those. I’ll save my calories for real food that you can’t get just anywhere… Crawfish Etouffee, anyone?

With any luck this will be a fun vacation that doesn’t put me back in my weight loss efforts. I’m lower than ever (176 this morning!) and I don’t want to ruin it. If anyone has any additional tips for me, chime in! Your thoughts are welcome :)

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Diet, Personal Stories, Workouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.