So… is gaining weight and “going off the plan” worth it?? In the past one of the biggest problems I’ve had with weight-loss, from a diet and exercise perspective has been taking things too far. What I mean by that is my drive to drop the pounds takes priority over everything else, including enjoying myself. Instead of going out and enjoying a night out at dinner or a bar, even worse…. God forbid… a weekend of day drinking, I’d decline the invite and while my friends were all having a good time, I’d be home drinking a smoothie, or out a bike ride, or sweating to death on my rowing machine.

     This time around, however, I decided to take my weight-loss at a slower pace. Make sure I enjoy time out with friends, even if it means there’s a little bump in my weight, or I knock myself back a few days. I thought about it for a while when I got started this past January and quickly realized, isn’t that the point anyway? I’m losing weight to have more energy, to be healthier, to be more attractive, to not have to worry about my weight holding me back from doing things. So why do all this work, then deprive myself of actually enjoying any of that?

     Granted, I’ve still go a long way to go to reach my goals, but having already lost 60 – 65 pounds, I decided Gold Cup was a perfect excuse to take a little break from the shakes and the workouts and just go have a good time. Well, guess what? It was 1000% worth it and from weighing myself on a more frequent basis and knowing there was going to be a bump in my weight and that I’d be able to work it off, I wasn’t nervous about derailing my progress at all.

     That being said, I just thought it was important to share exactly what that looks like. I had reached my goal of getting myself under 280 pounds and had actually dipped a decent bit under it, all the way down to 273.2 pounds the morning of Gold Cup. Well, take a look at the graph below and you’ll see what happens when you REALLY throw your body a curveball. Not only did I weigh-in at 8.8 pounds higher the next morning, my weight actually kept going up for the next 2 days as well… for a grand total of almost 15 pounds! That’s 15 pounds “gained” from just one crazy day of eating and drinking!

     Needless to say, you can see how quickly the weight is coming back off, but it’s not nearly a week later and I’m only halfway back to where I was. We’ll see what happens over the next few days. I’m sticking to my diet, I’ll do some workouts inside since it’s going to be raining for the next 3 days and we’ll see how close I come back to where I was before another concert/day-drinking event this coming Sunday.

     So I’m finally back on track toward hitting my next long term goal of being under 250 pounds by July, but just barely. I started the month of way WAY ahead of the game, and good thing I did because that was exactly the room I needed to be able to cut loose and have a little fun!