Happy Friday | The Challenges of the Weekend

The weekend is almost here and we are looking forward to crossing a few more things off our Summer Bucket List these next 2 days! I’m looking forward to spending time with my family and doing some fun stuff together. Do you have any fun plans for your weekend?

I’m a wedding photographer and lots of weekends are spent away from the kiddos, so we really try to make the weekends we have with them special! As much as I enjoy having weekends off and spending them with my family, I do worry about how I’m going to eat healthy and stay on track while we’re eating most of our meals out of the house. I’ll do really well all week. I’ll workout every day and cook and eat healthy meals. Then the weekend gets here, we’ll be at the park or running around at stores and then BAM it’s time for dinner. Your options are limited and you aren’t going to go home and cook (it’s Saturday, after all). You decide on a place to eat, vow to find something healthy on the menu, and then the bacon blue cheese burger and fries catches your eye….Is this scenario familiar to you? Do you give in to the burger or make a sensible choice instead?

Let’s not let the weekend ruin all our hard work this week! Here are 3 easy steps we can take this weekend when we’re met with temptation while eating out!

1. Tell your family or friends you’re out with that you’re going to have a healthy meal! Just saying it out loud to others will help keep you accountable and when you start drooling over those chicken nachos, they can hopefully help steer you away 🙂

2. Plan a quick morning workout. You can find some on my Pinterest workout motivation board. Anything from 15-30 mins. should do it. Something simple you can do in your home that will help get your blood flowing & heart rate up. I find that taking just a small amount of time for myself before starting the weekend helps me stay on track. It reminds me of what’s more important and I feel stronger when faced with temptation during the day. I’m like, “I worked hard this morning and don’t want to ruin it!”

3. Have fun. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you give yourself a cheat day or a cheat meal once a week, then go ahead and use it on the weekend when you plan to eat out. Enjoy the time with your family and friends. Don’t be so focused on counting calories or not eating carbs that you forget to live in the moment. Eating healthy and exercising is a way of life, but it shouldn’t consume your entire life.

Have a great weekend and enjoy your messy life!

xo,

Jessie

Excuses…we all got ’em

So, last week I was so excited about starting Whole 30 and really stepping up my clean eating and Paleo lifestyle. Jason even said he’d do it along with me, so that was a major plus. I planned on doing some meal prep on Monday morning to help make things easier and get Jason some good lunches set up. And then, I got sick. And then, my 4 year old got sick. And then, my 8 year old got sick. Yup, last week at the Emeric household was kinda nightmarish. Needless to say, I didn’t make it to the gym all week. Did I get started on Whole 30? I tried. But honestly, with all of us sick with the stomach bug at some point last week, it just was not something I could handle. Meal prep went out the window and Jason wasn’t ready to do it on his own, having not done Paleo consistently before. When I managed to eat something, I did eat healthy Paleo foods most of the week, but then I broke down. I asked Jason for some “comfort food” aka red wine, carne asada nachos from Roberto’s & Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Talk about being an enabler, Jason! Oh wait, that’s another excuse, isn’t it? Wow, my food list seems even worse now, seeing it all typed out! My main excuse? I was exhausted from taking care of sick kiddos and I though the food would make me feel better. Did it? Not really. I was still exhausted, stressed, and now I was feeling guilty for having eaten all that junk. Did it taste good, though? You bet!

So, those were my excuses for not keeping my promise of starting Whole 30 and falling hard off the “healthy” bandwagon! I’m really disappointed in myself for making such a bad choice but I feel really determined now to get back on track. I know, I know, I said that in my last post, but there’s something about today that has me feeling super pumped. Maybe it’s the coffee. Either way, here’s to starting this week off with a bang! xo

My Futile Attemept to Eating Healthy on Vacation….

We headed out on our 11 day vacation up the east coast earlier this month. We had a great time visiting with friends and family and taking in the sights! Before we left, I was very nervous about not keeping up with my exercise routine and of course, eating healthy. There was a ton of food on our list that we just had to have- food that we don’t have here in Las Vegas or that is just way better on the east coast. I told myself I would make healthy food choices and only have small tastes of the junk food I wanted, ie. Mr. Softee, pizza, boardwalk fries, etc.. I admit, it was a long list!

So, how did I do? Not so great. I had really good intentions, but temptation got the best of me and I didn’t really make as many healthy food choices as I should have, I over-indulged in junk food, and didn’t practice much self-control. Can you believe one of the days we were on our trip was National Donut Day, plus I hadn’t had Thrasher’s Boardwalk Fries in over 10 years! Is this a good excuse? Probably not, but it’s what I told myself to justify it. (See, I told you this blog would be about the ups & downs and keeping it real!) I will say that although I wasn’t limiting myself like I should have, my portions of junk food weren’t as big as they would’ve been a year ago and I did manage to work out 4 days of the 11 days we were away. That helped, right?!? And, even though my food choices weren’t the best while on vacation, they were still my choices and I’m ok with that.

Life lesson? Don’t be too hard on yourself while on vacation, but don’t be too lenient either. Set some guidelines for yourself before you go, even if you don’t stick to them 100% you’ll still do way better than if you just let yourself run wild. Believe me, I know. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t stick to your healthy ways, just move on. Most importantly, make sure you get back on track as soon as you get back home. Don’t stay in vacation mode too long or it’ll be much more difficult to go back to healthy eating and exercising. This I also know from experience. Vacations have always been the death of my weight loss programs in the past, but not this time. Knowing where I’d failed in the past, made me even more determined to get back to my Paleo eating habits and working out regularly. Before we went away, I told myself I’d start the Whole 30 program when I got back. Here’s a quick description of the program straight from their website, it’s a ” short-term nutritional reset, designed to help you restore a healthy
metabolism, heal your digestive tract, calm systemic inflammation and
put an end to unhealthy cravings, habits, and relationships with food.” It’s based on the Paleo program, just a little more intense and no cheating allowed! I’m excited to be starting this today for many reasons but mostly, because my husband, Jason, will be joining me! He hasn’t been doing Paleo like I have for the past 8 months, so this is a big deal! I’ll be blogging about our Whole 30 experience once a week, so stay tuned! If you want a daily dose of my Whole 30 progress,follow me on instagram !