The weekend of Dreams

I got engaged!!!

Well, I’m going to give you a recap of my weekend.  What was supposed to be one night in the city turned out to be a very long weekend of fancy dinners, parties, and then a wine country finale to include a Michelin rated restaurant, spa treatments, champagne, wine, and… A RING!  Yup…I got engaged this weekend!

And since I’m sharing with you my food and exercise journey over the next few months, I feel like I need to share with you what happened this weekend!

In regards to exercise…

we tried to get a little in, but the weekend was pretty much dedicated to spa treatments, relaxing, incredible restaurants, and yes…a little too much wine.  You’ll have to check out our hotel room workout:

I did my best to make smart choices with food…

but there were for sure desserts at every dinner, and I’m proud to say that I tasted them all, but always left at least a 1/3 of it behind.

Did it all go out the window?  Well, no.  I made sure to make smart choices during the day and even more importantly, used portion control to make sure I never over did it.  The only night that we went a little overboard was Sunday night, when we finished off a bottle of wine (we’re light-weights…), and a small bottle of champagne.  Needless to say I woke up with a phaty-headache and a little nauseous the rest of the day.  And then, I did what I would normally do in this case, which was to drink some coffee to kill the pain, but because my coffee intake has been so low, it sent me over the edge and made me feel worse!  ARGH!!! Now I know why don’t drink (much) alcohol in the first place!

So there you have it.  This was definitely not my typical weekend, even for the holidays.  I’m doing my official weigh in for the week tomorrow, so we can better see how bad the “damage” is, and where to take if from here.

Friday:

typical oatmeal breakfast, Starbucks turkey sandwich (on whole wheat) on the way up to the city, an apple for a snack, and then an exquisite dinner:  frisee salad with goat cheese and cranberries (by standards of my typical salads, it was about 2-bites big) Mahi and Fillet Mignon with braised greens and scalloped sweet potatoes.  Dessert was a small chocolate tart, of which I ate less than half.

Saturday:

Breakfast:

Whole oat grout oatmeal with dried fruit and milk. 2 eggs. A very small bite of a homemade pumpkin/banana muffin  Coffee (yes…with cream and sugar..and OMG…it was so good!),

lunch was a bowl of clam chowder soup (with a few bites of Miguel’s sourdough breadbowl).

And dinner was a big steak salad with veggies, egg, and blue cheese.  It was swimming in dressing (I forgot to order it on the side), so I started getting nervous about eating too much, so I barely finished half of it.  It wasn’t that good anyways.

A glass of wine at the Ballet.

Sunday:

This oatmeal dare I say...was even tastier than mine! The trick is using the whole oat groat

Breakfast: Same fabulous oatmeal breakfast

Snack: Apple and almonds (they travel well!)

Dinner: This was “the dinner”.  We ate at Terra in St. Helena, which is a Michelin rated restaurant…and it was awesome!  We started with a soft-shell crab salad, muscle saffron soup with carmelized onions, and Gnocchi of Bellwether Farm Ricotta cheese in Pheasant Sugo with chestnuts.  Dinner was a grilled dry-aged New York Strip (you can take the girl out of Texas….)  And dessert was Maple Breadpudding stuffed baked apple with cinnamon creme fraiche.  I had one glass of wine.

All of this I think was fine…but it’s what happened next…hence why drinking too much alcohol can never play a role in real weight loss.  That night after the glass of wine with dinner, we shared a bottle of wine (which is usually enough to send me over the top), and also a small bottle of champagne.

Monday morning breakfast:

It just gets worse from here!  We stayed at a bed and breakfast that brings a “breakfast basket” to the cottage in the morning.  It’s filled with a nice bowl of friut, juice, and…CROISSANTS filled with cinnamon!  I couldn’t resist having it with some coffee and while staring at my ring!  Needless to say, that within a few short hours, my blood sugar dropped exponentially, I felt irritable, hungry, tired, and even nauseous.

But now, I’m back to reality and back on track.  Went to an AWESOME bootcamp class this morning and my food is back on track.  I weigh myself tomorrow…so you’ll have to stay tuned to see how it all goes!