I’m home in the Florida Keys but my head feels like it’s somewhere in outer space. Jet lag is horrible when you fly east across five time zones. Thank goodness that I’d also taken today off from work. I could not have focused. That said, I rolled out of bed and went to a 9 a.m. Zumba class. I’ve also worked today to gather my thoughts.
Honestly, after the successful zip lining adventure of last Thursday, I pretty much ate whatever the heck I wanted for a few days. I didn’t overeat because, of course, quantity is limited, but I wasn’t careful with my carbs or sugar. That stops now. My goals for the cruise were to have fun, experience my adventures, and maintain my weight loss. Check, check and check on those goals.
Now that I’m back in home port, my overall goal goes back to the top slot in my priority list. This means careful adherence to my food plan – focused on protein, then veggies and fruit with minimal “empty” carbs. I’m not worried about keeping up with my activity and exercise. Even when I ate off plan I still stuck to strong activity effort.
My mindset is really positive right now. I’m in a great place. This is so far from my old patterns of successfully dieting for awhile and then falling off track and being unable to get my motivation and my ass back in gear. I am absolutely confident that I will be back on the plan, steaming steadily toward my goal.
Maintaining motivation is a challenge for anyone. For me, it used to click off like a switch and I experienced numerous, frustrating, often heartbreaking, times when I just couldn’t find a way to switch it back on. I refuse to focus on those past failures now. Instead, I’m revving myself with confidence, energy and determination. I’m also holding onto the memories of all that I can do now, adventures I can experience because I’ve lost weight and built myself into a more fit person.
I can remember that I’ve dropped enough weight and increased my upper body and leg strength enough to hike a volcanic crater, transverse suspension bridges and pull myself up ladders onto Zodiac boats and tree platforms. I’ve already had great times and more are beckoning me in my future. These are powerful thoughts to hold in my mind and heart.
I haven’t forgotten that I owe you pictures. I got as far as downloading them from the camera to my computer but I need to play with the images and resize several so that I can upload them to the blog more easily. For tonight, however, I’ll leave with you a couple from the crater and the zipline. Enjoy!
We’ve hiked down and are now walking a mile or so across the lava bed to hike out!
Knowing I’m secured to the cables, I hung back over the platform’s edge for the photo.
Weighty Matters 
Mary, that zipline picture is awesome! You look fantastic, and really really happy.
What a gorgeous smile! I’m surprised to see all of the evergreens behind you, I envision Hawaii as being full of palms, not pines. Perhaps someday I’ll get there to see for myself.
Hooray to you for doing all of the activities that you planned for your celebratory vacation, and welcome home!
There are a lot of Norfolk pines. They were brought to the islands by Captain Cook so that they would have tall, straight tree trunks in case they needed to make new masts for their sailing ships.
These days they are also planted to make wind breaks that protect the macadamia nut orchards.
I knew none of this before taking these excursions. 🙂
That’s a really terrific photo of you! I’m so pleased that you’ve had all these adventures that reinforced all the good that you’ve done for yourself so far, adding to your motivation and commitment to keep to your goals and plans. This is terrific stuff here.
That’s such a happy photo of you! Such wonderful adventures.