Holiday victory!

Well, the annual challenge has come and gone and I'm really proud to report that, when it comes to weight, we've both passed this particular year's test with flying colours.

I'm talking about holidays here (vacations for US readers), and the toll they can take on losing or maintaing a sensible weight.

This year we thought it might get a wee bit more difficult as we're still pretty new to the idea of low carb and were not sure if we could translate this into things like eating out - specifically for the birthday meals.

I thought we'd be likely to be tempted by the idea of cake or desserts or higher-carb treats and half-expected us to fall off the wagon, or at least wobble wildly. I'd even made a few mental contingency plans for what we'd do if (when?) this happened - mostly to be honest and admit it, then get right back to being EXTREMELY careful as hell with everything we ate.

But... amazingly, we didn't need to 'make amends' in any way and we rode that wagon quite comfortably for the whole time we were away. I'm so, so proud of us both and so, so grateful that some aspect of the low-carb, high-fat, moderate-protein way of eating seems to help us both with keeping good control.

Without the little (carb-driven cravings?) internal voice saying 'but I want the cake' it's generally pretty easy to see something appealing, think 'hmm, that looks delicious' but still just walk on without any real regrets.

I feel that we ate really well, er... luxuriously even, in the time we were away. I don't feel in the slightest 'deprived' and we certainly seemed to eat more/better than usual. In fact, I often found that I felt quite full, and even skipped a few meals for small snacks instead as the thought of a full plate just didn't appeal.

I did have one day of feeling 'oh, poor me', when thoughts of 'but I can't have a...' got a bit intrusive (that was the day before we had to leave and my black dog got tetchy that our holiday was nearly over), but it still didn't translate into eating high-carb foods.

Does this class as a NSV? Well, sort of. It's a whole heap of victories in my mind, and even the scales said nice things on our return (neither of us had gained at all) so I guess it's SV + NSV.