I've been gone for the last few days because I was travelling in Alberta to see Family. Excuses, excuses I know! Yes, Alberta, and the places I was staying at, had Internet connection. However, I'm going to plead illness!
While at the airport on Wednesday, my sister texted me saying she couldn't head down to Medicine Hat that night since she wasn't feeling well. She was nauseous and had been throwing up all morning. I wasn't impressed. One of the reason's I flew back to Calgary instead of driving was that my sister had promised to go down with me and was my ride. I didn't have a car there and I wasn't so sure she would let me borrow hers for the 2 days. She is generally flaky as hell (sorry sis, but it is true!) and I was worried this was just another excuse. However, my mom had some stomach issues, to put it mildly, on Sunday/Monday, so there was some credibility to the story. Well, to make a long story short, she work up at 7:30 on Wednesday morning and said she was able to go.
It was surprisingly nice to travel with my sister, she has been on a health kick since January of last year and lost about 40-50 lbs on Jenny Craig and is now down and maintaining at around 120 lbs. Prior to that she was one of the worst eaters I knew, but the weight never really crept up until the last 5 years or so. She had huge plates of french fries for dinner, popcorn for lunch, and diet coke 24 hours a day. She also never exercised and slept every spare hour she had. Something in her clicked last year and she found her inner motivation, joined Jenny Craig, stuck to it, met her goals and has been doing great since. She works with a personal trainer 3 times a week in the morning (this in and of itself makes me wonder which alien group reprogrammed her mind.) For this trip down, was all about healthy snacks. Her stomach was still sensitive, but we packed the ubiquitous Diet Coke, apples, bananas, rye crisps, sugar snap peas, and water. This was a huge help to me!
The visit to my grandparents was great. While they are getting up there in age (89 this year) they are still agile and their minds are sharp (they quite enjoyed killing us at cribbage) and I was so happy to spend some quality time with them. Knowing they've made it this far makes me want to keep on living healthy so I can reach that age as well.
The worst part? The drive home. My sister still smokes, yes I ride her ass on it every day since my dad died from smoking, and I thought my stomach was just bothered from drinking too much chocolate milk and all the cigarette smoke in the car. I was positive it was just that, no way was I getting sick with a couple trips to the gym planned and 4 more days of vacation to go.
I wasn't that lucky. We got home Friday around 1 pm and by 1:30 I was in the washroom with some nasty diarrhoea. I was still trying to convince myself that it was just the chocolate milk, so I grabbed my gym stuff and went to the gym with my husband and his cousins. That definitely didn't go so well. I made it through 25 minutes on the bike and 2 sets of squats and 3 trips to the bathroom before giving up, changing and reclining on the massage chairs for an hour waiting for the boys to finish. *Sigh* I knew then that I was done for, but refused to give in. I was stupid, I tagged alone to the Vietnamese restaurant for dinner and was able to keep down the tea and part of a lime drink. By this time, TMI alert, my ass was on fire and I was unhappy. I still trudged on. After the food, the guys were still hungry and a mutual friend invited us out to her place for homemade wonton soup. I really just wanted to go home, but since we hadn't seen this friend for ages, I felt obligated to go out to her place and hang out. With a quick stop at Shopper's Drug Mart, embarrassing the the pharmacy tech asking about nausea and diarrhoea, we went out to Chestermere to hang out. Thank goodness all we did was hang out. I was able to sit and not move for hours on some of the most comfortable couches ever. I convinced the boys to go see American Reunion the next night and barely made it home before I felt like I was going to throw up. My poor mom, I ran into the house dropping everything as I tumbled into the washroom. I HATE throwing up, try to hold it down as much as possible, but couldn't get rid of the feeling that I just had to be sick. Alas, even sticking my fingers down my throat didn't work. This is insensitive, but I really don't know how bulimics can throw up! I made it to the couch that night and never moved again.
I made it through the night and was able to be alive enough the following days to hang out with my husband and family. It was slow going, food wasn't appealing, and I never had enough energy to even sit on my phone or computer to blog. I barely had the energy to walk. I did however, feel good enough to hit the gym for 90 minutes on Monday. I was struggling when my heart rate hit 140, but able to maintain it through the workout! Wohoo for small accomplishments!
On the plus side, I lost 8 lbs that week from not eating (my stomach still doesn't really want a lot of food) and my sister and I didn't get my grandparents sick! I also was able to control my portions and all of our eating
All in all, travel is hard for diet and exercise, but if you find ways to work in good food like healthy car trip snacks and exercise (try joining a friend at the gym using a buddy pass) it is doable to keep it up. I just don't recommend getting a stomach bug. It is not a quick fix I want to repeat!!
p.s. does anyone else find it ironic that Blogger's spell check pukes on the word blog?
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