Because of all the traveling that I did during the filming of The Biggest Loser, airports and hotels are a bit of an emotional trigger for me. In the past my coping mechanism for this trigger was to eat and so I get panicky when I have to face this again. My other problem with traveling is that I learned extremes when it came to weight loss. That means that I did not learn moderation techniques that allowed me to eat fast food once in awhile without beating myself up emotionally. All that the show left me with was an all or nothing approach to eating, which meant no fast food, ever. Well, I don’t know if you have ever drive across country (twice) on what the military pays with an infant and a dog, but the only option to get there in a timely manner was fast food. I was terrified.

 

When my family made both our cross-country trips this past year, I still hadn’t made it back down to my pre-pregnancy weight but I had already discovered Livea. We spent 10 days on the road driving from Alaska then we spent three months at my parents house. That was ten days of non-stop time in a car with my family eating quick meals from fast food restaurants, the occasional sit down place and I am ashamed to say vending machines. After this trip there was three months of my mothers home cooking. All followed by a three -day drive to Florida with the whole family where I swear every stop for food involved something chicken-fried or covered in gravy. I did my best to choose healthy options. I walked at every nighttime stop I could when I wasn’t exhausted from driving all day but I still was terrified of what the scale was going to say when we finally unpacked in Florida.  I LOST WEIGHT. Yep, that’s right. My food intake, though I may not have been making the healthiest choices (I did make an effort to order the healthiest things I could find on the menus where we stopped) my intake was significantly lowered because I was taking my Livea, I wasn’t controlled by cravings or emotional eating. What a nice way to start off at our newest duty station.

So why am I writing about this now? Because it’s that time again, after a few short months in Florida, my happy little family will yet again be making a cross-country move. I would say wish me luck with my eating, but I don’t need it.

 

"Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised." Denis Waitley