Excess Baggage – the post-holiday edition

And so we’re back (side note – when I write that does anyone else channel Gloria Gaynor and want to add in “from outer space” … or is that just me????) from our five weeks in the UK away from anything that remotely looks like a routine.

As a Pisces for whom routine is learned behaviour, I relish the whole handcuffs off, no rules, no boundaries, no regrets vibe of a holiday. However, as someone trying to lose a lot of weight, I knew some moderation would be required if I wasn’t to put back on every one of the kilos I’ve lost so far.

Before we went away I’d decided a few things:

• I wasn’t going to do any “scheduled” exercise but would aim to average 10,000 steps a day for the time we were away.
• I wasn’t going to say no to anything I really wanted to say yes to.
• I wasn’t going to count, track or weigh (either myself or my portions).
• I was prepared to put on two kilos.

The results?

• After I’d peed out the contents of my post-flight ankles over the weekend (too much information?) the scales showed a two-kilogram gain. (Grant, annoyingly, put on just a kilo – the joy of being tall and a man…) Even though I know it will take me the same length of time to lose it, I’m cool with that. If it came down to a choice of maintaining my weight loss and missing out on something I’d travelled a long way to experience, I’d compromise on the scales every single time.
• I walked almost 350,000 steps in March – an average of 11,250 steps daily. Given there were some heavy road mileage days in there, I was thrilled with this total.

Anyone following my trip on Instagram would know I said yes to most foods I wanted to say yes to, and I also drank daily – both the obligatory pint in the pub (which I love) and usually a large glass of (mostly) red wine with dinner. Every Sunday we enjoyed a pub Sunday roast (don’t look up the calorie value of your average Sunday roast – it will give you a heart attack on the spot!) and we made good on our promise to try as many local baked specialities and cheeses as possible. The damage on the scales should have been higher, so why wasn’t it?

Breakfast

Other than a few nights in a B&B in Betwys-y-Coed and four nights in a hotel in Inverness we were self-catering. This meant breakfast was usually yoghurt and fruit for Grant and a boiled or poached egg and slice of toast for me.

The UK is known for its full breakfasts and in Wales this usually consists of a couple of sausages (either pork or Glamorgan i.e. leek and cheese), a couple of rashers of bacon, fried bread, potato and leek rosti, baked beans, mushrooms, tomato, black pudding and toast. In the B&B I opted for porridge (again Grant had his fruit and yoghurt) and a mini version of Gwawr’s amazing Welsh breakfast – sticking to either a sausage or the bacon, the beans, tomato and mushrooms and a round of toast. While it was still a treat, it didn’t weigh us down too much.

As there was no mini fridge in the hotel in Inverness, we kept our provisions cold by placing them on the window ledge. We made do with oatcakes and jam and a cup of tea before heading off for the day, knowing we’d probably be sharing a mid-morning snack somewhere or other.

Other than sharing a teacake and a couple of Welsh cakes one morning in a Tenby cafe we didn’t eat out for breakfast.

Lunch

Mostly we had whatever was the soup of the day in a pub or cafe. Sometimes it would be the soup of the day and a shared sandwich. Tomato, parsnip, leek, broccoli, or combinations of the above, while they varied in quality, they certainly hit the spot.

Dinner

Most nights we ate out at local pubs, but this trip we balanced that out with nights in, especially if we’d had something more substantial than soup for lunch. On those nights we’d buy a tub of soup from the supermarket or have a mini cheese platter and maybe a pork pie or Scotch egg and some crusty bread. While still not what you might term “healthy” it was certainly better than a heavy pub meal.

In the evenings we mostly ate at pubs, usually having a single course, although on some nights we shared an entree and had a main meal each, and on others, we had an entree each and shared a main. We rarely had dessert – except for rhubarb crumble and custard… and we shared that too.

In betweens

This is where the damage really could have been done. We love scones and savoury baked goods (while I can happily leave chocolate undisturbed, I can’t say the same about sausage rolls), so the deal was we had to share. This way we didn’t feel we were missing out, but also weren’t ruining our appetites.

In St Ives, we split a pasty, in Wimborne, a sausage roll, in Pitlochry a Scotch pie and in Exton, the baker cut a pippin in half for us and we took turns to have the top or bottom of a scone. We shared an ice cream in pretty much every region we visited – sometimes a scoop in a cup, sometimes a single serve tub.

Exercise

By far, though, potential damage was mitigated because we walked. A lot.

We walked the streets of the towns and cities we stayed in. In the case of Edinburgh we walked steep hills (so many steep hills) and climbed stairs (so many stairs). Edinonians must have buns of steel.

We earnt our Sunday roast by walking before and after. In Edinburgh we walked two miles over a massive hill for our roast … and back again. Then we had a short break before walking two miles in the opposite direction for a whisky tasting Sarah had bought us.

Mostly though, we walked country lanes. Miles and miles of them. Stopping to talk to dogs (and the people who owned them), horses (and the people who rode them), and to take photos of daffodils, blossoms, fields and hares.

Because I lived in walking pants and my hiking boots (the best way to protect dodgy ankles on cobblestones) it was the kind of exercise I didn’t need to get changed into my workout clobber for, the type I didn’t have to plan or schedule or commit to. It reminded me just how much I prefer to exercise in nature, how I far prefer it to organised “workouts” – and how much I detest stairs… especially going down them!

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• Debbie Harris from Deb’s World
• Donna Connelly from Retirement Reflections
• Jennifer Jones from The Retirement Phase
• Sue Loncaric from Women Living Well After 50