From the bottom of the pile to mountain tops!

This weekend afforded the Boss lady and myself the chance to get away on a little weekend retreat just the two of us so we did! I got an email from Wify listing an entire weekend full of stuff to do with a simple question "How does this sound?" I thought it sounded great so the room was booked and we were off. I always talk about not limiting myself during "special occasions" and this kind of fell into that but I did pretty good on the eating front and as far as exercise is concerned we walked for more than 5 hours on Saturday on Mt Sunapee at a craftsmen fair followed by about 2 1/2 hours on Sunday at a HUGE flea market that was on our route home.

Oh no! I ate the whole thing!

We started out on our trip and I had all day Friday where I ate how I should have, we decided to go to the supermarket for a snack for the ride as it was a few hours and some stuff to drink. I decided on a bag of Quaker Quakes rice snacks which is 70 calories per serving BUT I ended up eating the entire bag on the ride up! no worries I thought as I had a very light day so on we went. It was decided before we left that we would do a late dinner when we pulled into town and we found a little bar/restaurant which was surprisingly good where the service and food was concerned. We ordered nachos for an appetizer and I got an 8oz NY strip with a loaded baked potato and sauteed zucchini, I passed on the veggies, ate the whole steak and the potato came back to the hotel with us so again not so bad of a dinner where calories are concerned. Wify ordered a pasta dish with artichoke, spinach, grilled chicken and a light red sauce and she only ate half of it and that meal from Friday fed us for dinner again Saturday and one meal for two nights dinner would have never happened in the past.

A shot of the Healthy eating vendors sign.

Saturday morning we woke up early and started our day with breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel just to make things easy, I had an eggbeater omelet with veggies, whole wheat toast and some home fries. I asked for half of the cheese that they normally use as I didn't figure they used low fat stuff like I do at home, the home fries were baked and I opted for H2O as my drink, over all I was off to a good start. We headed up to the Craftsmen fair and I was pleasantly surprised at what I found there as I was a little skeptical that it was going to be intriguing enough to keep me interested in staying all day. There were glass blowers, blacksmiths, wood carvers, painters and silver smiths along with any other kind of craft type persons that you could think of there, we walked straight away to a fella that was carving logs into sculptures with a chainsaw and immediately bought a mask off of him for our wall of masks at home. After walking around for a few hours we decided that it was time for lunch so we walked on over to the food area to be faced with things like Philly cheese steaks, cheese burgers, pulled pork sandwiches and all other sorts of "fair" type food stuff but then noticed the "Health smart" booth! I ended up with a Turkey sandwich on whole wheat with lettuce on it with a bottle of H2O to wash it all down with so I was still on par with making good food choices to go with all of the walking that we were doing.

Half of my lunch.

and the other half! along with my chipmunk like cheek!

After lunch I was forced we decided to take a ride on the ski lift to take a 10 minute ride to the summit of Mt Sunapee to check out the view and walk around a bit up on top of the world, the brochure said there were trails up there so it sounded fun. The ride up was really fun with lots to look at and the view from the top was even better, it was almost story like as we got to the top and were greeted with what seemed like hundreds of shiny purple dragonflies gliding around the wild flowers and trees. We spent about an hour on the summit before heading back down and to say that I was relaxed at that point would not be close to how I was feeling, Just two and a half years ago a trip like this one would not have been possible just because of the walking that was involved never mind anything else.

My feets on the ski lift, its further down than this pic lets on!

Me and Wify on the summit, another hiker offered to take our photo for us.

This is off of the balcony on the lodge at the summit.

Wify snapped this as we were walking away from the ski lift after coming down.

When we came down off of the summit we decided that it was time to head back to the hotel after a quick trip to the supermarket for some green tea and supplies. I was craving Cheese for some reason, is there something in cheese that my body needed? or did I just want some?! I don't know but we picked up some low fat pepper jack and a box of wheat thins which we used as an appetizer to our main course al la left overs. Saturday night dinner was the loaded baked potato, Wifys pasta and the remainder of the nachos split between us, we did indulge in dessert at the Italian restaurant in the hotel in the form of some Gelato and a small piece of cheese cake which was also split between us after dinner.

Sunday is where my eating went down hill as I feel that I made decent choices throughout the whole weekend until that day, breakfast was at a diner and I got a cup of coffee which I did use splenda in so props to me there but that's where the props stop I am afraid. I ordered hash and eggs, which had 3 eggs over easy on top of a small pile of hash along with some whole wheat toast, the meal was delicious and I haven't had hash in ages but probably not the best choice in the grand scheme. We had decided that we were going to stop in Massachusetts for dinner at a random Italian restaurant that we found on restaurants dot com as we had a few coupons and we were going to kind of skip lunch grabbing a soft serve ice cream at some point after a flea market that we stopped at. Well we did get soft serve at a place called Poor boys drive in, this place was amazing! they had flavored soft serve ice cream in the way of like 30 different flavors! I ended up getting a large rum flavored and wify opted for the cheese cake and that rum soft serve tasted just like rum cake and though I thoroughly enjoyed the cone I am quite relieved that it is so far from me. Our "skip lunch" idea turned into "lets just grab a side and split it" which we did, we ordered something that they called tumbleweeds which was just very thinly sliced onions cooked like onion rings but it was a huge plate! and off we went.

At the place in MA I ordered the chicken parm which was served on top of pasta and again was not the best choice but I knew that when I ordered it, the menu was sort of lacking and nothing else really caught my attention. I knew that another blogger Ann whom I met when I went to the Dr. Oz show lived in MA and she had given me her cell phone number at the time so I thought I would shoot her a text and see if she wanted to meet Wify and myself for dinner at said random restaurant. As it turned out she was only 30 minutes away from where we were eating and accepted so that was a cool surprise to end our weekend. Ann found out that I do in fact drink crazy amounts of tea as she watched eight or was it nine glasses of unsweetened tea come to the table one after another, we did joke about that. After dinner back into the car we went and homeward bound once again we drove as I tried to make the "time of arrival" on the GPS get lower and lower until finally we made it home.

Over all it was a great weekend spent with Wify, I made some good choices with my intake, some not so good choices but in the grand scheme it was good. Eight hours of walking/hiking squeezed into two days and some great memories added to the collection along with the three hundred some odd photos that we snapped while making those memories. This entire weekend would not have happened if I had not decided to change my life just two and a half short years ago and I know that I am happier because of that decision.

That was how this fella spent a weekend because of a two and a half year old decision, what are you able to do now because of healthier choices? and with that, the end has come to this edition of as the fat guy turns..

As Ever
Me