I ended February weighing as much as I did when the month began. Thanks to lots of eating out, I put the brakes on my weight loss, loss sleep, experienced digestive problems and had no energy.

I started February weighing 182.9 pounds. I end the month weighing 182.5 pounds. While I hoped to leave the 180s behind, I see this as a small victory. Even when I’m “bad” I can maintain or course correct pretty quickly with my eating habits.

Now when I say “bad” I’m talking about eating out and enjoying wine way too much. The middle of the month the hubby and I ate out about 10 times.  Of course, I had wine with my meals.  Ugh!!!  Thankfully the last 10 days I’ve worked diligently about cooking my own meals and forgoing the vino. And the results showed not only on the scale, but in how I physically felt.

Lack of Sleep & Feeling Crappy
What did all that eating out and wine get me? Between February 8-21, I gained 5 pounds. I know some of that was water retention, but when the pants started fitting a little tighter than normal, it was time to make a change.

Besides the pounds, I noticed a couple of things about my physical health: 1) poor sleep ensued, and 2) The morning after, my body let me know it did not approve of such behavior.

I know alcohol is really a stimulant, but even on nights where we ate out and I stuck to water, I still experienced poor sleep. Normally I’m a 6-½ – 8 hours a night type of gal. But when we eat out, I’m lucky if I make it to 5 hours of sleep – wine or no wine. I’ve already posted about the connection between weight gain and lack of sleep. So I wasn’t doing myself any favors.

My lack of sleep wasn’t the only thing I noticed.  It took most of the next day for me to get physically back on track. I’d wake up in the morning feeling like crap – gurgling stomach, bloated, headache and zero energy.

My food choices are always low carb when I eat out. But when you don’t control the ingredients or how it’s cooked, it’s easy for hidden carbs and sugars to sneak onto your plate.

This week was a different tune. We stayed in for dinner and cut back on wine. Sure enough I dropped 5 pounds, am sleeping better, have plenty of energy and a quiet stomach. Clearly eating out 10 times over 2 weeks wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done.

Lesson learned and I’m applying it to my March Challenge.