Holy cow. This was one of those weekends when I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. Spent Saturday morning at an Earth Day event picking up trash out of the L.A. River, and then Sunday I helped my mom clean out her garage to prep for a yard sale next weekend. It all added up to a lot of manual labor followed by a lot of time recovering by binge-watching season 5 of Game of Thrones before the new season premiere last night.

Again, holy cow – if you saw it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Where I went right this weekend:

The Husband and I have a long-standing tradition of making a big celebratory dinner for the first Game of Thrones of the season. We try to make it something they would eat on the show. He was in charge of last night’s feast, and he outdid himself with a little dish he called “Fleabottom Bowl of Brown.” It was a Whole30 compliant beef stew he came up with on his own, and it hit the spot. The only this we were missing was our wine. Tyrion Lannister would have been truly disappointed.

Where I went wrong:

Despite all my activities this weekend, I still fell short of my step goal both days. I averaged around 7,000 steps per day. It probably wouldn’t have taken much to get those extra steps – a quick walk around my neighborhood would have done it.

We had our eyes on the prize this weekend, and stayed focused on Day 30 being around the corner. But, I felt like we dwelled a little too much on thinking about how everything would have been better with something NOT allowed by our diet. Example: After the river cleanup, we both were dying to go with our friends to Golden Road Brewery and just spend the rest of the day drinking beer and hanging out. Talking about it over and over made it so much harder to focus on the main event itself. And, after eating the beef stew, all I could think about was how it could have been even better with a big ol’ glass of merlot (don’t judge me) and some crusty bread to soak up the juices at the bottom of the bowl.

Goals for this week:

Make it to Wednesday. Come onnnnn, Wednesday.

No seriously, I’m looking forward to a little freedom after Whole30 is over. But, I’m also afraid of going nuts and undoing all the good I’ve accomplished. Seems to be the outcome of every diet I’ve ever done. Which is why we started thinking of this not as a diet, but how we’d like to eat from here on out. Just with a little more flexibility. I’ve realized I don’t miss sugar at all and I could eat like this quite happily as long as I could enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or a nice cocktail at the end of the week.

So my goal for this week is to enjoy a few days of being done with Whole30, but to try just wading into the pool instead of diving into the deep end right away. I want to introduce one thing back at a time, and avoid stuffing my face with junk food again.

Note: This is a re-post from the Tumblr version of this blog. It originally ran on April 25, 2016.