Doing the 'Disney diet' worked wonderfully for her

Before I went on my Bahamian cruise I was concerned I would gain some of the weight I fought so hard to rid myself of. Then during the cruise, when I knew I fell off the wagon, I ate what I wanted with some guilt but also some justification.

Then after the cruise, my fellow travellers and I (my mother, my aunt, my Mom's best friend and I) went to Walt Disney World for three days.

Disney is a diet unto itself. Actually, it's more of an exercise plan.

I have never walked so much in my entire life. I wish I would have remembered my pedometer that day. A few days before, we spent an afternoon walking through the streets of Nassau. I clocked nearly 7,000 steps on that excursion. But during one day at Disney I'm sure I walked double that ... maybe more.

There was one day we spent more than 10 hours at Epcot. My legs ached when we arrived back at the hotel just after 11 p.m.

I slept like a rock that night, and felt fine the next morning.

I thank Curves for that. I feel like I have so much more stamina since I started working out. And I sleep better most nights. Not everyone was as lucky. After our Epcot marathon, my aunt's feet ached for most of our Disney adventure and she vowed that if she ever came back to Disney World she'd be renting one of those scooters for the disabled.

The upside to all the walking was felt when I stepped onto the scale when I came home.

I gained less than a pound through my week of eating. I was shocked but also pretty pleased with myself.

The great thing about this wonderful outcome is I didn't deny myself ... not totally. Most days I avoided bread with my meals, most importantly the butter-laden pastries with my breakfasts.

I'd eat a vegetable-based lunch daily, throwing in some protein with it, and then would pig out on supper - and I mean pig out ... salad, main entrée, and then dessert. One night was salmon, another steak, then there were prawns, and lobster tails and special pasta dishes and roasted chicken and lamb.

When we went on an excursion in Freeport, we had fried conch with french fries. At Disney there were ice cream cones and an Oktoberfest buffet with things like sausage salad and fried wiener schnitzel.

We had three kinds of cheesecake at the five-star Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa (we only ate there as we weren't interested in selling a child so we could actually stay there!) and my favourite - filet mignon with celery mash (mashed potatoes with mashed celery in it, which is so much yummier than it sounds) at Disney's Contemporary Resort restaurant, The Wave.

Mom had the rack of lamb that night ... I got to have a taste ... everything was sinful and oh-so-good everywhere we went.

But even though I was tired when I returned, I was grateful the days were busy and full of walking. If they weren't, I dread to think of what the scale would tell me now.

I bounced into Curves my second night back, and promptly got back into my eating routine, although I still dream of warm chocolate melting cake with vanilla ice cream and the lobster tail dinner with prawns, where we were offered seconds, and of course took them.

Such wonderful, scrumptious memories ... hopefully they'll last me through the next big gluttony test .... Christmas!

Theresa Blackburn is a wife, mother and New Brunswick Community College instructor who lives and diets in Woodstock. You can e-mail her at theresa@mybigfatlife.ca, or join her group, Big Fat Life, on Facebook.
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