As many of you know, I’m in California for Christmas (hence the sparse blog posts and tweets… sorry about that!). This year, I was able to come home for a whooping 20 days! 20 days to spend with my parents, sisters and a few friends… more importantly, 20 days off from my day job! *cartwheel*

As I planned my trip and the things I wanted to do while I was home, I found myself focusing on how much time I would have to exercise. 20 days on vacation, I’d have no excuse not to hit the gym regularly while I was home. My train of thought went a little like this: 20 days of vacation… if I worked out every day… I could lose a good amount of weight… at least 5 pounds… maybe even 10… If I could lose 10 pounds, when I got back to work I could be noticeably smaller!

So I’ve been home now for eight days and I’ve worked out three times. Being home has also changed my eating patterns, I’m eating more rich holiday foods. Needless to say I have not lost 10 pounds… or 5 pounds.

But this post isn’t about beating myself up for choosing family and friends over the gym, this post is about patterns.

The fantasy I slipped into about being away for a long period of time and returning as a skinnier version of myself is one I think I’ve been having since I was 11 or 12. Every year on the last day of school, I would commit to starving myself everyday of summer vacation so that when I returned to school the next year, I’d be unrecognizably skinny.

In my junior high fantasies, my starvation would make me so thin that the kids would think I was “the new girl”. Boys who saw me as “just a friend” would suddenly find themselves crushing on me. Life would be… different.

Attending a performing arts high school, the fantasy changed a bit. I was constantly cast as someone’s mother or an old lady because, “the heavier you are the older you look”. But I was desperate to play a lead. Although, I had the singing voice- I knew that at my size, a lead role would never ever happen, so each year I would fantasize about walking into the auditions at the beginning of the year and causing an upset when I stole the leading part from the skinny girls who didn’t even see me as competition.

Every summer, I thwarted my own get skinny scheme one way or another. At that age, I didn’t understand the importance of exercise and starving myself while being on summer break was a plan that was destined to fail.

Oddly enough, I did lose a lot of weight in high school but it was accidentally and during the school year. I drove myself to the gym every day after school because it was the one place I could go without asking my parents permission. I did that every single day for nine months and lost 50 pounds. I didn’t even know I’d lost weight until a teacher complimented me on it.

Obviously my life experiences have shown me that the fantasy of losing a substantial amount of weight while on vacation is pretty ridiculous, but in the spirit of weight loss shows and teenage make-over movies, somehow I can’t stop hoping that one day I’ll pull it off. The better goal is to focus on maintaining my weight in the land of Mexican food and In-N-Out burgers… and with that- I’m off to the gym!

Did any of YOU have back-to-school weight loss fantasies growing up?