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By Drew Newbold aka TubbyHubby340 This is your captain speaking. This blog will be cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet. Skies are sunny, and we should be reaching our destination right on schedule. Once the seat belt signs are off, please feel free to move about the cabin and the flight attendants will be coming by to get your drink orders soon. So sit back, relax, have a pleasant read, and thank you for flying with the dailySpark. Ahhhh, travel. Some people prefer planes, others trains; the wife and I just love a good road trip. No matter what your preferred mode of transit, great trips start with two simple steps I like to refer to as the yin and yang of travel. Planning and packing. How well you plan and what you pack, can make the difference between time well spent or a hellish nightmare. The kind of nightmare that would make any sane person give up on the idea of travel all together. Planning may have the most impact on the success or failure of a trip, but packing the right things is crucial. Flip flops and a two piece will not bode well in the bone-chilling weather of the Alaskan Wilderness. Conversely, a fur-lined parka and snowshoes may be a tad out of place on the big island of Hawaii. Taking the right things is really a no brainer as long as common sense is employed. It’s the things you don't take with you that sometimes make the difference between a great trip and one that’s hindered by superfluous baggage. Here’s an example. When backpacking in the Himalayas, the bare essentials are all you need. After all, you have to carry your life around on your back for the next week or so. Your Starbucks home edition espresso machine and your laptop aren’t gonna fly with the local Sherpas. Creature comforts are the first to go. I think it’s funny that all those things you rely on to make life easier at home, can make it that much harder to get to where you’re going when you travel. When I recently embarked on a journey, and I had to leave behind several things to make sure that it was a successful one. When I started this road trip to health a couple months ago, there were things about it that I had to accept right out of the gate. I realized that the journey I was making would be about as easy as the Donner Party crossing the Sierras. My will would be tested and hunger would most likely be inevitable at certain points along the way. There was no room on my proverbial pack mule for all the comforting excuses and rationalizations I usually had along for the ride. This wasn’t gonna be a leisurely coastal drive with four star hotels and valet parking. This was the fast and furious, pee-in-a-bottle-cause-we-ain’t-gonna stop kind of a road trip. The planning part was easy. SparkPeople.com is like AAA when it comes to these kinds of trips. I told them where I wanted to go and they helped me figure out how long it would take and the best way to get there. They armed me with an arsenal of maps and travel guides that gave me stuff to check out along the way. All the fluids were checked and I made sure things were mechanically sound. That part was easy for sure. It was my careless packing that almost took me out of the race for the umpteenth time. The things I would need to take with me were all pretty straightforward: Better eating habits, a positive outlook, some serious determination, consistent regular exercise and brutally realistic expectations. The stuff I didn't need to take wasn’t even on my radar. Anxious to get going, I just tore through my closet and threw some stuff in a duffle bag, not noticing the skeletons that decided to ride shotgun. As I started to ease on down the road, things went pretty smoothly. But the first hill I encountered proved to be a beast. It wreaked havoc on my mental gas mileage and almost caused my intestinal fortitude to seize up on me. During past trips I would just ignore it and push forward, not wanting to deal. A dangerous line of thinking. This time I knew I had to stop and find out what was causing the problem. Digging through the trunk, I was amazed at what had been blindly packed in the bowels of my baggage. The time I had to ask for a seat belt extension on a plane to Chicago was in there. The entire cheesecake I ate just because I was bored. The stress of never being good enough was omnipresent. The incessant need to please others and neglecting my own happiness, neatly tucked under a stack of underwear. My childhood struggles of going without, and the subsequent binge eating that would occur when I did have it, popped up in some pocket I never knew existed. And that was just the duffel bag! In my shaving kit, I found all sorts of excuses I had used to sabotage previous trips. I usually pulled those out when I felt like things weren't going according to plan. "I am just a big guy." "It must be genetic." "My knees are bad." "I just need to accept who I am." "I am too heavy to do this thing right." "I am not losing it fast enough." "We don't have the time or money to do this." “It’s all or nothing. If it isn’t perfect what’s the point!” The rationalizations and excuses I used my crutch and my comfort, sounded like whiney backseat brats on the way to Grandma's, riding their parents' last nerve. I honestly don’t know how that all fit in such a small space. Kicking my ballast to the curb that day has made all the difference in my success this time around. My trip is far from over, but I know that I will have enough gas to make it to the end finally. Sure there will be times along the way where the skies get gray and start to rain on my wonderful parade, and that’s OK. It’s still better than being a passenger on the couch as life passes by outside the window. I’m in the driver’s seat now, and it feels good!  Drew (aka TubbyHubby340) joined SparkPeople in September 2009 and has become obsessed with blogging despite no experience with it. A graphic designer, he has really taken a liking to writing and, based on the positive response, may consider a career change in the near future. Drew hails from Northern California, where he has been married to his high school sweetheart Erin (aka SweetErina71) for 20 years. They have two very creative and hard-headed children, Taylor, 20, and Abbey Road, 17. When Drew is not blogging or at the gym, he is a bass player and vocalist in a Dirty Punk Blues band in his hometown. Along with being a movie and art nut, he has a passion for music, pop culture and trivia. What excess baggage have you shed during your journey to a healthier you? |
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