Today is the first day of our two-week vacation to New England. The real challenges for us will be the following:

• Eating healthy: temptation will be strong with lots of non-Paleo foods.
• Exercise: I need a gym with free weights, and I’m going to have to find some to drop in at.
• Alcohol consumption: it’s fall, which means it’s apple season, and we will be visiting many cideries.

On vacation, Sherry and I tend to relax our rules a bit on what we eat, so we’ve decided that when we go off the diet, we will be sharing portions to mitigate the damage and the calories. It’s a good plan; we’ll see how it works out.

As for exercise, normally I can run, but with the Achilles heel injury, I’m stuck doing weights. That’s been fine at home where I have my own gym, but now that I’m traveling, I will need to find a gym to workout in. In the cities it shouldn’t be too difficult. I might even be able to get form checks on my exercises which is a plus. I hope to get a t-shirt from every gym I visit.

Alcohol consumption will likely be the toughest to tackle. We enjoy cider, and we enjoy drinking while on vacation to relax and to experience different flavors in the different parts of the world. We’ll try to keep it reasonable, but sometimes, drinks taste too good to not imbibe.

We will be visiting relatives and then going off on our own to see the fall colors and explore Montreal and Quebec City in Canada and then Portland, ME and hopefully some lighthouses. I brought my drone with me to get some aerial photos and video (but not in Canada where it’s illegal for me to fly without a Canadian license).

I’ll be posting my experiences while on my vacation with diet and exercise and my ability to channel as much willpower as possible. It will be a trying time, but I refuse to partake in regional foods. If I gain a little weight, it’s okay; I can lose it later. But I do plan on being as smart as I can about it.