Hi friends!! I am just getting back from a week at Disney World. My kids and I have never been there (my hubby went when he was 10 years old), so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Well, I take that back. I had a pretty good idea of what to expect thanks to pinterest and many of my friends who have visited! If you’ve gone, you know the amount of planning that is needed ahead of time with the fast passes, park schedule, restaurant reservations, and packing! Ahh!! It was enough to make this Type A personality go a little crazy. 🙂 We went with my in-laws (father, mother, sister, brother) and 2 nephews!

I had many people ask me what I thought about it and honestly, it was hard to answer in just one word. It was fun, busy, exhausting, hot, and entertaining all at the same time. Can’t say I have that with every vacation! I won’t bore you with all my pics so I’ll sprinkle a few highlights! (If you follow me on instagram, you have seen a couple of these pics already!)

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This was Lila’s first flight and Sam’s second, (although he was only 6 months old on his first one)! They really enjoyed it and Sam couldn’t wait to put his iPod on “airplane mode”. So cute!

Dinner at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre!

“Meet and Greet” breakfast at “Tusker House”!

We had lots of “meet and greets” with princesses! Side note: Being the mom of a princess lover was a lot of work at Disney! 🙂

I believe my caption on instagram was, “If I’m gonna lose my mind, I might as well wear Minnie ears while doing it!” 

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Some of you asked if I kept up with my healthy eating for the trip.  3 words. DISNEY. DINING. PLAN. That should answer it for you! ha! If you’ve been to Disney and have used the dining plan, you know how much (and what kind) of food this entailed. So going into this trip, I had to make a decision–was I going to try and keep a pretty tight grip on my eating, indulge, or fall somewhere in between. Answer? I gave myself permission to relax (Did I just say that in reference to Disney? ha!) in regards to exercise and eating! So the truth is, I kept healthy by giving myself a break! Out of 52 weeks a year, 1 week wasn’t going to set me back much and I didn’t want to mess with trying to fit in an additional workout (because walking 10 miles pushing a stroller in 95 degrees wasn’t enough?!) or eating “clean” the whole trip.

Now, because the weather was SO hot, I actually didn’t have much of an appetite. (I also think because I wasn’t lifting weights, my metabolism sort of adjusted and wasn’t firing away like usual. I actually think this was a blessing b/c if my appetite was what it typically was at home–goodness–I would have made some worse eating decisions! ha!) So truthfully, I didn’t eat that terrible, except for the fact that there was some sort of dessert I had at every meal. Hey, who could blame me! 🙂

Lila and I doing what we do best—eat. 🙂

BUT, just because I wasn’t striving to keep 100% on my game didn’t mean I was way off base or that I wasn’t taking notes!  Here are some tips I have for you–some which are more specific to Disney, while others will work no matter where you vacation!

1) Get your mind right.

Decide before you go on the trip what sort of standards or guidelines you may have. Figure out if it’s a trip here you want to keep things tight, or indulge a little or a lot. I believe that it all starts here.

2.) When you can hit to first base do it.

If you aren’t sure what I mean, you can check out this post, but in essence, when you can make the smart choice, make one. Part of the Disney Dining Plan (DDP) was quick service options. There were a couple times when I was dying to have a cheeseburger. (I love myself a cheeseburger!) but knowing that later that night, I was going to a nice dinner, which would inevitably have desserts, bread etc, I chose a salad, or chicken, eggs etc.

3.) “Either/or” some things.

Because each meal contained dessert, I made a choice–either breads or desserts. And I bet you can guess which I chose.

 This was just 1 of 4 desserts we had at dinner that night! 

4.) Play splitzies

For lunch one day, my hubby ordered a BBQ chicken flatbread pizza and I got a big salad. We split each of ours up which gave us nice diversity and didn’t overload us too much on one thing.

5.) Make good use of the sides you get.

My kids got lots of those individual bagged carrots and grapes with their meals. I usually had them eat at least one of those bags, but since we had 2 kids, that meant we had some leftover. (Or if they also had yogurt as an option, I had them eat the yogurt while it was cold and save the bagged stuff) We put them in our baggie and either nibbled on them later in the day or took them back to the resort and placed in our fridge for breakfast the next morning. It worked out great!

6.) Keep an eye on the clock.

“But Clare, that’s not what you do at vacation! Keep your eyes AWAY from the clock!” OK, OK, I get it, BUT this did serve its purpose on my trip. Because of the DDP, we had at least one food reservation a day, so that gave us some anchor as to how we could split up our eating for the day. I knew that I wanted to fully enjoy my sit down meals so I wanted to get in there with a hungry tummy. Keeping my eye on the clock helped me know if I could push through one more hour of just drinking water, or if I needed to have a snack so I didn’t faint!

7) Pack your stevia (or sweetener of choice).

So here’s the other thing that can kill ya at the park. We got these free refillable mugs that could be used at our resort at any time. You could fill it with any type of pop, coffee, tea, etc for free.I’m not a big pop drinker, so it isn’t tempting to just chug coke all day, but for some of you, it might be. I drank a lot of unsweet iced tea, but needed to jazz it up, so I used my liquid vanilla stevia. It was perfect!

8) Grab a cup of ice any time you see a line that isn’t that long

Ice saved the day for us. It was so hot down there and the bottles of water we would pack got hot so quickly (and I forgot to bring my soft cooler. Oops) so grabbing a cup of ice or ice water was so important. Most spots at the parks have them and they are free! The ice was multi-functional because we would unknowingly slip them down each other’s shirts so then they’d hop up and scream for a second. It’s how we kept entertained. Ok–maybe it was how I kept entertained. 🙂 (See pic below. I actually maybe poured water down me at that point!)

Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. And I am totally rocking the “mom at an amusement park” look!

9) Move, push, swim, when you can.

So, a total no -brainer that you are going to walk your butt off while you are there. And actually, I was so thankful that I was in good shape because I had zero soreness, my feet and legs weren’t that tired, and beyond the heat, I really didn’t feel physically tired. We chose to get a stroller for my 5 year old (don’t regret that one bit!) so we all took turns pushing it. It was good to have that extra movement with my arms and when I could, I found myself jogging a bit with the stroller. (Sometimes that jog came out of necessity like when you are running late for the Princess Meet and Greet at the Akershus house. Ahhh!) I also got in the pool and swam just a bit with the kids. Typically I never get in the pool or get my hair wet (that’s like mom code, right?) but I got in there and treaded water, moved around a bit and played with kids. I thought any extra movement would be good for me.  I did pack my exercise band and did 10 minutes of pilates one day but that was it as far as any additional exercise.

See? My hair got wet!

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Downtown Disney!

This week has been interesting getting back in the swing of things in regards to exercise. I feel like my body has been whooped earlier than usual, so I’m taking it all in stride, doing my best but not getting discouraged. Remember, it’s all about mindset! I’m also cleaning up some eating habits so there’s been a little bit of retraining all around this week but it’s all good! I have no regrets from my Disney trip!

If you’ve been to Disney before, what would you add for healthy tips?