I've waded through the giant vat of mail (and e-mail), unpacked the bags, done the laundry and gone grocery shopping.

Back from vacation and back to normal eating. Nothing could be less appetizing than hearing someone say "Let's go out to eat!" There was way too much of that on the road.

The once-empty fridge is now full of lots of fruit, bags of salad, turkey breast, baby carrots, hummus and the requisite entire shelf of yogurt. We eat a lot of yogurt in our house. Hubby eats one in the morning and one at night, I'll have one or two a day and my kid will snack on one daily. So I buy a LOT of yogurt. 

MyBlogSpark wanted to know whether I'd like to try Yoplait Thick & Creamy -- turns out it's long been a staple in our house, but thanks for the free coupon and the note cards! I buy Yoplait Thick & Creamy Light because it's sweetened with Splenda, which I find tastes better than aspartame-sweetened yogurts. I'm a fan of the Key Lime and Peaches and Cream flavors, my husband doesn't really have a fave and my son likes the two new flavors -- Cinnamon Roll and Cherry Cobbler. And this stuff is stand-your-spoon-up thick, not watery like a lot of light yogurts.

Yogurt makes a good snack -- it's either fat free or low in fat, is a good source of protein and has calcium, which has been shown in some studies to help with weight loss. I usually pair my yogurt with a piece of fruit, or sometimes a sprinkling of chopped walnuts or almonds.

I'm stuck in the hotel room while my husband and son get to frolic all day. I've had this ridiculous bad cold practically the whole time we've been here and it's not getting any better. So after my second trip to urgent care this morning I sent the guys on their merry way and quarantined myself in the room.

Lunch was a can of Andersen's pea soup I picked up from the drug store where I got my Z-Pack prescription (sinus infection, too!). Dinner was going to be trickier. The hotel fridge is as small as you can get, and there's not much in it. But I managed to come up with a pretty tasty wrap made from a Mission Carb Balance tortilla (high fiber, high protein and 110 calories), 2 slices of Jarlsberg Lite cheese (100 calories and higher in calcium than other cheeses) and a small Fuji apple (around 55 calories and a couple more grams of fiber).

I sliced the apple with a plastic knife I saved from a cutlery pack from last night's baseball game. Then I put the apple on the top half of the tortilla and put the cheese over the apple. I then microwaved everything in the teeny low-power hotel room microwave for 1 minute, rolled it up and voila! Dinner.

Next time, I think I'll try a tarter apple, like a Granny Smith, but overall, it was a pretty good dinner in a pinch -- high in fiber, protein and calcium and only 265 calories.

Had brunch today at a Newport Beach fave, Charlie's Chili. We'd been there the last time we visited California and I ordered the same thing then as I did today -- the Baja Breakfast. It's a scramble of eggs, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and jalapenos and comes with  salsa, refried beans and small homemade flour or corn tortillas.

I wasn't running a marathon, so I skipped the refried beans. But when I get back home I can definitely see myself making this for brunch or lunch. I'll sub out the eggs for Egg Beaters and probably skip the tortillas -- everything else is good.

Flickr photo/Danny Sullivan

When in SoCal ...

This was lunch today -- In-N-Out combo No. 3 (burger, fries and drink). I got the sugar-free lemonade, so I saved some calories there and didn't get cheese on the burger. The burger is 390 calories and the fries are 400. You can save 80 calories by skipping the "secret sauce'' -- which I'll do next time. And ordering the sandwich "protein style'' (no bun) can also shave off 150 calories -- also a good idea if you want those fries.

This will be the big meal of the day -- dinner might be a Zone bar.

One other little trick -- I always make sure I bring a bottle of Alli with me on vacation. It's an easy way to pull some of that restaurant fat out of a meal (and no, I don't get those side effects).

This may sound crazy but I actually miss the Nutrisystem food! My day with Nutrisystem is all planned out and vacation eating can be pretty willy-nilly (and full of fat).

But I know it will be waiting for me when I get back.

I know I'm late with this post but we were flying all day.

Now that we're here, I am bound and determined not to gain weight on vacation. And I have no excuses; there are three options for fitness:

• The hotel has a modest but useful gym with strength and cardio equipment.

• There's a 24 Hour Fitness Sport gym about 2 blocks from the hotel (and I remembered my membership card).

• And I just discovered that we have Exercise TV on demand in the room!

So regardless if we're going to spend the day walking or hit some sort of gym, I fired up the TV and did a 10-minute standing abs routine with Jennifer Galardi (that's her and her abs at right). I'm calling it my insurance exercise.

I've had the flu all week, and even though I didn't exercise one lick, I still lost 4 pounds this week and have kept it off.

Perfect timing for vacation. I've already scoped out the nearest 24 Hour Fitness near the hotel (just around the corner) and I'm planning on packing the workout gear and the membership card.

My husband looks at working out as "the more I workout the more I can eat." To me it's "I'll workout so I don't gain vacation weight." Either way we'll start the day at the gym; any other trekking around town will be gravy.

I'm going to try and post while we're on vacation, I may even try blogging by phone (just in case you wonder why the posts might look weird).

I'm also packing a food journal even though I plan to journal with the mobile application from SparkPeople. But I need a backup plan. I'm also going to be checking out CalorieKing Mobile, which is a great buzzkill at restaurants. ("Do you really want to order that burger? I dunnoo....")