This past weekend The BF and I took a little family vacation to visit my grandmother in Florida for her 90th birthday party. He wore a suit, I wore high heels, and we even bought him a polo with a little palm tree logo on the pocket–how fancy are we?
We stayed in a little guest house with 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, but no kitchen. Also, the little barrier island neighborhood that my grandmother lives on has several restaurants and a deli, but no grocery store. Needless to say, there was very little opportunity for us to do anything about eating clean other than try to weed out our best options among menus full of cream sauces and puff pastries.
The first day we fared pretty well, picking the pile of salmon out of my smoked salmon sandwich and ordering shrimp cocktail and broiled fish for dinner. The next day I had some fruit for breakfast and a big salad for lunch, so still did pretty well, but dinner was another story. At my grandmother’s birthday party, everything they served was absolutely delicious, but absolutely covered in either rich sauces, butter, or frosting. After we left the party we tried to walk down to the beach to let our food settle, but my head was throbbing and my stomach was gurgling so badly that I barely wanted to stand, let alone stroll. And it’s a good thing I had a flowy dress on, because my stomach was distended at least 2 or 3 inches.
I felt terrible, but it made me wonder, is this how I used to feel all the time? Before taking grains out of my diet and finally getting rid of dairy after knowing I’d had a lactose intolerance since high school? Before cutting out gratuitous amounts of processed sugar like I had just devoured in the form of peach sorbet and a giant cupcake? Sure, it is my decision to eat those things, but I’d like to see anyone turn down birthday cake while sitting next to their grandmother at her 90th birthday party! I have these little epiphanies every once in a while when I get to a point where I tell myself that my diet isn’t really serving me and I should just go back to eating whatever I want. And then I do go back, whether on purpose or because I’m out of options like this weekend, and I end up feeling miserable. It’s weekends like this when I realize that it’s total bull when people say they eat crap because “Life is short” and they “want to enjoy it” by eating whatever they want. The types of people who use that as an excuse may not know any better, but I know firsthand that you aren’t able to enjoy much of anything when you’re full of air and inflammation, your head throbbing and gut aching.
So this week I am back on zone. However, with my second body fat test coming up in a few weeks, I am starting to focus on trying to cut bring my body fat percentage down a little, which means that I will be incorporating far fewer fruits and sweet potatoes into my day (as opposed to having one or the other at every meal, like I have been doing). Right now everyone else at our gym is on the 21-Day Sugar Detox and I am hearing a lot of mixed results–many people are saying that they’ve never felt better and are amazed by how much energy they have, but others seem to be borderline homocidal. I’m intrigued, but not quite ready to go full-on sugar-less while I still have at least 4 weeks of zone eating left to do.
