My flight left the airport at a little after 2:30 Pacific time, and I didn't land in the taxi-strewn, pulsating, outrageously interesting streets of Manhattan until close to midnight Eastern.
I was starving and bleary, and my hotel room smelled like cigarette smoke and illicit sex and I put my luggage gingerly on the desk and went back down to the lobby, glancing at the clock in the tired lobby. Well, it was only 9 in Vancouver. I could still have dinner.
I asked the Concierge if there was a restaurant nearby where I might get a salad and he looked at me dubiously and said there was a 24-hour-deli across the street. It wasn't quite what I was thinking, but oh my god. My mouth started watering the minute I stood in the door: sandwiches, piles of them. Thinly sliced corn beef and crusty paninis, fresh havarti and vegetables and a grill to press all the deliciousness together. There was fruit in the deli case too, some nice looking pineapple and melon, and a caesar salad that I could eat without the dressing, but dear lord I wanted a sandwich.
I ordered a chicken parmesan sandwich with melted mozza cheese on a hot crusty baguette. It tasted so good I thought I might cry. I hadn't eaten bread in more than a month. I hadn't eaten cheese, except for once, in several months. And a breaded chicken breast? I think I may have only ever had once or twice in my life.
Tomato sauce dribbled down my face and cheese burned the roof of my mouth and I full intended to save the second piece of sandwich but my willpower ditched me and went staggering down the street, in frantic search of a bagel with cream cheese. Iinhaled the rest of the sandwich before I crossed the street back to the hotel.
I didn't feel guilty when I entered my room and gingerly turned down the covers. I deserved a damned sandwich. What I maybe could have done without was the Italian Feast of Disaster I ate with my work colleagues the next night.
I had vague intentions of sticking to my Paleo guns while in New York, and really, it's a city where at every corner you can find whatever you want to eat. I could have done it. But I didn't. At our company dinner I gleefully ingested:
- White cheddar mushroom penne with some kind of Sauce From the Gods
- Spaghetti and Meatballs
- Bread and Butter (x2)
- Parmesan cheese and prosciutto, too much to count.
- Lasagne (so amazing it actually melted in my mouth)
- Chicken breasts with tomato sauce
- broccolu and pasta
- Italian Cheesecake
- some kind of Holy Shit Awesome finger sandwich filled with cream and chocolate
- Three glasses of wine
I am sure the meal I ate was well over 3000 calories. And then I went out with our awesome sales planner and had another glass of wine.
I staggered toward the hotel so full it hurt and I think my distended belly and food disorientation is what led to me getting lost in Times Square. A man dressed as a reptile showed me and my belly the way home.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt like I'd been hit in the head with a cactus. Also: I missed my 7am flight. I blamed the meatballs, and maybe the wine.
Then: I contemplated eating grease and fat all day again, to somehow combat the fat and grease that was struggling in my belly.
But I couldn't believe how crappy I felt. I couldn't believe that one night of eating too much salt and meat and sugar and grain could turn my stomach into a battlefield. A convex one.
I hopped back on the Paleo bandwagon after I secured a new flight. I picked up some fruit at Starbucks, ate vegetables at my connection stop in Calgary, and then waited till I got home in Vancouver to eat lunch: Corey cooked a buffalo meat curry that tasted delicious and my body sighed in relief.
I think it's sometimes easy to say "screw it" when you screw up on a diet choice you've made. I think an all-out cheat is good and very normal once in a while, and I know I'll do it again.
Things I Need to Remember for Next Time. Because Next Time will happen at some point:
1. Hop back on the bandwagon right away. Never think in terms of "I already ate that so I may as well just eat this." I did battle with this line of thought. But - it doesn't work that way. Every bit helps.
2. Pick up a fitness magazine or go pop over to bodyrocktv.com and gaze at that chick's abs when you feel like eating cake. I bought a Woman's Health magazine on the way home from New York and by the end of the Jillian Michaels article my steel food resolve was back in place.
3. After a disastrous eating day, eat delicious, legal foods. I ate an amazing roast chicken and steamed veggies for dinner last night - it was every bit as good as that cheesy Italian pasta that made me feel like walking death.
4. Don't be so hard on my damned self. There is no harm - as many of you have said - in a bit of cheesecake every now and then.
Subscribe