Looking back at last week I can definetley tell you that I got what I deserved.
Instead of taking my own advice, I rationalized my way into doing something very, very foolish.
I spent this week traveling. Not normal ‘business-style’ travel, but a very rare family trip to visit my little brother (he’s two inches taller then me, but I’m older so he’s still ‘little brother’).
This trip included my parents, my wife and my little girl. Since I was traveling with a larger group than I am used to, I somehow concluded that it would be easier for me NOT to fast during my trip.
I can’t exactly recall my reasoning, but it was good enough to somehow self-talk myself into dong something I knew I would regret.
I have always been an advocate of planning my fasts around my flight times. By doing this I avoid paying for overpriced junk food while waiting for my flight, then paying for overpriced processed food on the plane.
But for some reason, for this trip I decided to ignore my own advice.
Bad idea.
My 5:30 PM flight was delayed until 7:30 PM. To make matters worse, we arrived at the airport way ahead of schedule, figuring we would need some extra time since we were traveling with an 11 month old baby.
After an hour of sitting around my gate, it began.
I walked down to Starbucks and ordered a tall Americano and a slice of Banana Loaf.
(MISTAKE NUMBER ONE- One slice of banana loaf from Starbucks contains over 420 Calories. Add in the Americano with a little bit of cream and that was a 500 Calories “snack”).
After my coffee break I strolled my daughter around the terminal, doing several laps as she pointed with delight at every other baby in the airport.
When I returned to my gate I found that my father and my wife had bought some Twizzlers Licorice.
This really bothered me.
I have had tremendous success maintaining a fairly lean body by using a simple combination of eating sensibly and fasting once or twice a week.
My wife on the other hand, has lost all her baby weight and is now ten pounds lighter then she was before she became pregnant. She accomplished this through a combination of fasting once or twice a week and sensible eating. Only for her sensible eating includes twizzlers, dairy queen Blizzards and chocolate.
To say I am a little envious of her ability to eat anything she wants and still lose weight while fasting would be a gross understatement.
So, after watching my father and my wife split a bag of twizzlers, I tried to ignore sweet tooth by playing “airplane” with my daughter, but after about 15 minutes, I cracked and went to the store and bought a small bag of very over priced cashews.
(MISTAKE NUMBER 2 – While considered ‘healthy’ nuts are another hidden calorie bomb. The three ounces I ate contained another 500 calories)
At 7 PM, protein guilt started to kick in.
What’s ‘protein guilt’ you ask?
Protein guilt is the term I coined for when you convince yourself you need to eat some food because you have not eaten enough protein that day.
It is an Obsessive Compuslive Eating habit that I should have been able to identify as soon as it happened, but for whatever reason, on this particular day I fell for this little OCE mind game. A large Chocolate Milk was my protein fix.
(MISTAKE NUMBER 3 – Chocolate milk doesn’t contain any more protein than normal milk. What it does have is over 200 more Calories. Plus, considering my breakfast, plus the cashews I easily had eaten around 70 grams of protein already that day so I definitely did not need the extra milk)
So, by the end of the day, I let the Airport rob me of 15 dollars, and let some poor nutrition choices add 1300 Calories to my daily intake during a 4 hour stay at the airport.
lesson learned. When you are in high traffic areas where the food choices are limited and the food marketing is severe, pack your own food, avoid protein guilt and foods with high calorie contents, or best case scenario, fast during your trips.
BP
PS- I think the airport is a perfect example of why Eat Stop Eat works so well. The idea of simply flipping the switch to “off” makes resisting temptation a lot easier then lowering the amount of food you eat. It makes the decision making process incredibly simple.
PPS- Craig Ballantyne is starting his second Turbulence Training Transformation Contest very soon, and I’m proud to say his first ever winner used Eat Stop Eat as part of her winning plan. You can read her story HERE
