The out-of-town body
Had dinner with Adrienne of What Adrienne Thinks About That tonight–I know! She’s real! Not just a blog. And what a lovely person she is in every respect.
Anyway, as she was recounting her bad food choices for the past day in Chicago, and I was talking about all of mine while I’ve been traveling lately–lunch of only chocolate chip muffins, for example, because that’s what the librarian gave me at my school visit, and boy, was I grateful for them–I had to tell her my realization that I pretend I have a special out-of-town body that can eat whatever it wants and never feel the effects. I think that somehow I can get by for days on nothing but airport frozen yogurt and huge restaurant meals and way more sugar than normal and junk food galore.
Then we started talking about how it is on car trips–how you feel like you’ve been doing something all day, even if it’s just sitting in a car, and so clearly it’s time for a break and that means Dairy Queen. Then eventually you have that feeling like you’re veal, kept in your little box and fed massive amounts to fatten you up in a short period of time.
I told you how impressed I was when I talked to that author a few months ago about his road trip routine of only eating healthy food from Whole Foods. He does a whole Mapquest/Google Earth thing of plotting where all the Whole Foods are along his route, and scheduling his day around that.
I told Adrienne that, and she deadpanned, “Oh. Right Discipline.” And we both said at practically the same time, “Never mind.”
I mean, come on. It sounds so smart and good, but am I really willing to hold out for health food that’s somewhere far away from my hotel, when there’s an IHOP just across the street? A better person would say yes.
Does anyone else have this fantasy existence when you’re away from home? Like you can stay up until all hours (it’s already 11:30 here), not really exercise, eat whatever crap takes your fancy? Then you roll home all sluggish and puffy, blaming it on the travel. Ha.
Tomorrow morning I should find oatmeal and a banana somewhere. I should walk down to the Starbucks (which I will, but not necessarily for the exercise). I should find a little grocery store with happy fruit and yogurt and whole grains. I should eat the things I normally eat, do a little yoga in the room, walk as much as I normally do, etc.
But instead I’m looking forward to pizza night with whomever is in town tomorrow night, and I’m thinking I might want to try that Ghiradelli chocolate milkshake Adrienne was telling me she had in downtown Chicago today, and this is why my pants aren’t fitting me quite as nicely as they were about a month ago before I started going away from home so much.
So tell me: do you have an out-of-town body, too?
Technorati Tags: Travel, Eating While Traveling, What Adrienne Thinks About That, 1st Annual Kidlitosphere Conference, Kidlit Conference, Kidlitosphere Conference
(Guys, Robin’s real, too. Just in case you were wondering.)
I celebrated the realization of all that is wrong with my attitude toward eating while traveling by coming back to my room and eating a late-night snack of dark chocolate peanut M&Ms (telling myself, of course, that I *must* have burned an awful lot of calories with all that walking I did around the city today–I fool myself with that one A LOT).
I rarely go out of town or eat out.
Adrienne rocks!
I thought it was a scientific fact that calories consumed while on vacation don’t count?
I would say that 4 out of 5 times traveling, I actually lose weight. I lost weight going to a food festival — in Ireland.
I think because when I’m home, I spend a lot of time sitting at the computer, but when we’re traveling, we do a lot of walking.
You mean the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop right next to Borders on North Michigan Ave and across the street from the Hersheys chocolate store. Never been there.
Isn’t eating part of the fun of traveling? Why stop yourself from trying new foods that you may never get the chance to try again?
I took Robin’s thoughts about the oatmeal to heart and stopped at this place called Feast (http://feastrestaurant.com/) around noon and got a cup of coffee and oatmeal pancakes topped with cinnamon, apples, something wonderful called vanilla honey butter, and a dusting of powdered sugar. I highly recommend this endeavor.
Hey! I always feel like veal, too, during and after a long car trip. I’ve got to admit something here: when we get off the highway to look for food, I’m always on the lookout for the independent restaurant in the hopes that there will be actual REAL vegetables on the menu. Still, I make special exceptions for pie on vacation.
Yes Oatmeal or whole wheat pancakes absolutely cancels syrup and\or powdered sugar.
Shai – IHOPs are very rare and hard to come by.
Alkelda – I highly recommend riding IN the car as opposed to strapped to the hood.
Vacations usually mean eating out, which then means eating way more food than I usually do. When I went to Scotland I ate well because I had to. I had been sick and lost a lot of wait a couple of weeks before I went. Everyone there made doubly sure that I ate enough. Since then, I’ve kept a fairly steady weight. The only food I wouldn’t try there was haggis. Nasty!
Certainly we have an out-of-town body! What fun is vacation if you have to continue restricting your body’s natural desires for delicious food? Of course, the food I consider most delicious isn’t exactly the healthiest. Still, I try to balance the indulgences with lots of walking and sightseeing. Adrienne, I’m glad you really are real, and Robin too. And those pancakes sound divine.
Welcome to my little sis, by the way! Good to see that you wised up and decided to discover for yourself how awesome this community is. (FYI everyone, Katie is studying library science and hopes to be a librarian in the near future! And like all of us, she’s an avid reader.)
I’m not real.
Patrick, I don’t think any of us ever dared to dream that it might be possible.
Hmmm… A Space Lord. You could have more than one body. Who can tell?