Traveling....

....is hard. It's hard for several reasons. It's hard on my body, physically. I don't travel well. It's hard on my stomach. And finally, it's hard on my mind. But it's been getting better.

Let me explain a little bit more.

1). Traveling is hard on my body.

My body is stable within pretty narrow conditions. Changing climate, altitude, pressure, temperature, food type or daily activity typically causes any combination of the following: nausea, headaches, sinus pressure, exhaustion, allergies, grouchiness (this counts, right?) aka. mood swings, and decreased appetite.

I am Figure 2.

Often times, when I would return home from college for a break I would get sick almost immediately at home, or if it were a weekend visit, upon my return to school. Even though it was a mere 4-5 hours between college and home, it was still a bit too much for my immune system.

Car trips seem especially hard, although long flights are also difficult. Emmy, my pup, feels the same way. While our other two dogs tend to fall asleep on long car trips, Emmy gets wary/anxious and will stay awake. Although I don't always stay awake, I share her wariness and anxiety.

Freya, unlike me, is particularly happy in cars.

Food on long car trips:

Because of my inability to stabilize my body during long trips, I tend to try not to eat too much before or during the trip. My stomach doesn't do well anyways in the car (unless I'm sleeping), so I try not to make it worse when I'm driving.

Sometimes I will bring crackers or a Quest bar if it's a particularly long trip, but often times Ryan and I will just wait to eat until we arrive at our destination.


2). Traveling is hard on my stomach

I stated this in the last section where by "traveling" I meant the act of traveling (the actual driving/flying etc), but traveling in the generic sense of "staying somewhere else" is also very hard on my stomach. As you know by now, I'm a creature of habit. I like eating similar food, although I have a good repertoire, but traveling often puts a wrench in that.

When you go to someone's house as a guest, you are socially expected to eat whatever they prepare. There is the assumption that they, being the gracious host/hostess, have prepared a meal for you, in a polite gesture back to them, you eat what they serve. This is typical of most cultures -- not just ours.

I have the good fortune of visiting family that makes sure that they have at least some things prepared that I will eat. Because I don't eat any red meat or fish this often means they make some sort of chicken.

Some of the delicious, yet different, food I had this weekend.

Regardless, however, of their consideration, often the food is very different from the food I normally eat. As you may suspect, this tends to leave me feeling quite sick, even though what I consume at the time is delicious.

This is nobody's fault of course, except maybe mine for not trying tons of different food. I like what I like and stick to foods that don't affect my body in negative ways -- but when offered food that I know someone has gone out of their way to prepare for me, it's quite hard to explain that even though it may be in the same food group as food I tend to eat, it will still leave me feeling sick, simply because of how differently it is prepared.

3). Traveling is hard on my mind.

This has to do with the ED side of my mind more than anything else. I don't know how many calories I'm eating. I do know that it's a lot more and that I'm not exercising enough. I don't have the safety of my routine. So my head likes to worry. How many days can I do this before I start gaining weight? How much is polite to eat but not so much that I have to spend the next week making up for it?

These questions are a lot easier now than they used to be. I used to never want to travel for fear I couldn't know exactly what was in my food and how many calories I consumed. It's getting better...slowly. But that doesn't mean its not still a battle. It may always be one. But at least I feel like I'm winning now :-).

Summer foods make me happy.

Ahh. It's been a while since I posted. I will slowly try to catch up on some of the stuff that's been going on. Let's just start with the main things:

1). My back is "healing" (I think/hope) nicely. 

Basically I have been staying away from A LOT of exercises. I mentioned in a previous post that I basically stopped Back Day. I mostly work my shoulders & lats on back day instead. I have stopped a lot of leg day. However in the past two weeks I have started incorporating squats back into my routine. Today I hit 135x4 which was hard and humbling. Working my way back up.

I have been doing one Chest & Arm workout, one Arm Only workout, and then one combined Shoulders/Lats/Legs Workout a week. So 3 lift/total workouts a week instead of 4. I walk the dogs 1-2 miles every non-workout day instead and sometimes try to run if I'm not going to lift.

All in all, it has been helping a lot. The other thing that helps is that I've been traveling for the past two weekend (not including this one). Even though the car makes my back pretty sore, the lack of workouts or long time at the shelter has probably factored into the recovery some.

2). Eating hasn't been as healthy.

I attribute this to several reasons. Amoung them is that every day I have to fight that feeling of "Well I'm not working out a lot so I don't need as much protein. May as well have ice cream instead." I have eaten a lot of ice cream in the past month or two.

Traveling makes it a lot harder to control portion sizes (except by eye) and makes food choices less available. It's not that I absolutely couldn't eat the same way, but its a lot easier to eat what everyone else is eating and just try to eat a bit less. This is what I've been trying to do. But it still makes for several meals that aren't quite as healthy.

We've also recently added a third baby (puppy) to our pack. She's grown into a very loved family member, but the past month and a half have taken a lot of work getting all of us there. I haven't been at work as long because I've had to come home earlier for her. This cuts down on workout time some and definitely takes away some energy.

The above excuses are all things I'm working on now. I'm trying to eat more healthily regardless of how much working out or traveling I do. But it's tough for sure. I think it has just gotten the best of me recently.

3). But my love of summer foods will help fix number 2!

Summer is actually one of my favourite seasons in which to eat. A few of my favourite things recently are:

a). Strawberries. I pretty much have these in the fridge every week. They make the perfect snack to eat when I get home and I want to last another hour until dinnertime. They are so perfect now, and not to mention almost always on sale!

Delicious!!!

b). Salads. I love them. They are pretty and filling and delicious! Back when I had more serious issues with counting calories, I would use salads as a way to fill up without having a lot of calories. Basically I wouldn't use a lot of cheese, no dressing at all, ever(!), and definitely no nuts or seeds or anything that would add more calories. Basically I just had lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and chicken. Nowadays I'm loving lite honey mustard. Tonight's salad had Romaine hearts, a variety of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries (they're perfect in salads too!), crumbled feta, grilled chicken and lite honey mustard dressing. And it was delicious. I usually make enough to get 2-3 salads out as well :-)

Dinner tonight & Lunch tomorrow :-)

c). Grilled chicken & grilled veggies. I love food on the grill! Ryan is such a good griller. Although it's been raining the past couple weeks, we usually grill out at least one a week. I typically have marinated chicken or turkey burgers. He usually goes for the red meat and has burgers or steak or kabobs of some sort. I love grilled zucchini and squash as well.

Healthy shopping cart!

What do you love about summer foods?