On the road

Almost 3 weeks since I’ve turned left on the Health Journey Boulevard. I knew a slowdown period was coming this week; we had to go back home to Canada from our winter spot in the sun called Florida. It’s a 2400 KM (1500 Miles) and a 3 days drive.

Three days when you are at the mercy of those pit stops where French fries are cheering you to pick them up. They say they will be quiet just hang around your over-sized love handles, “Pick me pick me” they are crying their little potatoes’ eyes out… I HATE YOU or is it I ate you.

I knew temptations would not stay in my blind spot. It would keep showing up. I would have to be careful and keep McDonald in my rear view mirror if I wanted to move ahead in my planned route.

Sometimes you just have to look and you will find there are signs out there to remind you of your destination. I don’t know how many times I saw truck scales weigh stations where trucks had to pull over to get weighed, when the trucks are overweight they get ticketed. What is good for the trucking business must be good for me too, I don’t want to be overweight!

But seriously, this time I was apprehensive about those 3 days on the road. We used to just eat anything, anytime. We didn’t care if it was junk or not, as long as it didn’t slow us down (isn’t this the definition of fast food?). We would probably put over 5 lbs on a 3 days trip.

This time we are on the lookout. We are doing very well: the first day we had a homemade muffin (not one of those oversized store muffins) and oranges (the fruit, in case you don’t know what I’m talking about). I stopped and got a coffee at Duncan Donut, a double cream double sugar as I used to order them; didn’t order any donuts. In the last 3 weeks I have switched my coffees to non-fat milk and one small sugar. The DD coffee was not as good as I remembered it.

At around 10:00, my wife said: “How about we stop at a Wal-Mart around noon and get some exercise walking the store?” When we travel we go from point A to point B in the fastest way possible. We don’t stop for a walk in a shopping center…well, apparently we do now! So to Wal-Mart we went and every time we walk by one of the camera I couldn’t help myself from smiling. I could visualize a nervous security guard wondering “what are those two up to? They’re not even pushing a cart and they sure look like they are not here to buy anything”.

For lunch, we stopped at Chick-fil-a. We ordered one combo meal, which is a small French fries, a chicken sandwich and a pop. And we ordered one more sandwich, we shared a pop and the fries and didn’t even eat them all.

Around supper time we were in Charlotte and there happened to be a shopping mall across from the hotel so we decided to go and walk there too. Hopefully the security guard at Wal-mart didn’t put us on a no walking list! When we were done we stopped at the food court. My wife had a Philly Steak sandwich which was only packed with steak and a ton of vegetables. I ordered a spinach and mozzarella Stromboli. I thought it tasted like grass but It was filling. I ate two third of it.

Yesterday we had breakfast at the hotel. There were waffles, eggs, bacon, sausages. I can’t tell you how they taste we had none of this. Just an order of toast, yogurt and fruits.

For lunch we ended up at Five Guys. We each had a little hamburger (no cheese, no bacon), 1 order of fries. If you’ve ever been to a Five Guys you know they are really generous with the fries. We ate just a few, everything else went to fill up the garbage bag.

Supper was at an Italian restaurant, we both couldn’t finish our plates. I had some pasta with tomato sauce and real tomatoes… just yummy and healthy. There was a basket of garlic bread, we each took one and I can proudly say that I only ate half of mine but the thing is, before, we both would have empty the content of the basket and today the basket went back half full!

Remember yesterday I wrote to eat less… I am surprised to say that even on the road we achieved this, it was not perfect but it was manageable and we ate a lot less than we used to. Great job if I say so myself!