what i ate wednesday: meals provided

I spent the past two days at a marketing conference in Indianapolis (hence the lack of posts). It is always fun to get out of the office for a bit, but I’m happy to be back into my routine today. The food at conferences is always a little…iffy. Honestly, I should have just packed my own food and gone that direction, but the lure of free food was just too strong to pass up. It’s not even that I feel “guilty” or “bad” about eating what they provide, it’s that my body does not react well at all. By the afternoon on both days I had no energy and had a terrible headache. Food is so powerful. I just watched the documentary Forks Over Knives, and while I’m still not convinced a vegan diet is the way to go, it definitely made me consider and be aware of the massive number of animal products in my diet everyday. And yesterday’s food was no exception, especially when the free food came ’round. I need to remember this saying: free food is rarely good food.

Beyond that, I really need to watch my sugar intake. I feel like when I was doing the elimination diet, I was in a good place with sugar, but somehow it seems to have crept back into my diet with a vengeance. I’m never going to give up all sweets, but there is no reason for me to be eating processed sugar so many times in a day. Sometimes we learn things from WIAW.

Onto the (free) eats…

I don’t do coffee at 5am, but I do do a green monster! Soy milk (it was on clearance, usually I’m an almond milk girl), spinach, protein powder, chia seeds, clementines, and a few ice cubes. I love the citrus-y flavor in green monsters, but using actual citrus fruit is not the way to go. The fibers in the clementines did not blend up. Chewy=not good. I’ll stick to orange juice to add that flavor next time.

Once we got to the conference at around 9:30am, I dug into some of the free continental breakfast. Chocolate croissant, fruit and a mug of tea. I brought my own echinancea tea bag. There are lots of sick people around and I’m trying by best to keep that away.

Can you tell that what we had for lunch? It was supposed to be vegetable lasagna, but it was more like a few noodles, a few carrot pieces and 45 cups of cheese sauce. It sat in my stomach like a rock the rest of the afternoon. Plus a small amount of Caesar salad on the side (more cheese) and two yummy chocolate chip cookies.

Apple on the bus ride home from the conference around 5pm. Love apples, but I’ve found they just tend to make me hungrier unless I pair them with a food that has a little bit of fat and protein.

Once home, I whipped up a pot of Zuppa Toscana for dinner. Plus a few garlic toasts on the side. It was wintery mixing outside and I was freezing, so this warm bowl of soup while snuggling up to Babyface was just what the doctor ordered.

For dessert, we heated up the last of the sweet potato casserole leftovers from Thanksgiving and topped it with a few nuts and some chocolate and butterscotch chips. Again with the sugar…

What was the best thing you ate yesterday?

The zuppa toscana, definitely. Homemade food always wins.