Day 19: The Blackmark Trade Off (begins)

My two best friends don't live near me.  One of them lives up north and is training to be a doctor.  The other is based in Stockholm but works all over the world.  As a result, I don't get to see them much (enough).

It had been just over a year since we hung out.  But this weekend, they came to mine.  Of course, I knew they were coming.  There was quite prolonged planning involved.

I had, for a while, contemplated how this would fit into the Challenge.  I told them all about it, and they understood.

But at the end of the day, I know that personally I eat to live.  My nutrition and health are important; but so is my happiness and emotional wellbeing.

[what's the point in being super fit, and living forever, if you spend all of that life restricting everything, missing out on stuff?]

I am aware that this is not everyone's perspective.  Some people think that to even consider (and phrase) it as "missing out" on stuff is broaching the subject in the 'wrong' frame of mind.

This is sort of the same argument as the discussion on food processing / substitution: life (to me), like food, is for enjoyment, socialising, creating (much more than just basic survival).

So anyway, for this weekend, I loosened the terms of my Challenge.  Not in a determinate way.  Just in the sense that I decided I would respond to whatever we got up to and make choices along the way.

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Breakfast

• 1 Challenge compliant muffin

Lunch

• Leftover Mexican wrap (from last night) YUM
• 1 satsuma, 2 apples

There were no big cabbages in Co Op.. so my wraps didn't quite err 'wrap'

Tea

Trundled up to Seven Arts, once the Three Musketeers were reunited.  It wasn't a time for cooking, it was a time for catching up.

There had been a baked egg dish, which would have been perfect for me.  But, typically, it had sold out.

The next nearest approximation to a compliant dish was:

• Roasted onion squash with goats cheese, tenderstem broccoli, a leaf (I think kale?), mixed roasted seeds, flaked almonds, some little flowers (not sure what they were)

Excuses, excuses, but if I had been post workout, and not doing the weightloss challenge (therefore eating dairy), this would have been 100% fine.  That wasn't, however, the case.  So.. hello blackmarks...

PLUS blackmarks for 2 glasses of red wine.  (consumed over the full course of the evening).

But I'm not going to lie, it was delicious...  (the food and the occasion)

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Although, of course, a 'fail' within the scope of this Challenge, this, I feel, is quite an honest representation of how I intend to eat/can foresee me eating post-Challenge (which presents a whole other Challenge, in fact, of itself).  No grains, totally fresh, unprocessed...  But incorporating small amounts of dairy (less than I used to consume), and the occasional, moderate drink, where appropriate.