Eating All The Food

After competing I often find myself in a catch 22 situation. I want to eat EVERYTHING, yet I also want to maintain a balanced and healthy lifestyle. For about a week after a competition, I will fully indulge in all the food & consume roughly 10,000 calories a day which is mental. (here is a list of everything I consumed that week).

This year was exactly the same, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but by the final day I was craving some sort of normality & reality. I went back to work at my gym after fuelling myself with a regular breakfast (eggs & oats) but by midday I had a sudden panic “what the hell do I eat?”
I settled on Olive Garden Deli which has some really great homemade produce, for a truly delicious poached eggs on bloomer bread with bacon & tomatoes. If you haven´t eaten here, you cannot conceive how generous their portions are. My afternoon snack consisted of a leche leche coffee & a giant cream filled cone which in retrospect wasn´t the best choice however I mentally justified my options with “I haven’t done any exercise in 2 weeks, ergo I am burning it all off” – even though I am well aware this is untrue! My evening meal was equally as epic – Chinese takeaway ½ Peking Duck, seaweed, crispy chili beef & special chow mein; this was shared although I probably shared the most! I also concluded would make a great leftover for my lunch & mid afternoon snack, however I polished it all off at midday.

The next day I decided I will get some “safe” staple snacks from the supermarket : Rice cakes, natural yogurt, prunes, almonds, tuna etc. However, I am exceptionally greedy & managed to rationalize that I could probably eat all of these foods as one “meal” - You cannot justify consuming ALL the food just because it is healthy. Apples are great, but eating a tree´s worth in one sitting is not.
         Knowing that I had a mini weekend holiday booked to round off my week, my mentality settled into the “sod being healthy tomorrow, I’m on holiday!”

This is a vicious cycle that many of us get sucked into. Having great intentions, but not actually putting them into practice, then it is suddenly the weekend where you have decided a little cheat meal / cheat day is in order, ignoring the fact the all week realistically has been one giant cheat week.