Sunday, September 27, 2009

Ms. Crabby


I have a whole new appreciation for the saying "There's no place like home." Especially after being away from a home that houses my juicer and my organic fruits and veggies. For the past week I have been on work assignment in Baltimore. While I usually feel good getting out of the office from time to time a week proved to be too long for me. I found many hurdles to keeping on track with my 50/50 raw and cooked food plan while away from home.

Naturally I started missing my bed after a day. But on day one I was already loathing the ever-present temptation of the chips, cookies, pretzels and legal addictive stimulants laid out at the work and conference events. Everybody was partaking. The coffee was calling my name. My willpower was compromised half way through the first day.

It didn't help that there were few healthy food options in the vicinity. The closest thing to health foods I could find were the Naked juices in a convenient store, the smoothies in the hotel and inner harbor shopping areas and the salads in the hotel restaurant. The "fruit" smoothies came from a box and the salad couldn't have been whiter - iceberg lettuce, baby. I got frustrated. I wanted to scream.

I prepped as much as I could beforehand, packing fresh green juices and raw food snacks from Awesome Foods and storing them in the hotel fridge. But eventually I ran out of them and began eating foods with mayo and cheese - two culprits that are hard to avoid, especially when I am also trying to avoid eggs and other fermented foods. Even the salad had cheese! I removed as much as I could like a crazy picky eater.

A few days later I did start to feel better about food options. I got to visit some friends from grad school who provided home-cooked and uber healthy turkish meals. Thank you, Emek and Mehmet!

Despite beautiful weather in the inner harbor and plans to site see on my last day all I wanted to do was go home. I didn't feel 100% and wanted to get back on track with my food plan. No more temptations, thank you very much. My first orders of business upon return were to rest up and make a trip to Whole Foods. I loaded up on produce and soups. I began to feel normal again.

Time to go and juice!