Go Off The Wagon For Once - Eat BAD Food!

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’re probably thinking this is a contradiction to the normal message I preach about food intake, but it’s true. Once in a while, we just need to make time to eat the foods we really love!

While a regular diet of healthy nutrition is the stuff of most athletes, I don’t know anyone from the long list of people with whom I train who doesn’t enjoy a vice of food. It could be ice cream, fried chicken, pie, chocolate, turkey legs – all kinds of things. Everyone has a taste for different things they enjoy that simply aren’t healthy. Yet, we’re constantly being told that we should eat protein, natural carbohydrates, grains and on and on.

While you’re making plans for healthy nutrition, make plans for some unhealthy nutrition too. Taking a weekend off to enjoy the fruits of a football tailgate event is a great idea. What about your vacation? Instead of worrying about healthy eating during a time you should enjoy, maybe make it a time where you continue to do some exercise, but go deep on enjoying the food you love.

For myself, I totally took the last week off because my job takes me to working many hours at the great Iowa State Fair. As you can imagine, the finer foods of the Fair are not the healthiest, especially my favorites – meatballs, grinders, fried cheese curds, frozen peanut butter bars covered in nuts and chocolate, salted nut rolls, chocolate chip cookies and the list goes on from there. I weighed myself today and I gained a couple of pounds, but they’ll burn right off over the next week. I enjoy that food of the Fair so much, that it’s just not an issue.

I think as long as we can maintain a healthy lifestyle for the majority of the time, we’re okay with taking a little time for well-deserved indulgence!