Day 23: Cups and Cakes, Cups and Cakes, I'm So Full My Tummy Aches

This past weekend I attended a friend's wedding. It was an afternoon/evening affair held outdoors in a beautiful location. Even though there had been a threat of rain, the weather stayed fairly nice throughout the evening. The whole event was just lovely.

Now, I'm a rules-lawyer. Anyone in the gaming community totally knows what I mean by that. When we began Week 2, Patrick sent out meal plans with whole list of items that were allowed and things that weren't. I immediately put that information into my head as rules for the program. Unless he gives us an exception, clarification, or addendum, I will follow the rules to the letter. (Yeah, I'm an annoying rules-lawyer.)

In preparation of the wedding reception, I packed my own PCP friendly meal (dinner plus afternoon and evening snacks). I even prepared myself for the food assault that would be the buffet. It's amazing the spread that some catering companies will lay out for a wedding! To further limit any temptation that I might have felt, I stayed away from the building where the buffet food was placed. If I can't see it, I can't sneak it!

The upside is that the bride and groom know that I'm vegetarian, so there were many vegetables in the buffet. I know it totally messed them up when I brought my own food, but I swear if they hadn't arranged the meal for a vegetarian being in their midst, the buffet would have probably been a lot less healthy. (I've been to enough weddings where much of the food was either fried or swimming in sauces galore, where the vegetables were just an appetizer.)

When everyone came back to the table, I was amazed at the amount of food they had piled on their plates. Just incredible! It was a bit of a sobering thought for me. If it weren't for the PCP, I know I would have been right there with a mountain of food like the rest of them.

I looked at my meal and remembered how I thought it was a lot of food. Then I looked at their dinners. I'm betting there were more calories on each of those plates than what was on my entire day's worth of PCP meals.

Then the incredible happened. They went back for seconds! That was followed by a trip or two to the dessert table! And that was followed by wedding cake! Topping off the whole thing calorie fest was the open bar that stayed that way all night long!!

One of the more amusing topics of dinner conversation was when they started talking about how they were going to the gym and trying to lose weight. I mentioned what I was doing on PCP, but they took one look at my meal compared to theirs and immediately dismissed it.

I use to see that mentality when I worked for a fast food restaurant. People would order the double bacon cheeseburger with everything, loaded fries, ice cream . . . and the diet soft drink because they were “watching their figures.”

Huh?!? I'm sorry, but that diet soft drink has zero calories not negative calories! It's not going to take away any of the calories from the double bacon cheeseburger you just ate! It just doesn’t work that way!

So, off they go to the gym to work out. They’re excited because the machine tells them that they’ve burned off five hundred some calories. I look back to the over 2000 calorie meal they ate just the day prior, and think to myself, “You still have a 1500 calorie defecit that needs to burn off!” But I can’t say that. They don’t want to listen. That’s okay, though. When I start looking good, they’ll have the evidence before their eyes.