On the Road Again!

Welcome to another wonderful Wednesday.  As a soundtrack to today's theme, I'm going to encourage you to sit back, relax, and enjoy a little On the Road Again!


I bet you thought I was going to go with Willie Nelson, didn't you? Maybe take the obvious choice?  Well, as much as I love Willie (and I really do), Canned Heat is pretty awesome and has a much better groove to fly down the road to.  You're welcome.

Anybody that knows me knows that I'm a traveling man.  I originally got into the business I'm in because I liked roaming the Midwest, visiting new towns and schools, staying in hotels, and eating out in new restaurants.  The best part was that it was on someone else's dime.  Every continental breakfast or free lunch was one less that I had to pay for on a tight budget.  In my first couple of years, I would load up a suitcase and hit the road for eight weeks in the fall and eight in the spring, only stopping back home on the weekends to wash my underwear.  I went to Colorado and exotic places like eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota.  I was a gypsy, usually travelling with other gypsies from other colleges, and we went from city to city to help students discover their futures.  After a hard day of work, we'd find the local bar and make sure that they knew just how awesome college recruiters were, which was probably not nearly as awesome as we thought.

I really enjoyed the travel for about three years, but then the hardship of not being able to sleep in my own bed or see my friends on a daily basis started to wear on me.  I finally got myself into a position where I wouldn't have to travel for work as much, so I did the only reasonable thing and traveled for my personal life instead.  I bought a new car in March 2009, and I've already put 40,000 miles on it in the last 19 months.  I get restless.  I hate being in one place for too long.  Because of career decisions, I've always lived at least an hour from friends.  My family hasn't lived within an hour of me in about a decade.  Now I'm currently six hours away from someone that I wish I was never more than a second away from, and although our busy lives save me from weekly trips, I still make it down there at least once a month.

The problem with being so mobile is that it has made me even more reliant on fast food and restaurants.  A full continental breakfast that is hot, fresh, and ready to go doesn't make me want to get up and whip up some waffles at home at 5:30 am.  It makes me want to get a McGriddle at McDonald's on my way by.  The opportunity to eat at Outback or Applebee's five nights a week doesn't create a desire for home cooked meals.  It creates a dependency on high calorie, large portioned dinners that someone else prepares for me.  Don't get me wrong.  There are a lot of healthy choices on restaurant menus, and sane and rational people are able to order one of those, or they order the big bowl of pasta and only eat until they are full.  I'm neither sane nor rational when it comes to food.  Eating out as a kid is a treat, so if you don't shake that mindset (which I haven't), you end up wanting every last delicious bite, even if you feel like you're about to explode.  And then maybe the Double Fudge Chocolate Lava Brownie Cake with Ice Cream to wash it down with. 

The other trap that I've fallen into is when I try to pick a healthy sounding option, only to find that I could have just had the cheeseburger.  At Quizno's, the Chicken with Honey Mustard and Flatbread Salad has 1,110 calories and 74 grams of fat.  Chevy’s Fresh Mex’s Tostada Salad with Chicken has 1,551 calories and 94 grams of fat!  Aye carumba!  Subway puts itself out there as the healthier choice, but you still have to know how to order.  Cheese, dressings, and the wrong meats or breads can easily make a 300 calorie lunch a 1,000 calorie lunch in no time.  Most places now have a light menu, and the addition of caloric information certainly helps, but it is still hard for me to order the grilled salmon and steamed veggies over brown rice when the opposite page of the menu contains the quesadilla burger with french fries and extra guacamole.  That's a weakness on my part that I have to find a way to get over. 

The other option is to learn to eat a little of the stuff I want and not be afraid to let the wait staff take some of my food back to the kitchen.  My parents were never this way, but I guess I watched enough TV and movie families and had enough pressure from the lunch room attendants at school to think that if I didn't finish all of the food on my plate I was going directly to Hell.  Starving children in Africa and such.  I eventually figured out that my garbage food didn't really effect a child's provisions in Somalia, but the general message stuck.  A cleaned plate is a good plate.  So, instead of eating to the point of being satisfied, I eat until I'm literally physically sick.  I feel my body wanting to shut down to make me stop.  I get sweaty, I get tired, my pants start to cut into my skin.  I waddle out of the restaurant and desperately want to lay down.  And suddenly even this feeling becomes the norm.  I got to the point where eating wasn't for nourishment and energy, but to give me the feeling of fullness.  Tie that to my emotional attachment to that feeling and to the whole eating out experience, and that's the recipe for the disaster that I currently find myself in.

But today I'm here to announce that I'm a smarter consumer.  The whole inspiration for today's post is that I'm headed to Sioux City to see Jenna after work today, so I'm officially leaving the health nest I've created for myself into a big scary world of choices for the next four days.  I'm praying things are different this time.  I feel the confidence in myself to know that just because I'm not at home doesn't mean I can't be in control.  I've done my research.  Seriously, if you have time some day go check out different restaurant's websites to see the nutritional information on your favorite foods.  I would rate the experience somewhere between shocking and mortifying.  I know some safe havens where I can still feel like I'm getting some bang for my buck, and I also know that I'm not insulting the 16 year old "Sandwich Artist" if I get full and throw some of my sandwich in the garbage.  Part of the key to this will be just slowing down.  Eating in the car, eating in between appointments, and eating on shortened lunch breaks has caused me to be the Daytona 500 of eaters.  I directly tie this back to my school days where we had 20 minutes to get through the lunch line, get to our table, eat, maybe get seconds if it was chicken nugget or crispito day, dump and clean our tray and get to recess.  Nobody wanted to be the kid who was late for recess.  I often make convenient food choices because eating is something I've learned to see as such an inconvenience.  Food is for nutrition and energy, but the process of eating that food doesn't have to be so rushed and unenjoyable.  I imagine that in most parts of the world people actually taste what they put in their mouths.  I'm now going to be one of those people.  This is the hardest habit for me to break, but I'm going to make an effort to put down my fork between bites and take a drink of water.  This will let me enjoy the food, enjoy the company around me, and give my body a chance to relay to my mind that the energy tank is full.  I've tried this tactic before and failed.  I also fell off my bike a couple of times, but I still managed to figure it out one day when I was a kid.  That is until I flipped it end over end while I was trying to carry an overnight bag on the handle bars to a friend's house...then I learned to drive a car and said, "Screw this bike nonsense!"  Anyway, I hope you get the point.

So, wish me luck!  Not only am I making the trip down south, but I'm meeting her extended family for the first time.  I'm always super calm, collected, and totally in control in new situations. Also, the Pope is Jewish.  If I make it back to Minnesota without having to stop for a Brownie Batter Blizzard to calm my nerves, it will be a small miracle.  But I'm going to make it for my loyal readers and friends because I know you guys are all rooting for me.  I'm going to do it for me and my healthier future.  And if I don't, hopefully we'll at least get a funny story out of it.

Your 40 Ounces of Canned Heat,

Jeff