"Sure calories don't count on holiday, do they???"

Without even realising it I have found myself over half way through the 8 week program.  Having traditionally counted down the days til I finish every single healthy eating/diet plan/mission to look like a super model by ticking them off on the calendar it actually came as a bit of a surprise when I realised that this was the mid way point.  To celebrate my mid way through the 8 week program, I just spent the weekend in Adelaide, visiting wineries with two amazing ladies in my life.  To be honest, I have been looking forward to this weekend for so long, for obvious reasons, given some of my favourite things include consuming copious amounts of wine and talking complete waffle with these particular ladies, however, I was also secretly dreading it, as usually weekend away coupled with a lot of wine equals eating a whole heap of crap.  I had done 4 weeks of just eating real food, and I was a bit nervous this weekend would throw the whole thing out the window.

My plan for the weekend was to try to eat as healthy as I could for most of the time to make up for all the wine I was consuming.  I know that I have previously said that you can have wine on the IQS program as it does not contain fructose, however, this rule probably doesn't run true for the amount of wine I consumed this weekend - it was a one off, I'm usually so responsible as anyone who has ever drunk with me with vouch for, but I was in the home of wine...and when in Rome and all that!!  However, it was a real mind game for me to eat healthy all weekend.

One of my favourite sayings while on holidays is "sure calories don't count on holidays", and I generally use this saying to justify my over consumption of ice-cream (usually consumed at least daily), pancakes for breakfast (may have ice cream as a side), and chocolate (which may sometimes be melted over ice-cream) because well I'm on holidays aren't I!  So this weekend, I found it really hard to ignore the chocolate shops (which Adelaide has a bout a million of), and say no to the ice-cream (which was made easier by the fact the weather was awful so I didn't actually feel like it was ice-cream weather).    I did have one moment though when we were in one of the wineries, and I decided to try some dessert wine, I took on tiny sip and thought it tasted like the sweetest syrup I had ever tasted and couldn't drink anymore, so I think my taste buds must be changing.  Apart from this one moment, to the best of my knowledge, I survived the weekend away without consuming any added sugar.

On a different note, I wanted to mention an article I read this morning in the paper about a new type of eating disorder called "orthorexia nervosa", I feel like this is some sort of makey upy term to be honest, but the article did make me think.  Basically, this disorder is based on people, particularly young people, who become obsessed with "righteous eating", and refusing to eat foods such as gluten and dairy, and loosing sleep if they eat a small biscuit, etc. which causes psychological distress to the people.

While reading the article, it made me think about my goals of doing this program.  I know at the moment I am pretty strict on what I will and won't eat, but that is because I am doing an 8 week program.  I think I have mentioned before that I don't want to be that awful friend who comes to dinner and demands my food preferences be met, you know "that" friend (everyone has at least one), the one who never gets asked back because it's too hard to make a whole "fructose free meal".  I think overall, after all the reading around the subject I have been doing, my aim is to maintain a kind of 80/20 type relationship with food, whereby for 80% of the time I will eat "real food", so that when needs arise, I can let my hair down and enjoy myself without the risk of "orthorexia nervosa" and loosing sleep because I ate a slice of cake when I went out to commiserate that I am getting older without even trying too hard or something silly like that.

I will sign off now, with a small note about how excited I am that I will be allowed eat fruit next week, that is something that I am truly looking forward to.  I hope bananas still taste as good as I remember them!  Thanks for reading:)