International Training Food and Thought....The Food!

Ah, the food.  It's been only 8 months since our last trip to Vincenza and there were many meals that we enjoyed that are still fresh in my memory, but if I had to choose one to repeat, okay, two (because it would be a tie) it would be the seafood salad platter at Ai 2 Fogher's Ristoranti Pizzerie, and the Gelato at Il Gelatraio.  Nothing else really mattered to me at all, which was a good thing!  On our last trip to Italy my old habit of overeating out of fear of missing out on something almost got the best of me, in fact it kind of did, resulting in a gain of 6lbs.  I was able to keep it from getting totally out of hand by balancing some of it out with under eating/intermittent fasting and of course some hard training, but I'll go into all of that in my next post.  (here is the post I wrote after my last trip in regards to the food and eating http://tracysfoodandthought.blogspot.com/2013/11/eating-makes-you-hungry-food-and-eating.html for comparison).  This trip was entirely different. 

We arrived at the Venice airport around lunch time (12 noon), but of course still being on California time it was still the very early hours back home (3am), which meant I was no where near hungry.  Master SFG Fabio Zonin, super gracious host that he is, assumed we would be ready for a meal and our first stop was my absolute favorite restaurant in all of Vincenza!  The pasta is crazy good, the pizza amazing, but nothing comes close to the seafood platter Fabio introduced me to during our last trip.  I have dreamed about this dish for months.  It has steamed mussels/clams, a super juicy giant scallop, shrimp salad, deep fried giant prawn, but my favorite (next to the mussels) is some sort of cold marinated squid salad.  Man, the last thing I wanted to do was eat an entire seafood platter at 3am in the morning, but I had to make an exception!  DAMN IT!  It's a tough life, but somebody has to live it!

Knowing what I know about balancing over eating and under eating I knew dinner was completely out for me later that night, which was totally fine.  I'm good with a glass of wine and a breadstick if need be!  In true extraordinary super host Fabio fashion we did indeed meet just hours later for dinner!  Ouch.  But one of the best tips I learned from my last trip is that they do indeed give out doggie bags in Italy!  Is that wrong of me?  To ask for a doggie bag for food that was paid for by someone else?  Hmnn...thoughts anyone?  After a very small green salad and a glass (or two) of wine, I ordered, and took a couple of small bites of, the shrimp gnocchi and some grilled white fish of some sort, and wrapped the rest up for lunch the next day.


Thursday Mark and I got some decent sleep and I stayed back in our room to do some work while Mark and Fabio went out for....you guessed it, lunch!  I wasn't close to being hungry, and had leftovers from dinner in the small fridge in our room.  It was perfect actually because throughout the entire day I took small bites and even then, when dinner came around I still wasn't that hungry.


Dinner was at the most amazing Pizza Pub in town, and lucky me I've learned some new strategies to lessen the possibilities of "accidentally" overeating....they worked!

The first I already mentioned.....doggie bag!  The second is to limit my choices and really think about one or two things I want to try.  Instead of sampling all 9 different pizzas I chose two, I almost got away with one, the melon and ham, but the olives on another were too tempting so I grabbed a slice for, you guessed it, my lunch the next day!  I asked to have the leftover salad and two slices of pizza packed to take with me.  By the way, the lettuce was amazing!  Yes, the lettuce!  Since it was a Pub, beer and spirits were the only drinks on the menu, no wine!  I had a shot of scotch, a some antipasto (Burrata cheese, ham, lettuce) a slice of pizza and called it a night.  A perfect night actually with my focus on good times and conversations with new friends, not so much on how much food I could stuff in my mouth for fear of never getting another chance at this amazing pizza!


Mark and I slept horribly that second night, unbeknownst to us Mark would end up with a horrible stomach flu like feeling for our entire trip. The next day was the first day of the SFG Cert and I pretty much crashed and burned with jet lag.  Lucky me I had my lunch packed from the night before, and I still had a few food items leftover that I had packed for my flight, which was a good thing because when Mark finished up his 10 hour day he went to bed without any dinner while everybody else met at the hotel restaurant that evening.

Saturday.  Finally I got some good training in!  Still not really hungry for some reason, I had the chance to do a little site seeing in the afternoon, but not before gelato!  I could foresee the chance of missing out on a trip to Il Gelataio for a flavor of Greek Yogurt gelato I had a taste of last year, based on the fact that Mark was not feeling well, and we only had less than two days left before we had to return home.  I asked Fabio if he would instruct our driver to take me and my new friend Emily to get gelato before we drove 30 minutes to our first destination, Marostica.  What a fabulous idea that turned out to be!  All Emily and I could do while eating our gelato was moan and groan about how delicious it was!  By the time we got to Marostica we weren't hungry at all.  However, on our drive we noticed all of the cherry stands (ciliegia), cluing us into the fact that it was cherry season!  Of course we had to stop and buy some!

After a full afternoon of walking a ton we ended the day back at the SFG at 6:00pm, in time to listen to Mark give his speech on "What is the SFG?".  The group dinner was arranged for 7:30pm and I knew it was going to be a humongous buffet...and I was right.  Yes, I went in with some strategies....but not nearly as successful as the rest of the trip, and you know what?  It was fine!  Really the only thing I overate without really enjoying it was the cake!  By the time the cake was presented I had filled up on the yummiest roasted potatoes ever, along with plenty of other stuff, that my tummy was almost stretched to it's limit....almost!  I was triggered by my old habit of overeating, which was fine, but I wish I would have enjoyed the cake, which might have meant less potatoes....or maybe I should have just passed on the cake! OR maybe I should have simply taken a piece for breakfast the next morning?  Darn!  I could have done that!  Duh!  Oh well, live and learn...or should I say, eat and learn?  lol

Sunday, the last day.  I forgot to mention, because I'll write more about it in my next post, that our hotel did offer a small free breakfast every morning until about 10:00am.  I had brought some dry oatmeal with me in case I needed a snack, planning on making some overnight oats, so I took a couple of small yogurts and a piece of fruit one morning.....yep, a breakfast doggie bag!

Mark was still sick with stomach cramps and ate very little, in fact losing 4lbs during this trip.  Not only was he not hungry, but he couldn't even go out for a meal to socialize because he felt so bad.  When the SFG Cert ended around 3:00pm the only reason we went for gelato (my second time, his first), was because like me he remembered how freakin' amazing it was from our last trip, and if there is one thing Mark likes, it's good ice cream!  Even though I was still not very hungry I was forced to eat 4 more scoops of gelato before our trip ended!

Mark, exhausted and sick went to bed without dinner, again, and so did I.  Instead I spent an hour or two packing up to leave the next morning.  I had a few snacks in the fridge to get by on.  Some fresh cherries from our site seeing trip the day before, some mulberries I picked from a tree at the Cert site (pictured at left), and a piece of deep dish veg pizza I brought with me from home (believe it or not!).


Monday morning.  I had made two small containers of overnight oats w/yogurt for breakfast.  One of which I ate on our way to the airport, and one I ate on the plane.  I also had packed some fresh fruit for the flight, but mostly I decided to simply eat the food they would serve us on the plane.  It was fine.  In fact all was fine until we hit the Atlanta airport......and that, my friends, is when some crazy stuff went down!  But I'll save that for part 3, the "thought" post.  I'll share with you my thoughts about old habits and behaviors around food and eating based on "fear and lack", and what did and didn't work for me when some of those old triggers reared their ugly heads.

I had a wonderful trip full of good foods, great friends, new and not so new, some wonderful workouts and finally the best of all I got to share all of it with my brilliant and wonderful husband. One of these days I hope I can share it with my kids too.  That would be even more amazing!

Basic food/eating schedule:

Every morning we had espresso with cream I packed in our suitcase and brought with us!  You can actually find it and order it from Amazon; http://www.amazon.com/Trader-Joes-Whipping-Cream-Stable/dp/B0099SJVLI

Wednesday; Full lunch, seafood and salad.  Super light dinner with wine.
Thursday; Light lunch with leftovers provided by dinner the night before.  Light dinner with friends.
Friday; Leftover pizza and salad for lunch.  A couple of cookies from the plane, and a Luna bar I brought with me.  A couple of apples late in the afternoon from the Cert.  No dinner out. 
Saturday; Apple for breakfast.  Two scoops of gelato for lunch!  Cherries for snack.  Super huge dinner buffet with a lot of wine and cake.
Sunday; A juicy orange and some mulberries I picked. Gelato for lunch again, but four scoops this time!!!!  No dinner out, instead finishing up some of the food and snacks we had in our room.
Monday; overnight oats before we got on the plane.

We arrived back home late Monday night after traveling for 20 hours.