Eating Makes You Hungry! The Beginning of My Food and Eating Story

This is the beginning of my food story about my 2 week trip to Italy and Croatia that ended in a 6lb weight gain, or should I say a around a 2.5 kilos?  In terms of eating I am calling this trip the most successful from my past experiences with travel.  Not in terms of pounds gained or not gained, but in getting closer and closer to putting behind me the fear of not being able to control/not control the availability of food that up until now had sometimes triggered unwanted over eating.

We left on a Tuesday around 10:00 for 1:50pm flight out of SFO to Venice via Amsterdam, spending about 16 hours total in flight time.  I packed a wonderful lunch of kale salad (2 servings), deviled eggs (1/2 dz), chicken salad, peanut/coconut butter w/raisins, celery / carrot sticks, a couple of apples and one or two other things.



It was a perfect amount considering I was up and at the gym that morning to get in my last workouts around 5:00am and had not eaten anything before boarding the plane. So it was my breakfast lunch and dinner.  I did eat a few of the things the airline served, like a small roll to make a chicken salad sandwich, and the brownie they served with the first meal....I was on vacation after all!

We arrived Venice the next afternoon, drove to Vicenza about 40 minutes west to spend the night before driving to Croatia the next morning.  After a short nap we were picked up for dinner around 6:30pm and taken to a local pizzeria by our host in Italy, MSFG Fabio Zonin.  


Dinner started with a huge appetizer of some sort of special handmade fresh mozzerella cheese with a pure cream center, served with sliced cured ham/meat, and lots of it.  (I just googled it and found out it's called Burrata)

The pizza was off the hook, crazy good, and I could have easily eaten more, but I was trying to not look like a pig...I'm not sure I managed to do that!   Each pizza was cut into eight pieces, and I'm pretty sure I ate four parts (maybe five, ouch) which equalled 1/2 of a whole one!  Two large pizzas for basically three of us because Fabio doesn't eat bread during the week, so he helped himself mostly to the Burrata and meat.  Another motive for trying to not eat more was the wine (and dessert!).  Goodness, why didn't I remember my rules? Food OR wine, not both! (more about that a bit later)  Dessert was served with Grappa (to dip the cookies in!) and to top everything off Sambuca! (another shot of alcohol).  That was only the first night!

Why is it I wake up the morning after a big meal feeling like I'm starving?  Mark always explains it by saying "Eating makes you hungry!" I had some nuts with my coffee first thing and then I think we went back to bed for a bit! A couple of hour later more coffee while repacking for the next part of our trip.  When we went downstairs to meet Fabio in the hotel lobby I learned that, yes, our stay included a free breakfast buffet.....argh.  Knowing in the past that "free" food has been a big overeating trigger I simply reminded myself that feelings are not facts.  In the past I let free food trigger the fear of lack, the fear of not enough, and that was NOT fact.  I would not be acting on hunger, I would be acting on fear.  

Day two we leave on a 4 hour car trip to Kastav Croatia and the very first SFG Instructor Certification Course to be held in that country!  I still had a bit of the lunch I packed the day before (our room had a fridge) and that amount was all I needed for the road trip to Kastav.  We did stop at a Autogrill market for an espresso where I picked up some bresaola (cured beef, similar to prosciutto).

We got to the Cert site in Kastav just before dinner time and checked into our apartment flats.  Yay a kitchen in my room!  Again we all went to the market for some supplies, for Mark and me heavy cream for our coffee in the morning

topped the list.  Cheese, eggs, sliced meat (mortadella w/olives), yogurt, some bagel chips (instead of bread), dried fruit and nuts, and Mark got an ice cream and a couple of yogurt/nut bars for the next day.

There was a dinner at a local restaurant planned but I had to stay in.  The dinner the night before could have easily lasted me a week and I simply did not want to eat out again so soon.  This was the kind of compromise I felt I had to stick to.  The compromise was not one I made because I wanted to eat more and couldn't trust myself, but because I wanted to eat less and not allowing others or "special events" to obligate me to eat when, and how, I know it will create the opposite of what I really want. 

The next day I felt great!  Ready to meet all of the new SFG Candidates start a first full day, of six, we had to spend in this lovely country!

PS  Whoops..I forgot to mention that after only one day back home I'm down an entire kilo!  Sounds more impressive than 2 pounds!  Regular eating?  Who'd of thunk? lol