Category Archives: Food

A Weighty Post

On my way down to the Outer Banks, I stopped at my friend Tina’s in Virginia for the night, to break up the drive.

As I sat on her couch, chatting with her, I reached for a pillow and covered my stomach with it. I haven’t done that in years.

For the past several months, I’ve looked at the number on the scale, refused to believe it, and kept coming up with a new excuse to justify it.

Oh, it must be water weight. I must be PMS–ing. Maybe something I ate had too much salt in it. Maybe my clothes are really heavy. This isn’t real weight gain.

At the beach, we had lots of delicious, indulgent, not at all healthy food. I took a plate…and then went back for more….every night…and every morning at breakfast. One night, I got sick to my stomach because I’d eaten so much – a feeling that used to be all too familiar, and that I certainly don’t miss.

In isolation, these are all fine. (Well, maybe not eating until you feel sick.) Combined? This makes me nervous that I’m going to fall down that slippery slope of gaining all the weight back.

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Maybe you saw me Instagramming pictures of Blueprint Cleanse today? I’d always said I’d never do a cleanse, but as I’ve heard more about them lately, I’ve been intrigued. Yesterday, the juices were on sale at Whole Foods so I decided to give a one-day cleanse a try. Am I expecting to lose weight from one day? Nope. Well, maybe a little water weight tomorrow but I know that’s not a permanent thing. No, I really just wanted a way to pump a bunch of nutrients into me and start to reset some of the unhealthier habits I’ve picked up over the past few months to make sure any recent weight gain isn’t permanent. I’ll do a more in-depth post about the cleanse and my thoughts on it soon, but I wanted to mention it in context with the beginning of the post.

I think that trying to be a “perfect” eater can be equally unhealthy, and I don’t want to follow a strict diet, so I’m just going to say this: more cooking for myself, less wine. Those are my two health downfalls.

Have you ever done a cleanse? Would you? I’m not sure if I’d ever do one for more than a day (by the way, doing it on a nice day in June in NYC? Walking past lots of al fresco diners? Sorta torturous.)

How do you reset when you’ve gained some weight or see yourself slipping back into old habits you thought you’d moved away from?

Unrelated: My running coach, Jess, BQ-ed at San Diego! Go read her recap and congratulate her!

Crabcakes and Football: Two Great Annapolis Meals

So, spoiler alert: I did not die at the Zooma Half.

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Full review TK soon – probably tomorrow – but for now, here’s a pretty Instagram picture.

I had two awesome meals (which I’m basically considering my last suppers as I start detoxing from a week at the beach this week) I wanted to share with you.

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The night before the race, we attended a cmocktail party (don’t worry, I promise to never use that word again) at our hotel and ate at the restaurant in the hotel, because we heard from even an Annapolis local, Heidi, that West was good. And we had to be up early for the 7am start. [Full disclosure: Zooma provided Tina a comp room at the gorgeous, nautical-themed Loews Annapolis and Anne and I crashed her party.]

We sat down and saw that they had specials for runners. The waiter told us that the chef had done research into meals that would be good for runners. I went for the whole-wheat pasta with grilled chicken, squash, tomatoes, olives and feta. I’m pretty sensitive to dairy, and learned my lesson after Brooklyn and asked for the chef to go light on the feta. I think olives are disgusting, so I pushed them all to the side and let Anne and Tina pick at them. The portion size was perfect; I felt full without being overstuffed after finishing it.

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We’d all wanted crabcakes the night before the race but knew that wasn’t the time for them, so after the race we had a mission for crabcakes. Walking around the night before, I noticed Phillip’s right by the harbor. I knew it was a chain, so I sort of discounted it as potentially having good crabcakes. We asked the hotel concierge for her crabcake recommendation, though, and she recommended either here or West, in our hotel. Apparently West will be written up soon in some magazine as having really good crabcakes.

But we decided eating twice in our hotel would be kind of lame and ventured to Phillips. It had an open deck, so we were able to be out of the sun but still get a breeze off the harbor. The crabcake was delicious, but the fries in Old Bay were AMAZING. Can someone please fund a study about the health benefits of fries so I can eat them everyday? Thank you.

What’s your favorite post-race food? And what’s your favorite seafood? My favorite seafoods are lobster and scallops, but I love crabcakes when in the Maryland area. As for post-race food…hmm, I think whatever I can get my belly quickly! Although I always love a good post-race beer. I had a nice Phillips Amber Ale.