I spent last week relaxing in the sun on a cruise ship with my wife and kids. It was much needed and certainly much deserved. I really enjoy cruising because there isn't anything for me to do other than lay around and ... think. I can't work because my phone doesn't work in the middle of the Gulf or the Caribbean Sea and I am quite alright with that. It gave me plenty of time to contemplate things - especially my progress the last 5 months and what I am doing this next year.
I admit that I decided to take some workout clothes and sneak a couple fun, half-ass workouts in, you know, just for a pump. Plus, I figured it would be fun to try to dumbbell press while the ship slowly moved back and forth. Well, that and watching one cat in the gym trying to impress everyone else with his pathetically stupid warm up ritual. This dipshit even brought his lifting gloves with him - no shit. Then there was the Dad that was doing 6 different bicep exercises with his 13 year old son. I mean, you gotta get that bicep workout in on vacation but ... I digress.
I planned to eat quite clean this trip because I didn't want to lose all of the work that I had put in the last 5 months and I knew I still have another month or so to get to where I wanted to be when I returned home. I took a full tub of TEAM SKIP protein powder (shameless plug), large cans of tuna (to make it simple), tuna packets and nuts. I figured there would still be plenty of good food there for me to eat because they usually have grilled fish, baked chicken, etc.. This clean eating lasted about... 4 days.
Vacationing and eating clean just suck together. I mean, I am on a cruise where the food is all-inclusive from awesome dinners to awesome buffets to desserts pretty much 24 hours, not to mention room service for free 24 hours a day. At this point I was surprised I had made it 4 days.
What happened next was my revelation. It wasn't the act of eating the food that was my revelation but what I looked like once I ate what I wanted for about 2 days. I came back from a workout and looked - as politically incorrect as it is - RETARDED. I was so full and still lean as hell that I shocked myself thinking I had completely transformed in about 48 hours. Breakfast was pretty good: egg white omelette, smoked salmon with some cream cheese on a bagel and country potatoes. Sure, it wasn't a diet meal but it wasn't 3 orders of french toast every morning, either. Ok, it was a COUPLE of those days, maybe.
Lunch was either a grilled fish or baked chicken from the buffet with a couple protein drinks thrown in, as well. Dinner was whatever the hell I wanted and I would also have dessert. I should explain that I had 2 dinners and 3 desserts most every night. I then would have room service about midnight that almost always included 2 old fashioned banana splits (though they weren't huge they were not small, either).
I kept this ridiculous condition for about 2 days. The following 2 days I was similarly full but was starting to slip a bit as I now looked pregnant before bed and was watering over. The last day? I was glad it was raining because I would have preferred to not take off my shirt. And keep in mind that this was a Carnival Cruise so 98% of the people are fat as hell - so fat that some of them need canes for no other reason than they are fat as hell. I was closing in on needing a cane, too.
This entry is not to brag about my fat-assed appetite but to point out that it took this eating for at least the first 2 days to show me how over-dieted I had been for probably at LEAST a month if not longer. In past log entries you have read my complaining about old man skin but when I was full after a day of eating, I had no old man skin. I was tight as hell and full as hell.
After only 2 days of being home and back on my diet, I am already dropping water like crazy and it looks like the damage was very minimal - if at all. I will know more by this weekend. Had I stayed with my plan of eating clean on vacation I would have not only missed out on a good part of my vacation but I would not have had any idea how over-dieted I actually was. I have been doing this a LONG time so as much as I was surprised that I didn't see it, it goes to show that if I struggle to see something, most people out there would have no clue if it happened to them.
I have changed up my diet a bit due to what happened. I have more calories and carbs in my diet now so that I don't go so flat and so that I keep my metabolism rolling along as I finish up the last leg of this "get lean" phase.
If you are in a dieting phase, pay attention to your Skiploading or your cheat meals so that you know whether you are getting enough calories to off set your metabolism and actually fill out enough from the cheat or load phase. If not, you could be slowing progress and working harder than you need to.