The Healthy Cookie

My stay in St. Lucia went by so fast that when the time came for me to go- I just wasn’t ready.  So here I am. Still here. Still happy. Still loving the sunshine and rainbows. I will be home next week.

Eating three meals a day at a resort has apparently been taking its toll on me. I am getting fat. Yes. Fat. And I am perfectly a-okay with that.  It has been a super fun process.

Three and a half years ago, when I stayed at this resort with my mother for my 25th birthday, I was not well. I couldn’t eat anything without getting sick, and worse than that, I was afraid to eat. I spent a week eating only steamed vegetables and rice. Come to think of it, I spent nearly four years eating only steamed vegetables and rice.

Over the past 9 weeks that I have been here, I have slowly begun to realize that I can now eat whatever it is that I want… in moderation of course.  It is extremely difficult to stick to any sort of health regime when living at a 5-star resort with healthy buffets, yummy wines and amazing desserts available any time of day. So yes, I have been eating three big meals a day, treating myself to cakes and cookies and drinking wine and loving each and every second of it.

I have been breaking all my rules of healthy eating. All my rules but one- sometimes when something is good for our spirit, it is good for our health. There is no point indulging if we are going to feel guilty about it. So I indulge and I enjoy it and I smile. My not worrying about each and every little thing I eat, is good for my health.

A friend had once said to me that coming out here would give me a good dose of reality. I would be removed from my little nutrition bubble and be exposed to the way ‘normal’ people eat. He was right… at least about this.

I would say that 80% of the people I meet with, meet with me because they are unhappy with their weight. Most of them look perfectly healthy to me. When the symptoms of Crohn’s got worse for me, I went on this extreme detox program where I lost close to 20 pounds in under a month (a lot for me being only 5 feet tall). The sick thing was how many people, including the personal trainer that I was working with at the time, told me how great I looked. That’s enough to screw up anyone’s self image.

As I got healthier and began to gain the weight back, I was very conscious of each and every pound. I have never been a skinny girl- never really wanted to be. I have at last come to embrace each and every pound (and the few extras collected while down here) as a sign of my good health. For me, it is a sign of health that I have the capacity to gain weight. I may have gone a touch overboard while being here, but I am no longer afraid to eat, to try new things, or to treat myself, once in a while.

Of course though, everything I say here must be taken with a grain of salt (no pun intended) as I am quite sure that my idea of indulgence is still far from the way the average person eats.

When I go home at the end of the week, I will be back to my old healthy eating. It has nothing to do with how much I weigh, or how tight my jeans might be. It is about how I feel. It has always been about how I feel. Nine weeks of indulgence- eating too much, having a drink now and again, sneaking in an oatmeal cookie, not sleeping nearly enough… well- it has taken its toll. I am ready to get back on that healthy train. I am ready to get back to my fighting weight- not for the sake of actually fighting the weight but about getting back to a place where I feel my absolute strongest and healthiest.

My life at home is very different than my life living at a resort. For the last 9 weeks I have been feeding my spirit each and every thing it desired and it has been blissful. I know that I could not live like this forever but I wouldn’t want to. I have had a tough four years with my health, and I honestly could not think of a better way of celebrating my journey than by indulging in a glass of wine, while watching the sunset with good friends and an ocean breeze.

I can not stress enough, and I tell each and every person I consult with that if we are going to treat ourselves, we must treat ourselves with the best. The best butter, the best cheeses, the best wine, the best bread, the best chocolate, the best pastries. The best the best, the best… of the things that are the worst for us. We must enjoy them with good company, in a good environment, with a good mood, a good toast, a good celebration. We must make these indulgences count. We must ultimately enjoy them. If that piece of chocolate cake will make us feel guilty, or that second trip to the buffet will cause us to make excuses- the negative feelings we have about ourselves or about our actions will be more detrimental to our health than the actual indulgence itself.

There is no harm in treating ourselves once in a while. Once in a while that is. Overindulging our spirit, for too long, will leave our physical body in a less than optimal state.

During this amazing time in St. Lucia, my spirit has been thoroughly nourished. I am now ready to get back to the leafy greens.