I was just returning home from a perfect vegan grocery trip, when I ran into my friend Denise who wanted to go somewhere non-vegan for lunch. I was pretty hungry, and close to a new low weight, so I figured it’d be alright. We ended up at Shakespeare’s Pub, where I ordered the shepherd’s pie, hold the cheese topping. I finished all of the potatoes and peas, but left some of the meat filling uneaten. I guess my high-carb preferences are still showing. While I’m at it, I’ll confess to eating 3 lbs of corn tortillas over the last two days. With butter. (Warning: this diet only works with lots of exercise.)

Well, the Fish & Chips, donuts, prime rib, nachos, candy bars, and potato chips I ate last week on my Pacific Northwest road trip caught up with me this morning. I weighed in at 82.3 kg, which is 1.7 kg above my low of 80.6 kg last month. I thought I could get away with eating almost anything, because I biked 200km/week, with 2,000m/week of climbing.

Well, what they say is true: “you can’t outrun your fork”. In other words, it’s pretty easy to inhale 1000 calories, while it takes several hard hours of training to burn it off. So you can’t just serially eats donuts without consequences, even if you train a few hours a day.

It’s been about a year since I ate this amount of high-fat, fried, and sugary foods. I didn’t binge on them, but I ate full-fat restaurant dinners, then snacked on donuts and chips at my sister’s house. It’s pretty much the standard American recipe for weight gain.

I’ll get back to losing weight, and towards my ultimate 70 kg goal. Once I returned home, I immediately re-started my normal whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) way of eating, which I was starting to miss (especially after weighing myself).

I learned an important lesson here. Yes, we get fat because of rich western diet. Fried foods are horrible, sugary treats are calorie bombs. It’s pretty much all they sell, and you have to go out of your way to find something healthy, if you can find anything at all. Mystery solved as to why Americans get fat.

These seagulls live on a nearly 100% French fry diet, and they’re still light enough to fly around without any problems. The restaurant puts up a sign encouraging the patrons to feed the seagulls, creating a whole ecosystem based on the tourists tossing 1/2 their fries to the birds. This makes Pier 54 a petting aviary, and an all-you-can-eat chip shop for the gulls. The birds look healthy. I’m hoping my body handles 3 days of fried food as well as they do. I’m not flying, but I’m biking a few hours each day, and ran a few hills, and kayaked on the lake today.

Was still hungry after a nice sushi dinner, so we stopped at the food trucks in town. I ordered a nice veggie burrito with scrambled eggs, black beans, onions, tomatoes, etc. Will do more riding out in the country today.

Decided at the last minute to visit San Francisco for a fixie ride through the Presidio and up some hills.  I remembered all the turns once I got on the road.  One of those things you never forget.

Thanks to Jamie and Jeff for organising the Neon Ride Bike Party tonight through Kensingston with a lot of lights, glow sticks, and fun. I saw a few guys I know from the Awarewolfs, and met a few more fixed riders I didn’t know before. There were about 40+ of us, and it was like being in a parade. All the people in the bars waved and cheered.

I bought 3 lbs of fresh corn tortillas from a Barrio Logan grocery, and have been eating them warmed up, with a little butter, over the last few days. They’re pretty good, but I might try to find even thicker, doughier ones, or make my own from masa harina. I dab some water on the tortillas before I heat them up in the pan, which give them that just-made steaminess.

I pretty much ate a pound of these a day (450g/day) until they were gone. I ate a few with beans, but mostly I ate them with a little bit of butter. Usually, my rule is to eat my starches with fiber (e.g., lots of vegetables), but these were really good with just a bit of fat 🙂 Luckily, I still lost weight over the last few days, so they can’t be that bad for you.