I'm Back

Hello Team Cookie Monster!  I apologize for the length between my last few posts, we traveled to my wife's family's place for Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, there was no internet at her Tia's house (tia is Spanish for aunt, so if you learn one thing from me, there is a new vocab word).  While the entire PCP project thus far has been a great learning experience, there was massive failure on this trip.  I guess failing  is also a great learning experience though.

The diet was almost non-existent during this time.  Part of it was my personality is very not forceful, and I work very hard to not inconvenience people, especially when I'm a guest.  And my wife's family is Mexican, so the cultural and language barrier just made it that much more difficult.  As a male, it's culturally important for the females to make sure the man is always taken care of (my wife was raised in the US, so we don't follow this at home, thank goodness).  Which means that food is constantly forced on me.  And since I was a guest, food was constantly forced on me.  And me saying no means food was constantly forced on me.  I don't mean to say some of it wasn't delicious, but actually most of it was way too salty or sugary or both.  I have never felt so unhealthy.  I know this isn't true, because I have been more unhealthy in my life before, but my body has been cleansed of so many bad things since this project started that the constant salt and sugar just made me feel absolutely terrible.  I felt bloated the whole time, my bowel movements were totally messed up, and I was constantly craving raw vegetables.  Also, so much salt and lack of fresh fruits and vegetables just left me feeling constantly dehydrated.  I could not drink enough water to feel sated.  I think it would have been much easier just to claim I was a vegetarian, as everyone just said I was too skinny to worry about the food.  And I was not allowed in the kitchen, as that would have been rude on my part and because that's just not the place for the man to be.  I felt really bad about myself when I got home late last night as I feel I let everyone down.  But it also just made me more committed to making the life choices that PCP is instilling a permanent part of who I am.

I don't want to make it sound like it was horrible, I had a lot of fun.  There was plenty of singing and dancing involved.  And it was really funny that my wife's mother and I both understand rudimentary English and Spanish, respectively, so she would ask me questions in Spanish and I would answer in English, and we both understood each other.  We just both lacked the confidence to make the jump into the other's language.  But I never want to eat like that again in my life, it would have been so much more enjoyable if my body would have felt better.

It was also nice to be away from work and to have time to think about what's really important.  It seems obvious, but health and family is so much more important than anything else you do in life.

Also, as I mentioned before, I had to chance to read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer while I was on break.  A really, really good read, and gave me the push I need to decide to become a vegan.  I am going to wait after PCP is over to make the change, but I think it's an important and necessary choice for me.  I went to buy some chicken today and just thinking about where it came from made me put it down in disgust.  So I guess I'm just lacto ovo pescatarian the next couple of weeks, which will give me time to research how to transition.

Well, long post, two more weeks team. JFD