never before have i been that stuffed

i've kicked back a many of plates of food before. my buddy jason (who i lived with for 4 years) & i used to always taunt one another to eat more whenever we were out for food. he was my weight lifting partner throughout my tenure in the marines & when we would go to eat the question, "is that all you got?" would come up often. i can remember a many nights eating 3 or 4 plates of pasta with this dude as well as overindulging (see unabridged dictionary - it is a word) on the weekend brunches at hickam air force base. as for my weight, while i may be more fit today - back then i weighed a solid 175 pounds with just over 5% body fat. i was also 19/20/21 years old :)

of course when we moved to austin to wrap our degrees at UT we both put on some weight. i remember the day that we moved to austin & our apartment wasn't ready so the complex put us up in a hotel for the night. jason was a real stickler with his cash (especially while in school) & that first night he was looking for the cheapest place to eat where he could get the most food for our buck. we ended up at a mr. gattis pizza (i've only been back to gatti's once since this horrific event & refuse to ever go back into one). if you don't know anything about mr. gatti's it's a *super* cheap (price & quality) all you can eat pizza place. between the two of us that night we kicked back some 70+ pieces of pizza. that's 35+ pieces for each of us. i think the final count was me 37 & him 34 or 35. granted, some of their slices aren't all the normal pizza slices (some squared). regardless those 35+ pieces easily equaled 3+ large pizzas for each of us. i had never felt worse. well, up until last night.

kristin & i visited casa de luz for dinner last night. they had sweet potatoes & walnuts on the menu & that's all that really mattered to me. if you have ever had their sweet potatoes, then you would understand why i was so excited to eat there. casa’s full menu last night was:

- soup: creamy kabocha squash
- salad:garden salad with citrus thyme vinaigrette
- grain: basmati brown rice & tempe sticks
- bean: “hoppin’ john” (black eyed peas)
- greens: southern style cabbage
- vegetable: baked sweet potatoes with walnuts
- pickle: garlic ume daikon and beets

obviously very healthy! but just as the saying goes, “too much of anything is a bad thing.” i started with a full bowl of soup as usual – it was awesome! then onto the salad – again, the vinaigrette was super tasty & the sliced apples on top were so good! then onto the main course – i always take the first plate "as is" & then i pick & choose what i really like when i go back for more. after that 1st plate i was feeling pretty full. the brown rice, the sweet potatoes, & the black eyed peas were doing the trick – a lot of sticky carbs. i went back for my 2nd plate & asked for a normal plate minus the rice & please double up on the sweet potatoes. after another glass of tea & i went back for my 3rd plate – same as the 2nd. kristin had eaten like ½ of her 1st plate but did get a 2nd helping of sweet potatoes that she couldn’t finish. so when i went back for my 4th plate (i know – very sick!) i went without the sweet potatoes because i could just finish off kristin’s :). after finishing my 4th plate, like an idiot i went back for one last helping of the blacked eyed peas. see, there was this hot sauce that they made that i’d never had before & you drizzle it over the blacked eyed peas – it was so amazing.

after that serving of black eyed peas i felt like i was going to explode. i of course was eating so quickly that the full effect of how much food i put into my body hadn’t hit me until the end. when things began to expand i was scared my stomach was going to burst – jason would be so proud…

i had a cup of hot tea before we left & when we got home i could barely stand up straight – i looked like i was pregnant & worse off felt like i was having contractions. have you ever seen the movie or read the book “cool hand luke?” if you haven’t, you should – best paul newman movie ever in my opinion. anyhow, in the movie he took a bet to eat 50 boiled eggs. well his belly & mine looked very similar last night & i was walking & feeling about as bad as he looked in the movie. lucky for him he was just acting; i was actually living through this horrible feeling that i brought onto myself

it’s now morning, almost 12 hours since dinner & i’m still full. i usually love this part of my morning - waking up to coffee & a big bowl of oatmeal with fruit. i can’t bear to think about eating right now though. of all days too, i scheduled lunch with my friend/real-estate broker today for lunch at manuels & all i really think i can bear to eat are veggies – no carbs or meats please!

seeing how much you can stuff in your belly really is a “guy thing” isn’t it? i suppose i really don’t want to know any women that taunt each other to eat more :)

i think last night makes up for any missed calories on the bike this weekend. let this blog post be a reminder to me to *never* eat that much again.