A break away from your routine can be a funny thing. In this couple of weeks I’ve been in Hong Kong, I feel like I’ve seen my life in Bangkok with perfect clarity and figured out how to solve most of the problems.
One of the main things I’ve vowed to do differently is to eat like a normal person, instead of like a split personality bodybuilder/cookie monster. You know, spending a few days rigidly counting calories and macros and then the next few days stuffing everything sugary and delicious into your face like you’ll never get the chance again.
I’m also planning to become the strongest, fittest woman in Bangkok. I’ll be weightlifting four times a week, doing high intensity cardio twice a week and some lovely, zen-like yoga a few times a week, too. Needless to say, I’ll also be really productive at work, a brilliant girlfriend to my boyfriend and dog mum to my chihuahua. I’ve got it all planned out.
In Hong Kong, I feel like I’ve gained perspective. Or, it could be that I’ve gained five pounds (and all the post binge guilt that often goes with it) from all the Hong Kong breakfasts of French toast and peanut butter served with milk tea — a delicious, sweet local speciality. Or perhaps that extra belly roll has come from the three desserts I munched on at Mandarin Oriental, or the two crepes I had for lunch on Friday. Or the pizza and Toblerone I ate two nights ago. It’s been a really wonderful trip.
But yes, like I said, I’ve gained perspective now. I have plans of becoming a domestic goddess when I get home; I’ll cook incredible, tasty dishes that satisfy my raging sweet tooth but also work to hone my best body yet. I have plans to make salads that are filling and delicious (not bland and depressing like most of the ones I make) and desserts that are deceptively healthy, with things such as cacao, almond milk, manuka honey, stevia and flax in them. I have an Instagram account; I know the health food buzzwords. How hard can it be?
Of course, I’ve been daydreaming all of these things while munching on incredible full fat, full calories, sugar-packed delicious brownies washed down with cappuccinos.
Somehow, vowing that this terrible eating will soon be in the past makes me even more determined to eat everything delicious Hong Kong has to offer which, if you’ve been to Hong Kong, you’ll know is a whole lot of food. In a completely irrational way, I convinced myself this morning that my legs had doubled in width overnight — despite the fact that last week I was admiring my legs in the mirror, imagining that I had visible muscle definition after three nights staying halfway up a mountain (ooof, how do unfit people get by in Hong Kong?)
These, I realise, are not the thought processes of someone seeing their life with 20/20 vision. I think they are more the hallucinations you have while high on French toast smothered in syrup. Ah, but what a high.
But yeah, by next week, when I’m back in Bangkok, I’ll be a changed person and I’ll be getting my highs from beetroot salads and carob. If I say it enough, I can almost believe it’s true.
