X10 Challenge Week 8 – It’s All Connected

Last week’s challenge post spurred some great conversation on and off the blog. Y’all confirmed what I was thinking – health is more important than (just) weight. No, I cannot let the scale get out of control, but I need to think about how the rest of this body is working as well. As an example, let me tell you about my Vegas weekend.

First off, it was awesome. A great time. But more about that in a later post.

We got up super early on Friday to catch our plane to Vegas. 26 hours later, I fell into bed, but only for a few hours since I was hopped up on Red Bull. I woke up early the next morning ready to run a marathon. I had world famous mac and cheese (per a friend… it was good, but not the best ever for my taste buds) for lunch that day, followed up by a soda tasting (yes, fantastic) at Coca Cola World.

My caffeinated drink-induced high left the system right around the time I was supposed to get pretty for the wedding we were there to attend, but I put myself together to enjoy the beautiful wedding, a sumptuous dinner, and a few hours of casino time. I woke up at a more acceptable time Sunday morning, but only due to a horrible anxiety attack. Worse than having too much to worry about – I couldn’t figure out why I was having this attack. By this time in the weekend, my skin had become super dry. I couldn’t drink enough water to satisfy my thirst. I felt horribly bloated and my feet and calves were killing me. Why?

My food diary was laughable for this weekend. Shrimp cocktail, red wine, chocolate and the best piece of steak I ever had were the good parts of the list. Red bull, vodka, international sodas, a large bag of M&Ms, and airport Chinese were the bad parts. Notice there is not a single fruit or vegetable in that list. (Oh wait – I did have a smoothie one day.)

I’m still pretty tired today, but a morning of water (seriously – like a gallon), lunch of soup and a Bolthouse Farms Blue Goodness drink and I’m already improving. My mind issues have calmed down as has the swelling in my feet. Finding this correlation between my food and how my body reacts was a great science experiment. I need to remember this extreme feeling when I am considering a small splurge on your average Tuesday.

Do you believe that what you eat can affect your mood or other body systems that it doesn’t directly connect to? I always thought that was a bunch of hooie, but now I’m a believer!

P.S. All of this said, you can probably guess – yes, I did gain some weight this week, too, but I bet this will come off relatively easily once the dehydration is over and the exercise schedule includes more than shaking tail feathers and wandering the Vegas strip.

 

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