Wackadoo: Game On Day Off

The only good redeeming aspect of this whacked Game On! diet I have been doing (yes, it does feel like FOREVER) is The Day Off.  The rules state that one day each week you can basically be all, “EFF THIS Game On! I am going to eat unhealthy fats and drink whatever I want even if it is a vile carb like skim milk!”  As you might imagine, C-R-A-Z-Y times.

On The Day Off (TDO) you can consume UNLIMITED alcohol, so obviously there is a lot at stake in selecting TDO each week.  Teammate Karyn and I will literally spend hours Monday mornings at work strategizing TDO placement based on our upcoming social events.  We will mull over hard-hitting questions like: Should we take TDO Wednesday to enjoy our work happy hour? (The answer to that one turned out to be a resounding YES, mostly because our boss was buying.)

Taken with my iPhone

This particular happy hour marked my first visit to a drinking establishment in the Game On! era. I was soooo looking forward to consuming metabolism-slowing alcohol and food that was fried and/or covered with cheese that I could practically taste the game-sanctioned pleasure. However, mid happy hour I felt an unfamiliar sense of guilt as I thought about the weeks of healthy eating I was undoing with each TDO mouthful. WHAT in the name of the Sweet Baby Jesus is this crazypants diet doing to the wine guzzling, chicken finger lovin’, chocoholic Jessica that we all know and relate to?  I shared my identity crisis with my teammates in an email the following morning (largely to get five communication points):

Spinach salad at lunch. That is a LOT of chewing. Yesterday was my day off so I could enjoy work happy hour. Drinks are yummy but this wackadoo diet already has my body feeling all goofy when it eats unhealthy foods. Veeeery unsettling. My world is topsy turvy!

After the happy hour debacle, I was determined to properly revel in the nutritional rule-breaking freedom of my next day off.  Here is how last week’s went down:

7:30 a.m. Homemade chocolate chip muffins and glass upon glass of carb-laden skim milk for breakfast. Now THIS is living.

9:53 a.m. Stop at T-Ho’s for medium iced coffee with French Vanilla, milk and sugar, which is my usual daily allowable 100 calorie snack.  Those five chocolate glazed Timbits? Those are allll TDO.

11:37 a.m. I don’t have to wait at least two hours between meals today! Lunch time. Leftover non-whole grain pasta and homemade sauce from my Mom. HANG ON…where’s the meatballs I requested? I haven’t had beef in WEEKS!  A quick trip to my parents and the meatball crisis is averted. Just because I can, I sprinkle the entire plate with a unhealthy dose of Parmesan cheese.

2:15 p.m. Seems like shame to let the three uneaten muffins from this morning go to waste. It isn’t like I can eat them tomorrow when I am back on the Game On! wagon. Snack time.

4:40 p.m. I haven’t ingested a single bit of unprocessed food yet today, and so in a moment of TDO weakness, I make stir fry for dinner. I defiantly have it with white rice instead of brown, and I eat WAY more than a fist-sized portion. Take that Game On!

7:05 p.m. All hell breaks lose. My Mom texts from Bonefish Grill to ask if I want some Bang Bang shrimp. Do I want Bang Bang shrimp? YES! I pour myself a drink.

8:15 p.m. Downing Sipping a glass of red wine when the Bang Bang shrimp arrive. Those little suckers are in my house for exactly one minute before I have eaten the entire container while standing at my kitchen table. Disgusting and delicious all at the same time.

8:30 p.m. I just remembered that my Dad made fudge yesterday! (Yes, I do have The Best parents.) For the next two hours, I eat fudge steadily. I haven’t had this much chocolate at once since I was nine. You know what goes great with fudge? Milk.

11:00 p.m. I am beyond full, but as I eye the clock I realize I still have one more hour of decadence. I think about the six other days of deprivation and decide I CAN eat one more piece of fudge. It would practically be a crime NOT to! I wash it down with another glass of Gnarly Head Cab for good measure. Perfect.

The next day my friend Jim invited me last minute to go to the Sabres game (Score again for me! Err, I mean thanks Jim!) which turned out to be…unfortunate. I say this not only because the Sabres lost to the lowly Islanders 5-2, but I will let my email to my teammates have the last word:

In a poorly planned move I had my day off on Thursday and last night I went to the hockey game. We went to Colter Bay beforehand where I enjoyed a salad with grilled chicken and oil and vinegar and my dining companions had club sandwiches, melts, burgers, burritos…you get the picture…all with fries and beers. HOLY HANNAH was it hard and SUCKY.

Then I went to the game where I could NOT DRINK and the Sabres pathetic play on the ice made most of their fans DREAM they could be alcoholics…and yet I did not drink.

THEN I went to Geckos and watched people drink SOME MORE all the while just waiting until I could go home and curl up with some Kashi cereal and Greek yogurt, which I devoured at 2 a.m.(with almonds)  like a drowning person grasps for a life preserver. Even the hot guys at Geckos could not compete with my visions of a thumb-sized amount of a healthy fat.

I feel so much better having shared this evening from hell with you, my comrades in Wackadoo-ness. Thank you for listening. I knew you guys would understand!

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