Cheat Day Recovery

Saturday ended up being a monumental "Cheat Day". We had a previously planned dinner party for Saturday night, so we knew going into this challenge that Saturday night was going to be a no holds barred affair.

The day started off well. I had a good breakfast (pictured above). It consisted of leftover enchilada chicken, topped with 2 scrambled eggs, chopped red onion, and chopped cilantro. Could have stepped it up a notch with some avocado and a sprinkling of cheese, but this did me just fine. A couple good cups 'o joe and I'm ready to hit the gym.

Things went well at the gym. We helped out with the intro class at 8 am and then got ready to hit the WOD ourselves. Saturday's WOD included a fair amount of snatches, so I decided to drop the weight from the prescribed 95# and went with 80# so that I could work on technique. I was able to keep the intensity up rather high, but not sacrifice form too much to get there. I think it was a good idea to go with the lighter weight.

Lunch we stayed pretty much to the challenge, but it was after lunch that things started to fall apart at the seams. One thing we didn't plan for was being invited to a retirement party for a good friend's Dad. Mark's Dad is from Guam and it was sure to be a Chamorro cuisine blowout. Since we left Guam in 2003, Amy and I have only had Chamorro food one time, and it was a rather diappointing experience. This party did anything but disappoint. From the moment we got to the party it felt like I was back on Guam. The neighborhood, even though it was San Marcos, the people and of course the spread. They had everything: red rice, pan de leche, various types of kelaguen, ribs, chicken, empanadas and the creme de la creme, a whole roasted pig.

Amy and I tried to control ourselves, considering we knew we had another party to go to in just an hour. On my first trip through I had a small serving of red rice, pan de leche, chicken, drief beef, shrimp kelaguen and beef kelaguen, a spicy empanada, and of course some of that roast pig. I put a healthy serving of finideni over all of it and sat back and enjoyed. From the first bite of red rice soaked in finideni I was transported back 5 years to my last good Chamoru meal on Guam. Everything at this party was very authentic and very good. The shrimp kelaguen was fantastic and the beef kelaguen was loaded with peppers. The pig was roasted perfectly. I actually didn't make a second trip, but I did finish off Amy's red rice and pork, but I had to go back through the line to get some more finideni. Man, I miss that stuff. I also tried a traditional coconut, jellied dessert type thing. Everybody raved about it, but it wasn't my thing.

We would have loved to stay at the party longer, but we had a tapas dinner party to get to. Time for more food, ugh! We zipped home quick to pick up our offering for the party and we were back at it again. The tapas were plentiful, too many for me to recall. We brought puff pastry with bleu cheese baked in and topped with prosciutto wrapped figs, yum! There were also some spicy shrimp, tasty potatoes, scallop ceviche, a prosciutto and tomotao sauce bruschetta and some other things I don't recall. Plenty of great wine was flowing as well. I controlled myself pretty well on the wine. Only had 2 glasses, plus a small taste of the chocolate port that we brought. I lost it a bit on the dessert. Somebody brought two huge boxes of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, those always remind me of being a little kid and eating box after box of those, so of course I ate way too many chocolates. I also ate several of the brown sugar & cinnamon melt-away cookies that Amy baked. They were quite a hit, even though Amy was quite disappointed because they didn't exactly melt in your mouth. Needless to say, by the time we rolled out, I was hurtin'. Belly was full and I was ready for bed.

Today was recovery day. We stayed in the zone and stuck with the no-sugar/no-grain rule. I even avoided all the naughty teasers at Costco. Amy struck gold with crockpot again tonight. We had pork tenderloin that she spiced with a smoky paprika and garlic and threw in some cubed turnips and butternut squash.

Was going to try to get a run in today, but that fell by the wayside as we made an unscheduled trip to Ikea and then a picnic at Mission Bay Park.

Time to get back at it tomorrow. Oh, the damage from last night's cheating resulted in a morning weight of 156.2. Good thing I'm not obsessed about my weight