We’re recently home from a trip to the area where I grew up. We did some sightseeing, we spent time with many people, and we ate.
If it wasn’t clear to me already, I have a solid understanding of why I was overweight when I was young.
All of the “we have to eat there” places were junk food: two pizza places (though only one for pizza), two ice cream places (though friends we stayed with out of that area took us to another ice cream place that was also amazing), fudge and salt water taffy, a bakery.
It was all delicious. Tasty in its own right, but also tasty sharing it with my new* family—making new memories with old foods.
*That’s “new” relative to the last time I ate most of these foods.
So much more junk food than we typically eat. We might have had as much ice cream in 10 days as we’ve had in 2019.
But all the servings were small—the smallest available ice cream or split a sundae. One piece of salt water taffy. A tiny piece of fudge. A cream puff instead of an eclair.
But—it was special. A week and change of special occasion, I suppose. We don’t have health issues that we needed to ignore to be able to indulge. And the rest of the time, we ate relatively well. Lots of fruit. Some salads. Veggies. Burmese food one night. (New to me, and delicious!) Veggie burgers at all of our hosts’ homes (all different kinds, and all tasty!)
Now we’re home, and we’re getting back into our swing of things. I’ve been craving sweets, but I know cravings kick in when I’ve had sweets more than maybe two days in succession. It’ll take a week or two of no sweets before the cravings mostly go away, but I know that ahead of time and am ready to take back that power.
No problems here (so far) with some extra indulging. But counterbalanced in healthy food with a solid period of recalibrating upon return.
In case you’re curious, these were my go-to places:
on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ:
- Manco and Manco for pizza
- Kohr Brothers for ice cream (frozen custard)
- Shriver’s for salt water taffy
- Steel’s for fudge
elsewhere in NJ:
- Franco’s Place in Haddon Twp. for panzarotti
- McMillan’s Bakery in Haddon Twp. for nearly anything. (Their cream donuts are amazing. According to the Climbing Daddy: “Guy walks into a bakery … ‘how good can a donut with whipped cream be?!?!’ … Guy walks out of a bakery fully educated … that was the best donut ever …”)
- Friendly’s around the area but dying out for ice cream sundaes (the options are crap around here for sundaes)
