Foodie Overload

I still feel gross.

It's been a week since my my boyfriend's family's Labor Day Extravaganza, and I can still taste each and every cream-cheese- and mayonaise-based dip as if I devoured it seconds ago. I may as well have bathed myself in hydrogenated oil; it might have been easier to wash off.

Instead, I gorged on an amazing lineup of food: Chess Squares; brownies; shrimp n grits; eggs, spinach and goat cheese with onions; fritos; cream cheese and Pickapepper sauce; shrimp boil ... the list goes on. And none of the food was face value; the brownies had a layer of Symphony chocolate bar at the bottom; the grits were cheesy; the onions sauteed in bacon fat. I can picture my taste buds drunkenly stumbling and eventually passing out from gluttony. I don't want to step on the scale.

I feel this way after this weekend every year. Labor Day with his family is pretty simple -- his parents, brother and sister's family all I've get together at a lake house in Arkansas to hang out, ride in a pontoon boat and eat. I vowed this year to only gain a pound that weekend, even though I know I won't weigh myself. I might actually be making up for it a bit because I've been sick the past few days and surely consumed less calories than normal.

Usually I can take a weekend and indulge -- I'm specifically thinking of our now annual trip to New Orleans' Jazz Fest that's filled with nothing but oh-so-tasty fat grams -- because I'm mid-season and therefore have a great metabolism and a regular, solid workout schedule. But Labor Day weekend follows the weekend of my last race, the Chicago Triathlon, which signals the start of September: my month off.

I've tried to maintain a constant stream of veggies. Honestly, I pry won't feel back to normal until I'm working out regularly again. Maybe that's my problem -- not the food.