Post-vacation blues and you are what you eat

In August, John and I went on a 10-day road trip to the east coast of Canada. We stopped in Quebec City, Bay of Fundy (on the New Brunswick side) and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. It was amazing! There are so many interesting things to do and beautiful things to see. For example, the view from our tent at Cape Breton Island. We woke up to this every morning:


The Cabot Trail was beautiful. On the first morning, we went out for a drive and pulled off to the side of the road to snap a few pictures. The scenery was so pretty and we were a little hungry so we decided to have a mini-picnic for breakfast. It definitely beats my usual breakfast locale, which is my dreary grey cubicle at work.

Behold!
*sigh* why did I come back home again?

Anyway, I'm getting a bit off track. The point of this post is supposed to be about food. I had a grand old time on vacation. We spend about half of our time camping and eating camp food (i.e., burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, beer, beer, beer) and the other half of our time staying in hotels and eating restaurant food (i.e., a side of fries with everything!). In Quebec City, we definitely indulged in the locale cuisine ... mmm, poutine ... I had a salad once but it came with duck confit (mmm, duck braised in fat) which probably cancelled out the healthiness of the salad. Oh, and also it came in a tortilla bowl, with a side of bread (white) and butter (lots) and I washed it down with beer. When we came back, we were too tired to go grocery shopping right away so we ended up eating a lot of take-out and other convenience foods.

I felt terrible when I came back from vacation. Part of it was the post-vacation blues, coming back to the ugly concrete GTA after spending all so much time in beautiful nature and interacting with people who were actually nice and friendly was quite the shock. The other part was likely due to the lack of nutrients in my system. My hair was looking limp and lifeless, my face started breaking out and my skin was looking ashen and unhealthy. I felt awful, I had no energy at all...waking up and trying to get out of bed every morning was almost impossible. I was perpetually in a bad mood and was constantly struggling to get through the day. After a week of feeling like crap, I got myself to the grocery store and bulk food store and picked up the following feel-good supplies:
- lemons
- cranberries (frozen)
- hemp seeds
- cacao nibs
- chia seeds
- bananas
- walnuts
- spinach
- protein powder (chocolate flavoured)

With these items I made the following yummy things:
- water + lemon - ok, so its not very fancy. but I would drink it at work all day and at home all night.
- cranberry smoothies - with greek yogurt
- green smoothies!! made with spinach + varying combinations of bananas, cranberries, peaches, pineapples, pears and/or mangoes
- hemp milk - blended a couple of tbsps of seeds with a cup of water. Sometimes I mixed in cacao nibs, agave nectar and a pinch of salt to make it chocolate hemp milk and NO I did not get high off the hemp seeds. I don't think they sell anything containing THC in Bulk Barn.
- chia pudding - a couple of tbsps of chia seeds soaked in a cup of hemp milk or vanilla rice milk for about 15 minutes (stir every once in awhile). I'd also add varying combinations of dried cranberries, cacao nibs, walnuts and/or banana slices. Banana + walnut was my favourite. I learned that it's better to let the chia soak for a bit before adding the extras. When I mixed everything together first and then added the milk, I found the chia seeds tended to clump together.

I started cooking dinner again - with vegetables! quinoa! not deep-fried meat! legumes (beans/lentils)! And I started to hit the gym again. This is where the protein powder comes in, I found if I had a protein drink after a hard work-out, my recovery time was much quicker. Mmm, and the chocolate flavour tastes surprisingly inoffensive. The brand that I'm using right now is Whey Gourmet. I'll put this to the test when I start training for my next half-marathon.

I've been feeling much better this week. My energy levels are starting to perk back up again and I'm feeling a lot less like a dirty slob. I need to start setting my next set of goals. This little hiatus from doing things has been nice, but without a goal to work towards, I feel like I'm drifting around aimlessly :(