Anyone who says eating isn’t a major part of the allure of traveling either has paralyzed tastebuds or isn’t being truthful.  Or they’re simply the kind I’ve never been able to figure out:  dispassionate about food in a take-it or leave-it sort of way.

Never have I been afflicted with that particular brand of apathy.  I adore food and its varying temperatures, textures, colors, aromas, and flavors. Swan-dives into gluttony do me no favors, though.  And my body knows the difference now. It doesn’t enjoy being drugged anymore (actually, it never did, but it took a while for my mind and spirit to catch up).  Also, I’m not a grateful wearer of denim, and we all know how little wiggle room there is where that iron-willed fabric is concerned.

At the same time, what’s the point of travel and adventure if I eat exactly as I do at home?  I love eating clean (no gluten or cow dairy) but when I’m on the Open Road, I tend to take in both the sights and the culinary wonders. Gluten, because of the way it bloats me and saps my energy, is avoided at all costs.  Besides, even on the road there are rice, potato, and corn options in abundance.  I make the occasional indulgence back into the realm of dairy, but it really has to be worth it (superior quality, imaginative presentation).

During the past month I’ve had back-to-back trips to Florida, Wisconsin, and Alabama. And I realized, as I had to tug a little harder to get my denim pants situated around my waistline the other day, that it was time to dial the indulgence back a few degrees.

In my quest for better health and living with more clarity, I’ve dropped 180 pounds along the way.  And put a few rules in place from both ends of the spectrum: eating will be done for both pleasure and nutrition, and not to sledgehammer the living daylights out of unpleasant feelings. No food is off limits, but yes, Virginia, quantity does matter.

For example, last week at a seafood restaurant overlooking Mobile Bay, I knew before seeing the menu I’d be getting in one of my top ten favorites:  fried seafood.  But I ordered two vegetable sides with it and told the waitress to hold the fries.  Anytime a menu has lentils (whether it’s chick pea salad or black beans and rice) I order them for the fiber more than anything else.  Salads as appetizers are a no-brainer. And my secret weapon?  A steady stream of hot water or herbal tea throughout the meal.  Anyone who has ever washed dishes by hand knows the mighty power steaming water has over a greasy plate.

These are all tricks I employ to make crossing over to the other side a little less impactful.  During the past month I’ve moaned with pleasure over velvety crawfish bisque, a fluffy and decadent square of Tiramisu, Seafood Eggs Benedict (minus the English muffin), and Oysters Rockefeller.  I enjoy it all with appreciation and awareness, don’t eat until I’m shaking my head with regret, and always leave something behind on the plate…a small but significant gesture that I’m in charge of the food, not the other way around.

Inspite of the safeguards I put in place, it’s easy, amazingly easy, to let things slide when traveling.  Maybe it’s the combination of the adrenaline of new territory, the stress-charged atmosphere at airports, and edible temptation everywhere that collude to deceive me. And speaking of airports (where I’ve spent a lot of time waiting lately), I realized I’ve been subtly operating under one delusion in particular:  food eaten in airport terminals doesn’t count.  The calories exist in a hologram and don’t really have a consequence.  I’m in survival mode.  I need a little extra comfort before the flight.  The rationales are endless.

Last night on my way home from Mobile, Ala., I made a decision that meant my waiting time at the airport would quadruple:  I volunteered to get bumped from my flight in exchange for an irresistible travel voucher that equals a free plane ticket.  Instead of arriving home at 6:30 p.m., it would be 11:30 p.m.  As I signed on the dotted line I felt the siren call of wanting comfort in the form of food beginning to wail.  Then the ticket agent slid a meal voucher across the formica. All around me were fast food joints pushing burgers, tacos, sweet and sour pork, fried chicken, obscene cinnamon buns as mammoth as they were overly sweet, and ice cream (are you aware there are now cones made of cake?).

Believe it or not, with all the gorgeous fruits of my New Life, there are moments that I get frustrated and infuriated that I can’t just dive back in…Sometimes I really do just want the sensation on my tongue….and the sedative effects of sugar and fat sliding through my body. Especially when I’m overly tired and missing home. Instead, I backed away from the food court, hopped on a moving floor and didn’t look back till I got to my terminal. Which mercifully had a smoothie stand that sold packaged fresh fruit cup.  Two containers of it were my dinner that night. I’d taken a stand against temptation and it felt glorious.  Why fruit cup for dinner?  I was virtually sedentary the entire day, and after a vegetable omelet and grits for breakfast, and nuts and dried fruit for lunch, I was hardly underfed.

There was more food I could have delved into in my back pack (my emergency supply of clean foods), but I knew it would have been mindless eating.  So I pulled out another form of comfort I keep for such emergencies (the latest Town & Country) and dove in.  My digestive track and denim pants both approved.

All I wanted to do was buy a stove top espresso maker.  That was the plan as I walked into the mall yesterday, smack in between the busy-ness of touching down at the airport after nearly two weeks away from home, and a three-hour drive to New Jersey for a Spiritual Retreat at the sanctuary of the one and only Masha Penson.

I get a little edgy if I don’t have espresso in the morning, brewed to the specifications to which I’ve grown accustomed:  the steaming contents of a size medium Bialetti pot, four tablespoons of light cream, and 3/4 tablespoon of honey.  Pure Bliss.  I’d been ten days without this morning elixir and could take no more, so in I popped to Colonie Center and the Coffee Beanery, where they sell great equipment and accessories.

Sorry, espresso always gets me off on a tangent.  So yesterday afternoon, I’m sailing out of Colonie Center with my shiny steel espresso pot and making a beeline for the New York State Thruway when I was stopped cold in my tracks by an orange dress hanging in the entry way of an eyebrow-threading boutique adorably named Arch. They specialize in brow threading and Mehndi tattoos so it was surprising there was clothing at all, but the orange work of art with black embroidery literally shouted to me across the corridor, where ironically, I was bypassing one of my former passions:  those hot and sticky cinnamon buns the size of doorstops.  Or as I like to call them, the binge-eater’s version of shooting up.

Even before pulling the dress off its silver hanger I could tell it was one of those above-the-knee varietals …the blithe and airy dresses I’d only seen on other women.  That’s when the heart started racing.  Was the world ready for this?  Was I?  Before I’d fully yanked the apricot-colored fabric all the way over my head, my inner-knowing kicked in, and I realized I’d be walking out onto public asphalt wearing the little orange dress.  Good thing, because it fit perfectly…something I wasn’t sure would actually happen after 10 days of semi-recreational eating (an occupational hazard of the travel writer).

I loved the way it looked and felt on me, but this was a MINI dress. The thought of walking out from behind the black velvet dressing room curtain terrified me. I first poked my head out, then the rest of me…eyes fixed on the boutique owner and the woman she was waiting on. Uncensored first-few-seconds-of-viewing reactions were what I was after.  If they looked aghast or tried stifling a laugh, that would be my sign to 86 Operation First Mini Dress.

But there was no suppressed laughter, and I detected no flashes of disgust or pity.  I realize it’s wise to take a salewoman’s oohing and aahhing with grain of salt, but Sarah either really loved the little orange dress on me or has missed her calling as an Academy Award caliber actor. Besides, every fiber in me was pulsating with joy.  I loved everything about the dress, from the color and embroidery detail, to the price, and the way the lightness of the fabric danced across my skin.

Some of you regular readers know that an ongoing theme of my transformation has been that of visibility.  Other ways of putting that include allowing myself to feel vulnerable, making frequent trips out of my comfort zone, and confronting fears for the sheer challenge of it (like skulling, parasailing, or letting a man get to know me).

For many years I was hidden.  Literally and figuratively. Carrying the burden of nearly 200 pounds of excess weight plus the unquantifiable emotional pain that accompanies it has a tendency to wreak havoc on your Life force.   I don’t know if in my former state Life avoided me or I avoided Life.  I do know now that Life responds to how I approach it.  When I started paying attention to who I really am, stopped drugging myself with food, and started deconstruction on the wall of protection, Life responded with Amazing people and situations…some of whom seemed to be literally airlifted into my lap. Without me orchestrating it. That’s the beauty of Life and its responsive nature.

So how could I not (grain of saleswoman salt and all) take this dress and love it?  Yes, I was not entirely comfortable walking out the door wearing it. My breathing was guarded and shallow as I sensed wind and sun on my knees…I may have even looked nervously around the parking lot to see if there was a lurking cop. I felt like I’d just broken a major law of proper conduct.  But I kept on walking.  You know why? Beause I can’t remember the last time I said no, turned back, and not taken a challenge by the hand.  So why start now?

It was three years ago I made my annual pilgramage to Virginia to visit my sister and drink in the newness of another Spring as the earth awakened with pale yellow daffodils, cherry blossoms the color of cotton candy, and technicolor tulips, all amid the musical notes from the Robins as they prepped for impending parenthood.

There was something else awakening in April 2009.  Me.  I was four months into a life transition so profound, I knew that to attempt to put it into words would be a futile effort.  So I said nothing to my sister as I arrived at her doorstep after a ten-hour car ride.  But I didn’t have to say anything.  ‘Wow’ was the first syllable out of her mouth.  Dory last saw me over the Christmas holiday, but even in that short time, the physical changes had dug their roots deep enough for them to be, in her words, ‘dramatic!’

Like the nearly 200 pounds of excess weight I carried for 20 years, the 40 pounds I’d dropped since January was merely a symptom of the underlying cause.  In this case it was a state of peace and balance that shifted me from the inside out, making binge-eating not nearly as necessary as it once was. I cleared away the emotional debris and demons that had tormented me for so long.  The short list, in no particular order:  a crippling reflex to people-please, a toxic job, and an unhappy and unfulfilling relationship with a man who was kind and good-hearted, but not right for me as a life partner.

What I’m trying to say, and what I ultimately discovered after years of chasing my tail in circles is, that attempting to solve such deep issues by focusing on calorie-counting, fat grams, food combining, and all the other dieting smoke and mirror diversions was one of the biggest time and energy wasters of my life.  Because all that did was direct me away from the throbbing core of my real issues and into a safe-haven of a La-La Land where I could float obliviously above the turmoil and pretend that all I really needed to do was give Medifast another try. Problem solved.  Right?

Well, I’ll give you a hint.  I’ve dieted since the age of 9.  Regained 100 pounds back twice. And weighed in excess of 300 pounds for 20 years. Corralling food groups into a particular order, or heirarchy, numeric quantity, or timetable did nothing but keep me stuck.

In some Magical way, as only Life can, Life knew I was ready in January 2009. Because those 20 years of being a Big Girl weren’t just spent eating. There was plenty of therapy, 12-step meetings, journaling, crying, and ultimately laughing, as I discovered my worth as a human being had nothing to do with the numbers on the scale.  That was a major spiritual lesson I had to learn…and quite possibly the very reason I incarnated where and when I did and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

But Life stepped in that particular Jaunary  (see the YouTube video on the previous blog for more details) by  putting situations and people in my path to wake me up, make me see I could no longer live in a state of denial about the pain I was in, and last but not least, putting two Angels on either side of me to walk me through the withdrawls of trance-eating and the foods I’d been addicted to for so long.

Their names?  Dallas Page and Terri Lange.  Both of them I consider to be two of the most honest, kind-hearted, and physically fit people I’ve met. And believe me, in all my years of grasping at gurus, saviors, diets, and other straws, I encountered truckloads of charletans. Dallas and Terri walk the walk.  Thanks to YRG and clean eating (no gluten or dairy) Dallas looks and moves better than he did in his 20’s, and Terri has kept her weight off for ten years.

They helped me for sure, but the key ingredient was, I was READY.  Ready to take a look at my life, ready to put a few healthy boundaries on my habits and food choices, and ready to listen to their advice.  I didn’t look at the road ahead.  I didn’t really care about the road ahead.  I only knew I wanted my Life back.  The life I never thought could be possible, but very secretly longed for.  I didn’t care how fast the weight came off, only that the changes that I made felt natural enough to live with longterm.

I told no one.  In my mind that would have implied I was beginning another diet.  And those for me have invariably had disastrous endings.  But that spring day I arrived at my sister’s doorstep, the transfomation was chugging, full and steady steam like a freight train.  I felt it.  She saw it.  We rejoiced in it.

Three years later, I’m back for another visit at Dory’s Virginia Shangri-la. The springs blossoms are exquisitely beautiful and so is my Life. Like my mentor, Dallas, I look and feel better than I did in my 20’s and I’ll be 47 this year.  My intent is to walk a similar path as my other mentor, Terri, and keep in balance long-term.  I know it’s doable.  I know obsessing on it is useless, and I know that remaining in a state that centers around self-love, gratitude, compassion for others, and feeling with awareness is the key.

I Thank God everyday for the Miracles of Spring…and of Life. Keep your eyes open for Miracles…they are not only everywhere…they’re normal.