Tahoe Joe...My All Time Low!

   As you know from my previous blogs about traveling and my poor eating habits, I have a hard time sticking to healthy habits when I'm on the move. And I will be completely honest, a recent overnight trip to Bakersfield began the same way. A couple days before we left we were on Yelp trying to figure out where we were going to have dinner and what we were going to order...it got out of hand. When the time came we ended up going to a restaurant called TAHOE JOE'S FAMOUS STEAKHOUSE. My experience there will be an experience that I will never forget. As we were being seated at our table I took a good look around and had an epiphany:

   70% of the people in this are obese or morbidly obese!

   Right away I turned to Ryan and said, "Babe, I really shouldn't be here!" He looked at me with a confused look on his face and I just vented everything that was going through my head. If I am walking into a restaurant and everyone around me is my size or bigger, then it is not a place that I should be eating. It was terrifying and emotional all at the same time to be experiencing this. From that moment on my dining experience took a completely different turn and I want to actually show you how it triggered my brain to think about dining out differently.

 

   So this was my "healthy" choice: spring lettuce, balsamic vinaigrette, blue cheese, tomato slices and pecans. It was absolutely delicious and my favorite part of the meal.

   Ryan and I also shared some fried onions pieces, but we didn't even come close to finishing them because they were so greasy. This is literally what we left on our plate!

 

   This is the plate of food that came to me and it is a lot larger in real life than it looks. In fact it was so massive that I couldn't stand the thought of actually eating it or taking  the leftovers. After 2 bites of steak it was so heavy and dry I could feel the constipation coming on. The green beans were also full of grease and I couldn't even eat them. 

 

Even though there was so much food I left all of this on my plate. Just the thought of eating all of this food made me sick to my stomach and I had to acknowledge that my body just didn't want it. I had to force my myself to look at this plate and realize that this is how much I would normally over-feed myself. This is part of the reason I have problems... I have to be able to know that it's okay not to eat everything on the plate and that I need to be making healthier choices. I really feel like this experience was a wake-up call!