When your lower body is strong and used to carrying your body weight back and forth, there isn’t a strong need to work out the upper body. This is the problem I have, and thus means my upper body is quite a bit weaker then my lower half. However, this is a problem I’m trying to resolve using light weights and lots of reps. Winston re-introduced a reluctant me to weights the other day, and he first tried me out on 15lb weights. No joy there- they were too heavy! Then he tried out 10lb weights. My biceps could cope, but my triceps couldn’t. So, in the end, he tried out 5lb weights on my triceps, and my triceps and most of my upper body muscles could cope with it! I won’t bore you with the details of the exercises done, but suffice to say that I felt a bit sore afterwards. I’d already done half an hour of cardio earlier that day, and we spent an hour doing weights (a lot of that time was spent learning how to do the exercises properly, and stretching, so not all that time was ‘pumping iron’, hehe!)
My main motivation for doing weights that day was because we wanted to visit the local branch of HOMETOWN BUFFET, and it is better to do some exercise to compensate for major food intake then none at all! I basically stuffed my face, and so did Winston. However, Winston has an aversion to desserts if they’re not of the cookie and vanilla icecream variety, so he had more plates of savoury food then I did. Hometown buffet only costs about $10 per person at dinnertime, so it was well cheap, and the range of food you could pick from was a lot more diverse then a buffet place in London. It is known for making ‘homecooked’ American food with a bias towards the deep-fried, saucy, and barbecued! Winston told me he used to go there with his friend Yan during university days because of its cheapness, and because he loved the deep fried chicken.
When I say deep-fried, that place really deep fries chicken until the oil is oozing out of the perfectly cooked piece of chicken wrapped in its crispy seasoned skin jacket- a principle it lends to all other deep fried items of food. And a principle it carries out very well.
I have a particular method of eating at buffets that has held me in good stead over the years. My method has relaxed a bit as I’ve gotten older, but generally, you avoid eating any savoury carbohydrates like potatoes, rice or noodles, get one small item of everything on your first plate so that you only pick what you like when you get subsequent plates, and avoid drinking much while you’re eating multiple plates of food. One thing about American buffets is if you don’t like something, you can leave it, and you won’t be charged a penalty for doing so. But can you imagine the amount of waste there must be with American buffets if you really don’t like a food item, or only partially eat it? This is a question I put to Winston, and I asked him if wasted food was composted, or perhaps even fed as slop to pigs. Winston told me health rules over here mean that not all wasted food is ‘re-used’. Instead, it is just thrown away or disposed of accordingly (maybe via incineration or something is my guess). In London, most buffet places operate a wastage policy where the amount of waste left affects the size of the wastage monetary fine. I think this is the right way to go because it makes the public more conscious of what they choose to eat without leaving much waste. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a complete angel when it came to eating all my food. I did leave some waste behind, but this is not something I do normally!
I took pictures of all the plates of food I obtained from the buffet place. What you see on those plates is what I mostly ate. When something was too breaded (e.g the corn dog) or too saucey (like heavily coated saucy ribs) or too strongly seasoned, I’d only eat a bit of it, hence the waste. I’ve listed what I selected on each plate, so you can see the diversity of dishes I tried. I avoided certain items like deep fried egg rolls, since you can eat those anywhere, and only ate one tiny portion of food if it was swimming in a creamy sauce for taste purposes- such food leaves me feeling a bit bloated if I eat too much of it (I avoid eating large portions of most dairy products- must be a bit of the lactose intolerancy inherent in the South East Asian race in me, lol!)
I took two pictures of the first plate I had since the chicken thigh obscured all the other goodies on my plate:
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| Yum! |
First plate: Small piece boiled and lightly seasoned cabbage; 2 seasoned potato wedges; 1 corn dog; 2 popcorn breaded prawns; 1 tiny piece sage stuffing; 1 piece sautéed Portuguese sausage with green peppers; 1 piece sautéed beef with celery and carrots; 1 small portion buffalo babyback ribs; 1 deep fried seasoned chicken thigh; 1 tiny portion creamy chicken; 1 tiny piece spoonbread.
Second plate: 2 large BBQ sauced ribs; 1 small portion honey glazed babyback ribs; 1 piece calzone enclosing pepperoni, mozzarella and pork bits; 1 piece sweet and sour chicken; 1 tiny piece garlic toasted bread; 1 small portion stir-fried mixed veg; 1 portion mixed raw salad leaves, sliced raw mushrooms, cooked sliced beetroot, and cooked sweetcorn kernels drizzled with low calorie French dressing and sprinkled with roasted pine nuts.
Third plate: 1 jalapeño cornbread muffin (that I only had 2 small bites of since it was too sweet to me for it to be a savoury, which is what it was designed for); 1 medium piece of baked sweet potato; 1 tiny portion minced taco meat; 1 tiny portion broccoli and bacon salad; few boiled broccoli florets; 1 small and very oniony portion of onion salsa with coriander; 1 highly spiced medium portion of mexican tomato salsa; 1 small portion of Mexican mixed sweetcorn salad; few slices of boiled beetroot (again, I know, but I love beetroot!).
Fourth plate: Dessert! Luckily, I was able to cut small portions of each dessert I put on my plate. Usual American portion size is three times as large for each cut-able dessert. In the bowl was: one cinnamon cookie; 1 tiny portion hot peach cobbler; 1 tiny portion hot peach oat crumble; 1 tiny portion hot bread and butter pudding. In the other bowl: fat free plain frozen yogurt sprinkled with some chopped walnuts. On the plate: 1 small piece plain chocolate cake; 1 small piece American brownie; 1 small piece carrot cake with cheese frosting; 1 small piece moist chocolate cake; 1 piece of chocolate fudge (which was so sweet I could only eat a tiny bite of it and thus left it).
After such a huge feast, I was so full I couldn’t stand completely straight because that made my distended stomach hurt! I’d drank half a medium glass of Mexican cinnamon milk and consumed a few small portions of fresh cut pineapple after my huge meal to help with digestion, but such measures only helped a tiny bit.
Looking and thinking about food later that evening hurt my overly sated body and mind, so I didn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day, and I chilled out with Winston being a couch potato!
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