Adventures in Candi Land

People fill many roles in their lives; we are employees, students, children, parents, weekend warriors, weekday go-getters, significant others, friends….the list goes on. What also goes on is “life on life’s terms.” Eggie and I have learned a valuable lesson in the last weekish…Candida waits for no one. Recently, life on life’s terms has meant we have filled the role of….cue ominous music here…cheaters. No, not on each other; we are love giants, and love giants love to love other love giants. Rather, we have cheated…repeatedly…on our anti-candida diet. Life said, “Hey, we have all of this fun stuff for you to do, but you can’t do it if you’re only eating healthy food!” and we said “Screw candida! Sign us up for two tickets to fun land!” Turns out, it’s a lot like drugs….once you quit, starting back again is never as much fun as you remember.  

On the 28th, Eggie and I attended the Memphis Zombie Massacre; aside from being the most wicked sexy zombies on Beale street, we discovered something disheartening- zombie blood is basically candida food. It’s made of “devil juice” (more commonly known as corn syrup), but you can’t be a zombie without drooling some hemoglobin from your face holes! So we filled our mouths with the sweetest stuff we’d had in weeks….other people thought it was very realistic how we were licking blood from our lips all night, but, really, we were just on a sugar buzz.  

The following day I surprised Eggie with a “Fun in the Sun Day.” This involved lunch at a swanky restaurant downtown. But you can’t fully enjoy a swanky restaurant if all you’re going to eat is lettuce and beans. So we cheated….hard. We had salads with cheese (forbidden!) and sugary/dairy laden dressings (forbidden!), shrimp (discouraged) with grits (forbidden!) and collard greens (good!) cooked in sugar (forbidden!), and washed it all down with a strawberry bread pudding in a mandarin orange/sugar reduction (triple forbidden!!!). “If you’re gonna cheat, cheat right” we said. These early sins made it that much easier to cheat later when, seeking refuge from a short rain, we sat in the Peabody lounge and had sugar-fest girly drinks (hers basically tasted like sunscreen flavored molasses, while I had a strawberry daiquiri). At least they were virgin so we can say we didn’t commit the sin of alcohol on top of everything else (rationalizing is fun!). For dinner we had a picnic of approved, healthy foods while we watched an amazing fireworks show and marvelled at the boldest fox we had ever seen (he came within inches of eating my toes off cause Eggie kept throwing toe-shaped baby carrots at her new pet). It’s just one weekend, you might say. Well, as they say in NA “one is too many and a thousand is never enough.” Let’s emphasize that first part. The next day we were both pretty lethargic and couldn’t seem to find much motivation to move from the bed. Also, I weighed myself and discovered over a pound of gain in just one day. Yeah, that did wonders for my self-esteem. So we spent the week correcting for the bad behavior; you think we would have learned our lesson but nooooooo. Life showed up again this weekend, and again, we answered it’s call….and paid…dearly.  

This past weekend Eggie’s mother and godmother came into town from Montgomery. It was my first meeting with her family, and clearly cause for celebration! And how do Southerners celebrate? That’s right! With fooood! We started our fun-filled weekend with blue chips and the best homemade salsa on earth, courtesy of the Fairy Godmother. Then it was off to Mexican food for more discouraged underwater sea bugs via shrimp fajitas. Not too terribly terrible, but it gets worse. The next day we took them to Shoney’s, where we ate certainly non-organic eggs; I topped mine with ketchup of evil, and Eggie topped hers with coffee and Splenda, grits, and a big bite of bacon. For lunch we took them downtown where we had salads (the cheesy, Caesar-y kind) and more drinks of sugary goodness at the Peabody. Dinner rolled around and it was time to introduce the in-laws over copious amounts of Memphis bar-b-que. However, Eggie’s stomach had other ideas. Rather than enjoying her veggies cooked in fat-back and sugar, Eggie spent the meeting in the bathroom, her intestines reenacting the Battle of Gettysburg. I, on the other hand, gleefully devoured my BBQ portabella salad, complete with sweet BBQ sauce dressing and tortilla shell bowl, as my parents and hers bantered about their wonderful, crazy children. Fast forward to the next day where we say goodbye to her folks via a final meal of I-HOP. Eggie ate wheat toast, for fear of continuing the raging warfare in her gut. I had pancakes. Final results of our second cheater weekend in a row…I gained 4 pounds, Eggie experienced a whole new appreciation for my insistence on high quality toilet paper, and we realized that cheating is just not worth it. On the sweeter side (but not the cheating kind of sweet), Eggie’s peeps are fabulous….but they would have to be to produce such an amazing woman. My love and my candida grew exponentially this weekend.  

So now it’s back to behaving. I’ve lost the weight again, and Eggie’s gut is beginning Reconstruction…although in her version, the South won. Hehehe…eewww. We had a healthy picnic in the park today, and I left feeling better about our committment to this lifestyle change. As for our amore….picnics in the park are just made for lovers, now aren’t they.  

-Cheers, 

Muppet 

Sweet and Spicy, indeed.

 

Our Fun in the Sun Day...feel the love.