He Ain't Heavy....

Everyone knows it's not too hard to find a good meal in the USA.  And it's no secret that I enjoy a good meal.  Sharon and I have both been to the US many times but for some reason this time more than ever, we've really noticed the constant barrage of food adverts on billboards and TV.

The TV ads are not even timed to coincide with meal times.  You can be sitting there at 5am, awake because of jetlag and not even entertaining the idea of food when BLAM, you suddenly know all about the best philly cheese steak sub in the world and your life won't be able to continue until you hunt one down and cram it into your face.

As I sit here writing this at midnight, I have no doubt that tonight I will be dreaming about the latest Dunkin Donuts turkey sausage breakfast sandwich because I've seen the ad about 5 times today already (in about 2 hours of watching TV).  I know, turkey sausage from a donut shop, wtf.

But what can you do when you stop at a simple diner and order a quick snack, and end up with this on your table:

I don't know how she ate all that (I obviously just had the soup).

Maybe we're thinking about it more because we know we're here for a year so we have to integrate ourselves into some kind of daily routine, rather than just being in holiday mode the whole time we're here and not caring.  It could also be because we've been in Florida most of the time so far; there does seem to be more of an emphasis on food there than in the other states that we're now starting to explore.

Most people's first reaction when I told them we were going to the States for a year was along the lines of "You'll be the size of a house by the time you come back!".  I think most people think we're travelling in an RV to save me the embarrassment of having to be extracted from the roof of some hotel with a crane after consuming my own bodyweight in cheeseburgers.

Back home I use our garage space as a gym.  That's obviously not an option now, but I've managed to put measures in place to offset the Man Vs Food style eatathons.  I bought some dumbells to work out with, and a weighted vest that seems to be causing some amusement when I describe it to people we meet.

Basically, it's impossible to do bench press without a bench.  And I can hardly carry a bench press around with us for a year.  So this lets me do pushups with enough extra weight to make it worthwhile (as well as weighted chinups, squats, etc).  It weighs 140lbs at full weight.  Here I am modelling it in style:

I thought it made me look a bit like Bane without the mask.  Sharon has kindly informed me that it makes me look more like a twat.

Sharon's exercise of choice is running, something which I fail miserably at, partly because it does my knees in and partly because it requires a concentration span of longer than 30 seconds.  So she's going it alone on that one.

Whatever happens, hopefully neither of us will have to purchase two seats on the way home at the end of the year...