We had been planning our trip to Italy since March of this year and we finally got to spend a little over a week hopping from Rome to Naples to Agerola and Amalfi Coast. It was an amazing holiday, and the colors of fall made our outdoor walks all the more gorgeous.
Of course, I had braced myself to eat pizza, pasta, gelato and all that because it IS Italy after all and how could I say no? My itinerary included eating margherita pizza from its birthplace in Naples, trying caccio e pepe in Rome, and enjoying a cappuccino e cornetto in zero degree weather. And yes, I got what I asked for: I left Manila with a flat stomach and came home pregnant with a bloat baby. In fact, both my husband and I had bloat babies haha.
So now that I'm home, it's back to regular programming, folks! But I learned a couple of things from the trip and from purposely throwing myself off the Primal wagon:
Gluten bloat for me is a given. Thank God for chunky sweaters and bulky jackets.
I can't go more than two days without a proper serving of vegetables or my gut goes berserk. It still hasn't forgiven me. What might have saved me from a worse situation were the 25,000+ steps we walked everyday and the fact that we skipped dinner just about every other day because we were jet-lagged and chose to sleep early.
Apparently, Italian breakfasts are heavy on bread and leaning towards sweet more than savory. Everywhere we went we would wake up to a gorgeous spread of different kinds of bread and pastries and little jars of jam and Nutella. I would have a little bite of everything, devour the croissant and load up on the cold cuts and cheese. When we requested some greens with our breakfast our hosts told us it was an odd request and nobody eats salad for breakfast, but they arranged it for us anyway. :)
That was literally the most carbs I have eaten in a single week since going Primal. Haha! But no regrets, people! Like I tell my coaching clients, if you decide to treat yourself to something that is non-Primal, then it's got to be worth it. And this experience certainly was worth it. But the only time I'll probably ever eat that much carbs again is when I return to Italy.
That said, we did have some really awesome primal meals, and the ones that stood out for me were the bistecca and bufala insalata at Amico Bio right by the ruins of the ampitheater in Sta Maria Capua Vetere, the catch of the day at Da Gemma in Amalfi Coast, and the steak and salad at Beef Bazaar on Via Germanico in Rome. Delizioso!
And as with most of our trips, we worked some easy treks into our itinerary and explored Via Appia right outside Rome, and took in amazing views of Amalfi Coast along the Path of the Gods in Agerola. Of course, long walks were a given when touring the archaeological sites in Rome and the ruins of Pompeii.
Thus ends my awesome Italian holiday! Burp.