So we’ve all been there. Travelling away from home it’s very hard to maintain eating clean. For me this is one of the most difficult times to maintain my diet because so much convenience food in airports is based on total and utter crap. Nutritionally devoid food loaded with all the wrong stuff. You’re stuck at the airport, you’re hungry, and there’s hardly any choice. (Anyone who has been to Schonefeld airport knows what i’m talking about here!).

Precisely this happened to me the other day at the airport. I was tired and hungry and so I went to Burger King (I know, I know). First of all I want to say that it’s actually not cheap! For a burger, large chips and onion rings for me and my boyfriend it cost 20 euros! (Maybe craaaaazy airport prices but still, I thought it was meant to be cheap??)

Anyway, after feeling ripped off I ate my Burger King. Note that I haven’t eaten this sort of food for a really long time and my body is used to eating clean. Normally, I eat, I feel full, then I stop eating feeling satisfied. When I ate the Burger King it was so scary. I ate, and I ate, and I ate, but no matter how much I ate (and I really pigged out here, i’m talking no holds barred gluttony). I didn’t feel full! I polished off large fries, onion rings and a whopper burger and not even a hint of feeling full. It was the weirdest experience. The Leptin in my body which usually jumps in to say ‘you’re full stop eating!’ just didn’t work. I saw myself shovelling stuff in my mouth but no matter how much I ate, I had no feeling of fullness. I realised I could of eaten that whole meal all over again!!!!

The really scary thing is that I was reading a very good Paelo book, and I read that fast food is actually specially engineered to inhibit Leptin in your body, so you can eat and eat and never feel full, thus you buy more, thus the companies make more money. Genius — for them. This ‘food’ actually isn’t food at all. It’s a product which is engineered to be a food like. Now that’s scary. This food is specifically created to play havoc with your body chemistry so you can’t stop eating it. Its designed to look and smells irresistible.

Anyway I got on my flight after feeling freaked out by this and boy did I start feeling ill. I felt sick, had awful indigestion, my stomach was blown up like a balloon (bearing in mind I’m the sort of person who NEVER gets digestive discomfort normally). I literally thought I was going to throw up on the plane. Then came the crashing tiredness from the carb overload. I had to sleep. The worst part though is that these symptoms didn’t just last two hours though, they lasted TWO days. I didn’t feel back to normal until two days later!!!

Before I started eating clean I used to go to Burger King or wherever and eat fast food, and to be honest, apart from feeling hungry two hours later I didn’t feel any negative effect. I enjoyed the food as a treat. So what changed?

Eating clean over the past few months has naturally detoxed my body so when I exposed it to fast food it went crazy. It literally rejected it, like ‘No way man! What are you putting in me?’ It was a really interesting unintentional experiment. I can’t say i’ll never have fast food like Burger King again but after feeling that ill, I would seriously, seriously think very hard about it before I put that stuff anywhere near my body. If you love your body, feed it with the best! That means clean, fresh, nutritious food tht hasn’t been anywhere near a factory.