The Two Day Super Bowl Hangover

Well, that was dumb. Unless, of course, it was brilliant.

The Tour de Wings was on Saturday. The Super Bowl was on Sunday. And today is the start of Schenectady Beer Week. Fortunately, Schenectady Beer Week is a full week long, so I can justify missing this first day. Actually, it may take me a few days to get out there, but I’ll most definitely get in on the fun.

Remember how just a couple days ago I told you how effective my diet was at taking off the holiday eating weight? Well, I literally put on five pounds over the weekend. That’s what stopping at five local places for chicken wings and beer will do to you. Especially if you follow that up with the Super Bowl and all of its related eating and drinking.

So in what universe might this have been brilliant? I’m glad you asked.

While I had hoped to make the Tour de Wings a walking tour, even the walking group abandoned their post and got in the car to drive. That said, I did make the four mile walk home with a stop along the way for an iced tea at Starbucks. The stop was as much to use the bathroom and recharge my phone, as it was for hydration. All those wings are salty, and that adds up.

The walk helped make me feel a little bit closer to human again. Over the course of the afternoon, I ended up eating about twenty wings, five beers, and a quarter of a pizza. Hey, man cannot live on wings and beer alone.

Results from the tour will be posted later this week.

Personally, the result of the tour was that my traditional Super Bowl hangover came a day early. And it’s not a typical beer hangover. No, it’s a food hangover. Which meant that on Sunday, I had no interest in eating any more chicken wings. Really, at this point I might be able to go months before I’m struck with the desire to eat another wing.

The brilliant part was that this made the attempt at a healthier Super Bowl feel less depressing.

During the game itself, I only had two beers. Two. I started with one from Massachusetts. It was Jack’s Abby Private Rye. And then later I moved on to something from as close to LA as I could find. I picked up a bottle of The Bruery’s Oude Tart from 2013. Granted, the second one was a little bigger. But one of the nice things about drinking better beer is that you take it slowly to really appreciate what’s in the glass.

That moderation on Sunday extended to the food itself. The plan I had laid out held true. There was buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, and spicy greens.

The most decadent part of that was the mac and cheese, but to control my portion, I made just a single serving of the stuff. It was big enough to feel like a treat, and I didn’t cut any caloric corners. Blue cheese, butter, whole milk, sour cream, and cream cheese all found there way into the pot. But the chicken was diced pieces of skinless breast meat, and the pasta was 100% whole grain.

In the second half, I found myself dipping those buffalo chicken pretzel pieces into my homemade blue cheese dressing, which is pretty much just sour cream and cheese.

But nothing was fried. I did not drown my food in multiple sticks of butter, as I have in years past. The feast wasn’t based on round after round of starchy potatoes. Nor did I eat or drink myself into oblivion. Today, I’m tired, but am feeling fine. Or, at least, I would have been feeling fine had I not stepped on a scale and seen the damage I’ve done to a month of hard work.

Still, I have no regrets. It was totally worth it. And I can’t wait to tell you about the wings.