I am proud to say the Minnesota State Fair is the second largest state fair in America behind Texas. For those of us who live here in Minnesota, we love our fair! There are fun things to do for the whole family. However the best part, for a foodie like myself, is of course the food!
There are so many fun and delicious things to eat at the fair. There are, I think, over 50 foods on a stick from mac and cheese and spaghetti to salad. My favorite food, however, are the mini doughnuts.
So how do you go to a place that only comes once a year and not indulge? Further, how do you indulge and not go off the deep end and pack on the pounds?
My husband and I go to the fair every year and manage to eat everything we want and not feel like we ate a whole butter princess the next day. (You know, the butter heads, Princess Kay of the Milky Way?) How do we do this?
The first motivation is money. We don’t want to spend a week’s salary at the fair which is easy to do. The food, rides, and souvenirs are overpriced and we know that. So we keep ourselves on a budget.
Second we don’t want to overeat. We never leave the fair feeling like we will burst. This is because number one, we don’t like that feeling and number two, we want to leave room for all of our favorites.
Basically, what my husband and I do is split almost everything. Most of the treats we like to get are loaded with too much fat, sodium and sugar anyway. Eating a whole serving of cheese curds is just too much. If you eat healthy on a regular basis and really listen to your body you will be able to feel when enough is enough. Your body and taste buds won’t want to eat that much junk. It will make you feel sick.
Now that our oldest is three we shared with her as well this year. Maybe next year we will have to get two bags of doughnuts. My husband said that she actually ate more than we did 🙂
Another thing we do is pace ourselves. We will get a snack and then do something else that is fun. Now that we have kids that is easier. My daughter wants to see the animals and ride on the rides. We actually run out of time to do everything. At six o’clock we hadn’t eaten everything that we wanted to and thought, we better get moving!
I don’t even want to know how many calories that I consumed yesterday at the fair. Even with pacing ourselves and splitting everything you still are going to have too many calories. Those types of foods are going to be very high in calorie, there is no way around it. Even though I wasn’t stuffed I still know that I ate much more than I would normally. What I do now is just make sure that I keep up with what I always do. That is, eat healthy most of the time and stay on my exercise schedule. Then, if I gained anything it will soon be gone. Never feel bad the next day. If you do, you may eat more to try to get rid of those bad feelings. Just get back on track and the pounds will melt away.
So to sum up, how do you not over indulge if you are somewhere that you are tempted? 1. Stay on a budget 2. Share your food and really taste it 3. Keep busy with many activities. If you do that you will be fine!