Pizza, Lemon cake and Eating Differently

This weekend involved a little less meal prep and a little more pizza and cake.

Friday was a special day for me and Pedro, so we went out for pizza.

No lighter alternative, no attempt to make it fit some perfect version of how I’m “supposed” to eat. Just pizza, because that was what the day called for.

And today I woke up, I started the fireplace and I decided this cold rainy October Sunday was the perfect day to bake.

I’ve been thinking about a lemon cake for a while — something really soft and fluffy, with a whey protein frosting and raspberries on top. So that became today’s little project.

And it made me think about how easy it is to describe days like these as “eating badly.”

I do it too.

But really, I didn’t eat badly. I ate differently from how I normally eat.

Most of my days are pretty structured. I like protein, vegetables, proper meals, knowing roughly what I’m eating and having food ready when life gets busy. That’s genuinely how I prefer to eat and how I feel my best.

But that doesn’t mean every meal needs to serve a nutritional purpose.

Sometimes the purpose of the pizza is that it’s Friday, something nice is happening, and you want pizza.

Sometimes the purpose of baking a cake is simply that you really want to see if you can make a fluffy lemon cake with raspberries on top.

And then, because o we have to have some balance in life, we bought 10 kg of whey protein.

Ten kilos.

I know.

It sounds slightly unhinged when I write it down, but we use whey all the time — in shakes, baking, pancakes, scones, frostings and whatever else I decide to experiment with. So while this weekend included pizza and lemon cake, it also included an online order heavier than Blue.

Which, in a strange way, sums up my approach to food quite well. I care about nutrition. A lot. I also really enjoy food. Those two things don’t cancel each other out.

I still find it interesting how quickly we attach words like good, bad, clean or cheating to food. One meal suddenly feels like evidence that we’ve been “good” or “bad” that day.

It’s food. And one weekend is a very small part of a much bigger picture.

For me, balance isn’t eating perfectly and occasionally allowing myself to break the rules. It’s not having such rigid rules in the first place.

I can enjoy pizza on Friday, bake cake on Sunday, and still care about my nutrition.

Those things can exist at the same time.

And for the record, the lemon cake experiment was absolutely worth it.