Let Her Eat Cake

It’s a shame that food as always been an issue for me. Call it body dysmorphia, call it disordered eating, call it bigger, scarier labels, hours of therapy, hours of crying, hours of hating myself has just been a sometimes large, sometimes small factor in my daily life. Something that has grown with me like an ugly mole, the kind that isn’t malignant, but won’t go away as if to say I’m part of you now, so you just have to deal with it.  All of that is to lead up to say that going to an all inclusive resort can be a struggling eaters worst nightmare.

You would think this would be impossible. Struggling, being anxious should be an anomaly in one of these places. Everyone's job is to cater to your every desire and besides all that, the resort that we were staying in was very much Americanized.  All staff, servers, bartenders spoke passable English and after not hearing very much of it for a week, it was a blessing.  So, Elizabeth, you may ask, what on earth do you have to be anxious about?  Oh, dear reader, I will find something don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours.  I can make the impossible, very very possible, believe you me.

Let’s start with the resort itself. We stayed at the Royalton Riviera Cancun.

 We have stayed at it once before and found the food to be better than most all inclusives.  I have found that sometime at these resorts the flavors, the tastes, seem to all run together after awhile, but that had not been our experience at this particular one. Also, they have entertainment every night, quite good entertainment actually.  And the gym, we remembered, was top notch.  Not huge, by any means, but the equipment was all very new and expensive looking.  However, the last time we stayed here they were doing construction on one of the adult only pools, which caused everyone to cluster around the much large one.  This posed some issues, mainly that people were paying the staff to save them chairs in the morning.  Luckily, I’m an early riser so I managed to snag chairs for us everyday, although they were the last ones to grab and it gave me anxiety each morning that I wouldn’t wake up in time and once I did save our chairs, what if someone disregarded our towels, our bags and simply put their own things in their place? Also, after coming from Mexico City where I was chastised for even putting my cell phone on the table next to me instead of securing it in my pocket or bag, the thought of just leaving our things unattended seemed foolish. 

So, when G suggested with twinkling eyes and a smile that he needed to unwind and going to such a place would help him do just that, I tried to keep my food anxiety at bay, not wanting to ruin the trip with my negative self talk, most of which I almost always can't help but to verbalize, as much as I try.

G sprung for a room with an upstairs balcony, something that was a surprise for me, which explains the twinkle and the smile.  I actually couldn’t believe it.  I have never stayed at a hotel with a spiral staircase leading to its own private lounge area, hot tub included.  This girl loves a hot tub and doesn’t care how hot it may be, you better believe I will be using the thing and I did, more than once.

The room itself was extremely nice, the bathroom in particular, having a large bathtub in the center of it.  I used that as well. Love a bath. Call me Meredith from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. If you know, you know.

And we had a great view. The first picture is from the downstairs balcony, the second from the upstairs. Can I say again TWO balconies. I can never just have one again. Once you have two, can you ever really go back to a measly one?

It rained our first full day, but that didn't deter us from having our fun.  However, we did begin to notice a few things. Servers were not as friendly as the last time we stayed there, staff disappeared as soon as an order was taken never to come back to their post, bartenders were few and far between.  We soon found out that the hotel was closing for a massive lobby reconstruction in a few weeks and it would remain closed for several months.  Awww!! That makes sense why they were so understaffed and the staff that remained weren’t the best; like a C quality and not the A that was before.

I still had a great time.  Eat and drank my fair share. Here was a typical breakfast. A good mixture of traditional Mexican fare and normal brunch like items. Eggs, bacon, sausage, you get the idea. And bottomless mimosas of course.

 We booked two restaurants for the evenings, the steak house and the Mexican one.  I thought the steak house was exceptional.  My steak was incredibly tender and the mashed potatoes were thick with chunks of potato that melted in my mouth; exactly how I like my mashed potatoes actually.  The Mexican restaurant was fare, but I’m a bit spoiled when it comes to Mexican food now, especially after having just come from Mexico City, but if you aren’t familiar with traditional Mexican food, it presented a good representation. But besides all that it was fun to get dressed up and go on a planned date night. I put together a series of pictures from each night for you to see what I mean. The steak dinner, not included, I was too busy shoveling each delectable morsel unceremoniously into my mouth.

The entertainment was fun as well, not as good as I remembered from last year, but we still had a great time; we even danced a couple of nights, one of my favorite things to do with G, although I’m so much more light on my feet without my heels, something that he reminds me that a true Latina would never stand for, taking her heels off to dance barefoot on the hard marble floor.  What can I say? I’m a white girl with limited moves and balance.

I tried not to hate myself as I cleaned each plateful of food and drank each sugar laden beverage.  I tried to not think of all the calories that were being forcefully pushed into my system, expanding my waistline, my jaw. I tried to count my blessings because I am so very thankful to be in such a place, that G has given me the freedom to have some content for this viewer less blog.  When that snaky voice began to creep in with the ugly retorts, the fat shaming, the self degradation I sucked down my fifth margarita, gobbled down my third plate of chilaquiles and shouted at it to FUCK OFF, let me enjoy this week; healthy food will still be there to greet me when I’m good and ready for it. And I feel that I did mostly succeed, but it’s still a shame that I let my own head detour what could have been a perfectly pleasant route.

I know I’m not alone in this. I know that we all have our things because we are human and that’s part of the experience, I suppose, I just hope that when I look back at this week, I don’t think about my ever expanding gut and more about how blessed I was to be treated like a princess. I think I will for those negative thoughts have already taken flight to bother some other part of my brain and one day I hope that they will eventually just wither and die to be replaced with something brighter, something sweeter, something that fills my soul with love for the person who I am, the person who is strong, who is beautiful, who is worthy, and who is very very special.