What happens in Vegas, happens at Whole Foods.

This story behind a tiny personal lifestyle transformation it is quite interesting, because it's a neat example of how good can come from bad. Every since I've started to incorporate Whole Foods into my life, I feel like I've changed for the better. Here's the scoop:

Two weekends ago, I was forced to endure an AMSA conference in Las Vegas for four miserable days. During that period, I was desperate to not get sick from the cigarette smoke and negative energy that consumes Vegas, so I was willing to pay whatever money necessary to just eat good, healthy organic vegetarian food. Driving into Vegas on Day 1, I realized that the only true access to healthy my-style food in all of Sin City was the Whole Foods right off the strip. This would do but please note I've always been a reluctant fan of Whole Foods. I used to call it Whole Paycheck because of the fact that it would cost an arm and a leg plus your first-born son just to buy a weeks worth of groceries there. Now, I'm all for being environmentally conscious and organic, but within reason, mind you. There is no point of asking the world to start drinking shade-grown coffee, if, because of that, they won't be able to afford breakfast, lunch and dinner while they're converting to the more environmentally sound option. But, I made the decision the first hour I reached Las Vegas to invest myself in Whole Foods for the entire weekend for two reasons: 1) I figured at the end of the day I was getting a better deal than having myself gouged over some fancy shmancy steakhouse that would cost me $20 for grilled vegetables that wouldn't taste good anyway. And 2) I did not, at any cost, want to become sick because I was eating poorly in a shitty environment. Due to some bad personal experiences, this is, in my opinion, THE worse kind of sickness. It's the kind of illness in which your body kicks you and spits at you and says "Why!? Why did you have to be so careless about ME of all people? How could you be so irresponsible? And after all I've done for you. Well I'll show you now because I quit! I'm going on vacation!" And then you proceed to get so sick that you don't know how on earth you could have done this to yourself and you beg forgiveness from your own body to start to get it's act together and fight off whatever pathetic infection/virus you have consuming you.

But anyway, I bit the bullet and visited the Whole Foods on Las Vegas Blvd. every night for three solid nights and ate at their deli each night. Mind you, the first night going into this, I was expecting to pay a lot of money for food (and I mean a lot, like $15-20/night), but something very pleasant happened that first night in the Sin City Whole Foods Deli. I discovered that the deli allows you to take whatever food items you'd like for an easy price of $7.99/pound. Think about this: eight dollars. This means that I can eat a pound of salad, or a pound of falafel balls with hummus, or a pound of tofu stir-fry just for around eight bucks. First of all, I don't even eat that much food. If I consumed a pound of anything in one sitting, I would not only be mad at myself for gaining the quickest pound I've ever gained in my life, but I'd also be in immense pain from the sheer mass of the food! I started to realize that the Whole Foods deli was actually not that expensive at all for dinner (only about $6-8/meal, depending on how much food you weighed in, plus FULL LIBERTY of choice). Here, depending on how hungry I was, I was getting exactly what I craved for dinner and was not paying more than I wanted. Additionally, I was not wasting any food whatsoever because anything that I put in my plate was going through a mental assessment:
1) Do I need this? If yes, I'd put it on my plate.
2) Do I want this? If yes, how badly? $8/pound badly?
4) If I want this $8/pound badly, then do I want to eat this because it's healthy or because it looks tasty?
5) If it's healthy, I'd whole heartedly put it on my plate. And if it's tasty, I'd put just a pinch of it on my plate (in a silly effort to practice moderation).
I had limitless choices: Mexican, Indian, Vegan, Greek, American, Chinese, Moroccan, you name it, I could have it. Vegan meats galore, green salads galore, fixings galore. The point is, the food was all high quality, extremely vegetarian friendly, nearly 100% organic, but most importantly, affordably delicious. It was almost too good to be true - to pay earthly prices to get to heaven.

Now although in Vegas, I was just so grateful that I was able to eat what I wanted and not get sick, when I came back to Los Angeles, I found myself missing the easy flexibility and variability that wonderful Whole Foods offered. Back in LA, back in normal life, I found myself getting frustrated at having to cook my own crappy food, which, although simple, was just not that tasty and was way way too time consuming for what came out of it. Then it hit me. Why does what happens in Vegas have to stay in Vegas? Why not do here in Los Angeles, what I did nightly in Las Vegas? Why not go to Whole Foods for dinner every day? I know it seemed like a crazy idea at the time, but if, IF, I was only going to be paying $6-8 for a meal AND I don't have to spend any time cooking AND the food is served in the precise manner that I would happily like it to be served, why not pay for that quality of life? Factoring in the idea that time is money, I feel like it is cheaper for me to dine at Whole Foods every night than to spend time and money going to Trader Joes, buying a bunch of ingredients to try and make a meal that may not even turn out right and will have exhausted me in the process. The best part of this is that I've gotten better and better at perfecting what I crave for dinner and getting what I'm craving for the right price. If you're good at knowing exactly what you want, you can get it for about $6 a night, which is about where I stand right now. So for $6 a night, I'm getting delicious organic vegetarian or vegan food to my liking, to my taste, to the price of my choice!

Las Vegas was a terrible place. I hated nearly every minute of it. But because of what came out of the experience in the long term, I would not change the past for a second. Because I got something out of Sin City that I would have never gotten if I had just stayed in Los Angeles for that weekend. I got a slightly better quality of life. You are what you eat, and because of Whole Foods, I am little bit happier, a tad bit healthier, and now have more time on my hands to take care of the things that are really important to me. And for that, for all of that, I will eternally be grateful to the wretchedness that is, and will always be, Las Vegas.