You deserve to eat everything on vacation — here's how I learned that I do, too

It's vacation season. Is your summer body ready and in full effect? Well, mine isn't, and guess what — I still had a fantastic time. So I invite you to take a stand with me, put the dumbbell down, and pick the drumstick up. 

As a pawn of capitalism, I work like labor laws don't exist: late nights, early mornings and Sundays are as normal to me as $0 income tax bills are to billionaires. I don't fuss, I don't complain, I just pull up. This mentality means I don't always have time to spend 86 hours in the gym like the people on Instagram. But in all seriousness, like many Americans, I get stressed a month or so before vacation time. 

Why? 

Because I know that I will be going to a beach or a pool where I'm going to be the tubby writer wondering why full-body transformations never take place during that week of excessive exercise I attempted before I left. This has happened for the past few years, and this year's 2023 vacation was precisely the same — until it wasn't. 

"Beach, Daddy!" my 3-year-old daughter said, with tiny wet eyes, mid-spring, "I want the beach!" 

And because I love my child and work like I have ten children, this was going down. I found a family-friendly resort in Puerto Rico with a pool and direct access to a beach. Daddy pulls up, he shoots, and he scores. 

My daughter's eyes lit up as we walked into the hotel room. It was beautiful, as was the pool we saw 10 minutes later, and then the beach where we would post up another five minutes after that. As a matter of fact, the only thing that I didn't think was beautiful was my gut, as it looked like I had just swallowed a ten-pound watermelon. And I must admit that this bothered me because I feel like I don't overeat and try to exercise as much as I can, but here we are. 

"Señor Watkins, it is a beautiful day. How are you?" a waiter in a clean white polo with matching chinos asked. "Can I offer you anything?" 

"Thank you so much," I replied. "We just got here, so I'll look at the menu, get in the water, build some sandcastles with baby girl and then circle back in about an hour." 

And we did the whole song and dance, even spending an extra hour in the ocean. It turns out that my daughter is part fish and only hunger could pull her out of the water. So, we relocated from the beach to the poolside and revisited that menu. It was full of pizza, burgers, more kinds of pizza, beer-battered chicken tenders, fried fish tacos, milkshakes, liquor-infused shakes, French fries … A varsity wrestler who needs to pile on an additional 20 at your local high school would be in heaven. 

My baby is a baby, so I can order her pizza and French fries. In her mind, that would be edible heaven, But what would I eat — a salad? The one salad they had on the menu? 

I ordered a drink and pizza and fries for baby girl. She ate like a three-year-old that was playing  in the sun all day and was hungry for a nap. Happily, I watched her doze off, tired and full and satisfied, but the growls from my stomach almost woke her up.

I moved over a little and  leaned back in my chair, seeing  all the other dads at the pool. Most were not so fit and seemed like they were having the times of their lives. Like me, maybe they did what they had to do to ensure their wives and children could carve out a couple of days for relaxation, waves and sunshine. I looked down at the side of my leg and saw that there was still some sand left over from the beach, so I walked over to the shower to rinse it off. 

While there, I took a long gaze at the beach, and it hit me like a ton of bricks — you deserve to eat everything in sight. 

Looking at the beach made me realize that I actually hate the beach. You never know how deep the water is. Sand gets all over your shorts, hair, ear, mouth and, if you have to drive, then your car and hotel room. Why would a person want to swim on the beach when their resort is connected to a lovely swimming pool is beyond me. Also, an unidentifiable black bug with a hooked face and 12, or maybe 30, legs bit me while I was playing in the sand, so now I'm pretty sure I'm poisoned by something that hasn't even been discovered yet, all because my daughter wanted to be on the beach. Add that to traveling in the airport with a three-year-old who has to go to the bathroom on the plane every two minutes.

But looking at the beach, I realized that it also represents something that I didn't have when I was coming up — my family never went on vacations as vacations were a luxury we could not afford. 

I realized then that I not only deserve to eat like a person on vacation, but I also earned it. Part of the vacation is the dining experience. I was ready to order. 

"I would love to try those fish tacos," I happily said to the beach attendant. "Let me get an order of guacamole and, oh my God, my daughter's pizza looked amazing. Please send out another and I don't really care about the order it comes out in." 

It was all delicious, too delicious — and it tasted like the well-earned break for which I've been working all year. 

While on the island, I ate like this every day. And the beautiful part is that I don't feel guilty. We have our whole lives to diet and exercise and eat salads when we would much rather have pizza. So, if you are fortunate enough to have a vacation, do yourself a favor and eat like you are on vacation, because it isn't promised.