The Bellagio buffet secret to transforming your health journey
The Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas has one of the most amazing food buffets I have ever been to in my life. I went to Vegas years ago on a solo trip to watch the magnificent Celine Dion show, and this buffet was one of the highlights of my trip.
As I stepped into the luxurious room with shiny floors and shiny buffet tables with all kinds of food I could possibly imagine, I felt a feeling of overwhelming expansion.
It was about 1 PM in the afternoon and I had not eaten anything since 5 PM the day before so that I would have enough space and appetite to fully enjoy this experience.
So, I got a plate and dumped everything in sight into a mountain of food so big people all over the restaurant started giving me looks.
I ate the heaping mountain and then went back for seconds.
Not only that, I did the same with the desserts - puddings, and cakes, and cookies, and ice cream all into one heaping mountain of awe.
Afterwards, my stomach was just a churning mix of confusion, gurgling sounds, nausea, and a feeling that I never wanted to eat again in my life.
Hahaha! Nope.
That, fortunately, was not me at the Bellagio.
( I have done something similar like this before years ago when I was younger but quickly realized that it was not a good way to go about it.)
Thank God. Otherwise, I would have been traumatized by buffets forever more!
My Bellagio buffet journey
The true story is that I had no idea where I was going to start in that buffet journey, but I did have a plan. This plan was going to allow me to thoroughly enjoy the eating experience but also leave me with a feeling of goodness afterwards.
Here was the plan:
Walk around the entire buffet to get an idea of what foods were available.
Start with my favourite foods (on this day, health food focus did not come into play!)
Of my favourite foods, I was going to pick the ones I felt like eating that day. Even though I like soup it was a hot summer day and so soup was out. But seafood was definitely on my list!
Leave some room to try 2-3 dishes I either had not tried before or it had been a while since I had eaten them. Regardless, my body had to be receptive to trying it that day. I was not going to force myself to try something that didn’t ‘look good’ to me.
And so I strategically picked the foods as per my plan above, placed them beautifully on my plate and enjoyed every single bite. Of course I went for seconds. But my second plate was just as carefully curated as the the first along with some dessert choices at the end.
I paced myself enough so that I could actually enjoy quite a few desserts too.
I left the restaurant full for sure but with a ‘feeling good full’ vibe and with a feeling of ‘this was so worth it and I will definitely be coming back!’
The Bellagio hotel buffet and how you do health
The way most people do health, nowadays, is very similar to my first fictitious buffet story above: it leaves them with a horrendous after taste.
Maybe the following sounds familiar to you?
It sure does to me. I have done this to myself and my health before many times in the past:
Most people just dump all the health information absorbed from all over the place into their health plate and make the executive decision and assumption that:
“these are probably the right things to do; after all, if they worked for those evidence based health gurus, anecdotal based influencers, podcasters, and authors, then they must also work for me. So I am gonna try a habit from this collection, and hope it’s going to work for me.’
Then, two weeks later, not only is that health habit a thing of the past and it doesn’t work out, but the whole plate of health pieces is thrown into the trash as they proceed to blame themselves for not being disciplined enough or able to keep up with any health habit.
And health proceeds to decline even further.
We listen to health advice out there that promises that a specific weekly exercise protocol, for example, is evidence based so you must force yourself to do it no matter where you are in your health journey.
Here is the latest popular one: you need to do 45 min zone 2/ 4X per week, weight training 3X per week for 1 hour, HIIT workouts 2X per week, 15 min stretching everyday, and at least 10,000 steps per day.
We then assume that if we can’t do it like the guru down the street can, there must be something wrong with us.
Sure, it would be amazing to do all of that during the week but there is SO MUCH that needs to be taken into consideration before you just dump all of that all at once into your weekly routine, that it is not even funny.
Just one example from a recent coaching client who literally did all of the above exercises every week. When we had our first session, just by looking at him, I could tell his vitality was waning. He was having lots of fatigue, sleep problems, memory problems and more!
As we went through our first thorough assessment of everything that was happening during his day in detail, hour by hour, it was as clear as glass that all of those exercises were actually making him sicker not healthier.
He was adding all of that stress to his body but was not allowing for space and time for it to recover and replenish and then adapt to the new stress. He was also not giving it nearly enough raw materials for the recovery process ( protein and other nutrients), not to mention his sleep had been subpar for at least 3 years.
His body was compensating to keep him alive, and he was starting to feel it in life-sucking symptoms.
You can’t add that intense of an exercise protocol to your life if you do not have enough capacity to fulfill the recovery that will come as a need along with it.
So, it is not just about “exercise like this as in this protocol, otherwise you will die.”
It is about increasing each exercise slowly, keeping in mind that each exercise you do comes with an equal need for the recovery IF you want the exercise to give you the benefits that you are looking for.
This goes for EVERY SINGLE area of health.
It is a MUST that you understand your current health state, daily routine, and capacity very well, first and foremost, and then malleably work with it. Start slow and build a solid foundation as your body blossoms into more health not less.
Instead of blindly incorporating popular, famous, trendy health habits into your days because they are touted to be evidence-based or whatever, understand your current situation fully first and then add that preferred ‘food to your plate’ so you can give it a try.
Something that fits the current capacity of your mind, body, and spirit too.
Trying to achieve any health goal by forcing on perfect health protocols on your current routine without any thought to where you are currently in your health journey, your body state, your likes and dislikes, your ultimate goals (not just your health goals), is like piling up all the food in the buffet on your plate just because you are there.
It is also like trying to open a door with the wrong key and to continue to try to open that door even though it is so clear that key is the wrong one and will never ever open that door!
This is how most people do health.
Don’t do that anymore.
This is what keeps you feeling frustrated with your health and blaming yourself for not being ‘disciplined’ enough. (And how can you be disciplined enough when there is no real capacity?)
This way of doing things does not give you any leverage, it just keeps you going around and around and getting older and sicker faster.
Truth is, you are meant to have great levels of energy and vitality well into your 90s. If you feel like you are going in the opposite trajectory, then give this approach a try. I think you are going to love it.
You have to know what your ideal health plate looks like, and to know what your ideal health plate looks like, the one that is going to resonate deeply with what your body needs right now and the plate that is going to give you major health leverage, you HAVE to experiment with health information piece by health information piece with utmost awareness about what your body needs right now and which magical next health step is going to make a good wholesome dent in your healthspan journey.
And how do you know what your body needs and then how to pick the next health step to take?
Post coming up this week on this!
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