Well, So Much for Fast Food...

Like most Americans, I have been a fairly regular consumer of what we like to call "fast food". McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's... you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, yesterday at lunch I was quite hungry. And I wanted meat for some reason. And I hadn't brought any meat in my usual lunch pail of fruits and veggies. I am not one to ignore a meat craving, however, especially since I so seldom have them. I happen to work within walking distance of a McDonald's, and once there I started perusing the menu for something that best fit within my current food parameters (for anyone who missed it, I'm trying to eat paleo at least 80% of the time). I got one of the meatier burgers I could find and the smallest thing of french fries they would let me get with a meal.

On an only slightly related note, some kind soul on MyFitnessPal (probably someone who can't eat anything gluteny) has already taken the trouble of figuring out caloric values for various McDonald's sandwiches if you take off the bun.

Anyway, eating a meat patty with toppings balanced on top of it was slightly awkward, but I managed and it was even kind of good. And there was bacon, and who doesn't love bacon? Then I decided to take a big step out of what I've been eating for the last week and a half and eat a french fry.

It was gross.

I used to eat McDonald's french fries all the time. I used to actively like them. And yesterday they tasted to me like slightly salty sticks of blah. So I guess I need to start taking emergency beef jerky in my lunches or something.

My Own Personal Fairytale

For anyone that missed it over on my other blog, let me bring you up to speed. I'm currently in a serious, long-term relationship with my best friend from grade school. We reconnected via Facebook last summer after 19 years of separation (we lost touch in summer 1993 when my family moved) and have been rather constantly in each other's presence ever since (aside from things like work and sleep and school which tend to separate us).

We became friends in 3rd grade in TAG class. We weren't in the same homeroom class that year. By 4th grade we were spending a lot of time together outside of school. I liked to go over to his house because his parents were wealthier than mine and he had cooler toys (like a GeoSafari... we're TAG kids, remember?), and his mom took us to OMSI fairly often. I also remember his mother as being the one who taught me how to swim, and I was sad to learn that she passed away a few years ago.

I'm musing this evening on how things eventually come full circle. Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time there was a 10 year old girl who was friends with a 10 year old boy whose parents were in a decidedly different tax bracket than that of her parents. The 10 year old boy's parents decided one year to take him to Hawaii. When the boy returned, he brought the girl a ring carved from a single seashell in the shape of a leaf. The girl wore the ring all the time (on the ring finger of her left hand, she seems to recall) until the day it was tragically broken in a freak bleacher-crushing accident. The girl picked up the pieces from the floor and took them home and put them into the locked "treasure box" where she kept all sorts of priceless items like a purple, heart-shaped bead a Mexican boy had given her in kindergarten. 

Later that same year, the girl's parents decided to move to a town far away to have a house with more space. The boy managed to persuade his mother one time to drive him out to visit the girl, but eventually time and distance separated them.

Almost 20 years later, the girl (now 29-going-on-30) received an unexpected message on Facebook from the boy (who had just turned 30). "Remember me?" he asked. "Like I've ever known anyone else with a Finnish last name," the girl responded, as she had grown up to be rather sarcastic. Fortunately, it seems the boy liked this. The boy and the girl began spending Saturdays together. Then Friday nights and Saturdays. Then Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sunday afternoons which included the girl's son (who, interestingly, was about the same age the girl and boy had been when they'd last seen each other).  

Another year later, the boy decided he should take the girl and her son to Hawaii, as he remembered going when he was about her son's age and remembered it fondly. Plans had been in the works for  several days before the girl finally remembered the shattered ring that she was pretty sure she still had in a box somewhere at her parents' house. She ran into the other room to tell the boy excitedly, "I just remembered that I remember when you went to Hawaii before! You brought me a ring and I used to wear it all the time, then it got broken and I was really mad."

"Aww," he said, pulling her into his arms. "Well, when we go in December I'll buy you another one."

This story, by the way, is completely true. And the bit about me suddenly remembering this ring I hadn't thought of in probably 18 years or so just happened tonight.  Yes, this is the fairytale that has been my life for the last 13 months.... I'm dating and not-so-secretly planning to marry (at some indeterminate point in the future) the guy who was my best friend in grades 3, 4 and 5. You hear people all the time say, "We were high school sweethearts." Well, we were elementary school sweethearts... let's see you top that. And he already gave me a ring a long time ago. Yeah, it broke, but he already said he'd get me another one. And until then, I still have the pieces in a box... which I intend to retrieve the next time I go out to my parents' place.

I'm not a gamer, but...

A revolutionary thing happened to me a week or so ago. The Old Curmudgeon (for new readers, this is how I refer to my boyfriend, as he's a whole 4 months older than me and a lot more curmudgeon-y) mentioned once again that when he'd had to lose weight for the military he ate nothing but chicken and salad and lost 60 lbs. in a fairly short period of time.

As I said, he'd mentioned it before, but I guess I was ready to listen this time. Both the Old Curmudgeon and I had been driven to seek medical attention within the last month or so (me for an injury at work, him for dental work) and the truth was not pretty - my blood pressure is excellent as always, but I've gained 30 lbs in the last 12 months. His blood pressure is borderline high and he's gained 27 lbs in the last 12 months. Clearly we are doing something wrong (though obviously we are fat and happy and comfortable in our relationship).

I wanted to radically shake up the way we're eating around here, not just for our sake but also for the sake of the Chamaco (my 11-soon-to-be-12 year old son). And I've watched an awful lot of documentaries on Netflix lately that have convinced me that something is very wrong with how we eat in America. Sugar consumption has skyrocketed in the average American diet and most of the things we eat are full of chemicals that neither you nor I can pronounce. Most of the documentaries I watched were promoting veganism or vegetarianism, but I knew that was not going to fly in my house.

I'd heard of what's being called the "paleolithic diet" or "paleo diet" before... essentially only eating things that would have been available to our caveman ancestors. Nothing processed, just normal food... primarily vegetables with some meat and fruit thrown in. And somewhere in my googling I stumbled upon NerdFitness.com. They have a very engaging article explaining why what we eat now is making us fat, and why grain products and dairy are not as fantastic as the USDA would like you to believe. Also, the approach taken and their tagline "level up your life" appealed to my inner nerd... I was never an RPG gamer, despite the best efforts of my ex-husband and the Chamaco, but I have enough Star Trek and other geekery in my past to earn me some nerd cred. So I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a try.

The very next day (which happened to be Monday), I ate mostly vegetables (a little fruit) during the day and we had meat and vegetables at dinner. I also made myself walk a mile on my lunch break. Tuesday I did the same, including the walk. Repeat performance Wednesday and Thursday. I noticed by Tuesday that my energy levels were higher. By Friday, the mile walk which had seemed kinda far on Monday seemed like it took about five minutes. Also I weighed myself Friday morning. 6 lbs gone. Nearly a third of what took me a year to gain, gone in one week.

Obviously there's something to this, so I've decided to commit to a month and see where I am at that point. I have never gone a month without pasta in my life. Actually, I'm not sure I've ever gone a week without pasta in my life until now.

For week two, I'll be adding in something I found on NerdFitness called "The Angry Birds Workout", which is designed to shatter that "I don't have time to work out" notion. Also, I like the measurable performance goals and the idea of beating levels, because I'm just nerdy enough even though I'm not a gamer. (Anyone interested in this can look it up here: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/03/10/angry-birds-workout-plan/). I'm also gradually stepping down the amount of Diet Coke I consume... I'd love to just give it up cold turkey, but I know from past experience that this leads to about 4 days of intense headaches followed my me just drinking Diet Coke again to make it stop. I'm going to keep doing the walks at lunchtime because it gets me out of the office.

I'm also very interested in pursuing the notion of a "playout". A playout, for those of you not in the know, is what your kids do when you turn them loose at a park... they run, they climb, they crawl, they swing... they get all kinds of exercise, but they think they're playing. I taught preschool for a number of years and I am not above joining children on playground equipment. But an adult playout can take place wherever you are, provided you have sturdy furniture and patient neighbors. :-) I have neither of those things, so we'll probably just walk down to the park.

I'll try to update about week two progress next Sunday. During the week I'll probably post about other things unless I feel particularly moved to talk about something significant.

Onward to Level 2!

New Blog!

Hello to whoever is reading this (the reading several, as you shall now be known).

"But you already HAVE a blog!" I hear you protest. "What's up with this shiny new one that has bright, happy colors on it?"  That, o reading several, is what this post shall aim to explain (and then I'll move on to other more fun posts).

You see, when I started this blog on Halloween of 2009 I was just beginning the long trudge out of a depression that had lasted several years (since approximately 2002). I was 27 years old, had just started a new job, had recently moved into my first house with heat in nearly a decade, and I thought things were starting to look up, maybe.

Well, I still had a lot of mental manure to shovel, to be blunt.

That other blog, titled "The Confused Ramblings of a Deranged Mind", reflects a lot of that shoveling process. And while I still have quite a few posts over there that I quite like, a lot of it is depressing to me now. And I was sort of looking at things I had written about myself in the earlier years and I realized that isn't really who I am anymore. More than that, I don't want to be that person anymore. I mean, sure, it's still me and all those things led me to where I am now, but I feel that the overall mood of the blog (and the title) no longer suits me.

So now we (I) introduce to you the Diary of a Pretend Grown-Up. (insert fanfare here) I chose this title because even though I'm over 30 now I still feel like I'm making this Grown-Up thing up as I go, and I'm sure there are others out there who feel the same (and if you don't, you're lying!). I still cling to the notion that I might get things figured out before I'm 40, however, and this blog is intended to chronicle that figuring out... along with any other random bits of fluff I decide to pitch in there.

The old blog is not going to go away, and it will still be there for anyone who cares to view it (meaganmireya.blogspot.com), but I won't be posting over there anymore. Sometime I might even go look it over myself just to remember how far I've come. But from here on out, the party is over here. Yes, there are still a few things I did on the old blog that I'll probably keep doing here - aliases for my friends and loved ones, random insertion of song titles that I'm listening to as I write, and my annual "The Difference a Year Can Bring" posts will likely follow us here.

I'm now 31 (next month, anyway), mother to a middle-schooler (I'm still having some trouble making myself say that), involved in a pretty ridiculously serious relationship, and employed at a job that makes me dress like a grown-up. It's been a long road to get here, but overall I'm loving where I'm at right now. It's been a wild ride to get here, and it continues to be crazy at times. If you're the sort of voyeur who likes to peep into someone else's life and maybe live a bit vicariously through them, this blog is for you. If you just know me and you have a passing interest in knowing more about me, this blog is also for you.

Welcome to my new world order!