Day 66 Old Navy VS. The Value Meal

Today, I discovered that my former expenditures on fast food and soda, have been replaced by Old Navy. I'm so excited that I can buy smaller sizes that I now have smaller sizes in many different colors and prints. I have pants, I have shirts, I have more pants, and lots more shirts. Trading in cheese fries for 2 pairs of cords is totally worth it. Why didn't I think of this before? One week of sodas adds up to five 5.00 t-shirts and a pair of jeans is about 7 days worth of egg and cheese breakfast value meals at McDonald's. I feel rich, I feel slightly thinner, and I feel pretty flipping great right now. Sigh.....I also found a great new water bottle today, so that I don't have to schlep from one building to another, filling tiny cups with Culligan water (my office does not have a sink). I like my water habit, it's pretty much always free, I don't have to stand in line to get it, I don't have to exchange germs with fast food employees to quench my thirst, it just works out really well for me! Not to mention, water won't cause a sugar stroke, allowing me to drink till my heart is full without going blind or losing a kidney. Since giving up soda, I've cut about 1000 calories a day by drinking water,  diet soda is worse for your body health wise, so I would not event think of switching, water is safer. I think everyone reading this should look at what you're drinking right now and trade it in for some aqua.....do it!
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Day 28 Whole Lotta Something In That Bag

Today, I found myself as an outside observer into the world of kids, fast food, obesity, and outright, free wheeling gluttony. I witnessed the consumption of morbid mounts of food by a child, purchased by his parent, over the course of 2 hours in the car. The kid started off with a trip through the Taco Bueno drive through with 4 bean burritos and a small strawberry smoothie, he ended the trip with a stroll through McDonald's with 3 Double cheese burgers, a large fry, and a large Dr. Pepper! I did the math on this one, in two hours he consumed 4240 calories, 219 grams of fat, 10626 mg of sodium, 308 carbs, and 255 mg of cholesterol (not including the fries, which were not listed in the nutritional information). The combined food, including what his parent ate came to about 19.00! This child consumed 2 days worth of calories just at dinner #1 and dinner #2, I don't even know what the kid had for breakfast and lunch, makes me sweat just thinking about metabolizing all of that. While all of this hulabaloo was going on in my car, I sipped an icy cold tomato juice and had an apple, someone had to do it! So, this gross display of  food shoveling and mindless gobbling, led me to an idea, actually I had the idea way earlier, but this vulgarity solidified my decision to take action. I am going to offer some time to the Boys and Girls Club to teach a cooking and nutrition class, I think it would be a blast for them and for me and it's obvious, someone has to teach the little urchins how to make healthy choices. Maybe they will take what they learn back to their parents, homes will be happier, communities will thrive, and the world will be a slightly nicer place! Ya, it might happen!
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Day 22 I Spy a Dirty Beet

I found them, I found the beets, I was secretly hoping that farmers had stopped growing them and I would not have to keep my promise to make nice with them. I did not buy them, because I'm not ready to make the Borscht yet and I wouldn't want them to go bad or anything, but I saw them and they were dirty and bulbous and well, beety. Tonight, I will secure the recipe and tomorrow, I will approach them again, maybe from a different angle. In other news, last night I watched the documentary, No Impact Man and I am super inspired to take my experiment a little further. I will not go as far as eliminating electricity or forgoing toilet paper, but I like the family's approach to food. They ate only fresh, unpackaged food, such as fruit, vegetables, and food from the bins at Whole Foods. I don't know that this will be a 100% possibility for me to do, but I would like to make at least 80% of my food from fresh ingredients, I think that's a great idea and very healthy to eliminate the processed junko. I agree with the thought that there are many things that people can do to help the environment but it's impossible to do everything. Picking several things that serve the purpose, still has an impact on the earth. I feel the same about food and health, most people won't cut out fast food for a year, but maybe someone will cut down to once a week and drink more water or think twice about taking the kids to McDonald's and instead make a picnic of fresh from home foods and  have an hour of quality time together in the grass. The more we pay attention to what we eat, the less likely we are to eat garbage, I'm not your mother and you don't have to listen to me, but don't eat garbage, a nice lasagna is so much more satisfying!

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Day 17 Five Pounds of Oatmeal, Now That's a Sack O' Fiber

Things started out weird today, yesterday my Grandmother gave me a gigantic sack of oatmeal, 5lbs. of unflavored oatmeal actually. This morning, I looked at the famine relief sized sack of BS and could not come to a conclusion as to how to eat it. I needed time to process all that I could accomplish with said sack of oatmeal and my holiday was not the time to create recipes, willy nilly in my head, I had things to do. Instead, I decided to have myself a little spa time, before my day out in the cold and this is where things went horribly wrong. I dumped about a cup of oats into the bathtub, in an effort to combat dry winter skin, I thought I was being thrifty, turns out I was just being stupid. The oatmeal was nothing like the Aveeno stuff in the store, I was covered in gooey, sticky oats, I have no idea what went wrong. Also, the bathtub was a sludge pit of breakfast goodness, which I had to clean immediately, lest it dry into some giant, crusty cereal bowl.
Later,  in what could be considered my first face to face challenge, my brother forced me to accompany him to McDonald's to watch him eat. He waved french fries in my face, shoved his soda under my nose, implored me to take a drink, and generally attempted to lure me into breaking. I can proudly say, I did no such thing.
Tonight I bought a great Clean Food magazine and found a recipe for a natural soda alternative, made from carbonated water, ginger, and honey, only 40 calories and no chemicals. I made some but it just tastes like Perrier water, at least I tried, nothing will ever compare to the sweet chemical carnival of a Coke. While the soda did not work out, I was quite the chef this evening, with a Portabella Blue cheese "burger" with caramelized onions. I rock the home cooking circuit.  http://www.fastfoodboycott.blogspot.com/

Day 1 The Boycott of Fast food and soda

Today is January 1st, which begins 365 days of the swearing off of fast food. I am committed to eating at home and also eliminating soda. I love soda so this is going to be difficult. I love full sugar soda, diet soda, soda that could be called fizzy juice, I love it all. I will bring my lunch to work or buy it directly from the grocery store EVERY day. No more pizza buffets, no more Sonic grilled cheese or yummy yummy burritos, I'm done! The purpose of this experiment is to see how much money I can save by eating at home and to see if my new eating habits, affect how my clothes fit. Right now I wear a size 16 (I don't do scales) so let's see if that changes with the elimination of grease and processed crap. On a side note, I am going to attempt to eat healthier at home and add some herbs to my diet. For the last few days, I have been drinking ginger green tea and adding different things like Cayenne to help with blood sugar and stuff. We'll see how it goes! http://www.fastfoodboycott.blogspot.com/