Followup on ingestion tactics

Today is Thursday.  The 4th full day without any meat.  I’m sure it’s by far the longest stretch of doing so in my whole life.  *maybe* i’ve gone a whole day without eating meat once.. maybe.

But four days is nothing.  But I felt it was worth updating anyway.

The first couple days I didn’t think anything of it.  Just started eating different foods.  Yesterday, day three, it hit me.  I wanted meat.  Maybe it’s all mental, but I also wasn’t feeling that well.  Not sick, but weak.  I talked to Kat and she asked what it is I have been eating.  Apparently the technique of replacing meat with tomatoes isn’t going to work and explains my slight fatigue.  I currently have no protein in my diet and haven’t had any for days.  I feel a little worse than I did yesterday, and I got a good night sleep and everything so I can only attribute it to that.  So it looks like I need to remedy this situation.

To go along with whatever it was I started feeling yesterday I also had my first meat craving.  Argh.  I wanted taco bell, I wanted wendys, I wanted everything.  It hit out of nowhere.  But I won’t cave.  Oh no.  My guess the craving is because my body is pissed and requires something I refuse to put in it.  Anyone who said “I felt better the first week after removing meat from my diet” is lying.  They’re a pretencious bastard who will try to make you feel bad for eating delicious murdered animals.  Don’t listen to them.  mmmmm… murder.
Went to dinner with Kat last night to Noodles & Company.  Awesome.  I think i’ll eat there a lot.  Most everything is without meat, but you add whatever meat you want to it.  I had a delicious thing that I didn’t even know what it was and I didn’t even miss the meat.

My fear is by the time I think I’m done with the experiment and I should eat meat again… I won’t want to.  Oh god, what am I doing?

Pickles

As of last night, around 5pm I’ve cut out meat from my diet.  I’ve been planning this since around last night at 4:59pm or so.

It all started yesterday morning when Cassie and I were out to breakfast.  She convinced me to try a piece of egg, a food item I haven’t had for about 15 years.  It’s a slight phobia of cracking open the unfertilized birthplace of an animal.  I’m well aware egg is in pretty much everything, and that doesn’t bother me.  I just don’t want to look at it.
It was at dinner where I was looking at sauce options at spaghetti works and Cassie recommended I try the one without meat and I figured… why not.  Not only will I eat this without meat, I’m going to eat everything else without meat too.  Instead I can attempt to put things into my diet that I wouldn’t normally eat.  So I made my order, and the waitress asked “Would you like a meatball with that?”  Bitch.
So it began, a spur of the moment decision impacting things I do every day.

I don’t plan on doing this forever, but I see it as an experiment.  Can I start eating things I wouldn’t normally eat because I’ve cut out the standards?  Will I feel better?  Will I lose weight?

Lunchtime comes today and I have to make a decision on what I’m to eat.  So I go to a local sandwich place by the office and for the first time in my life utter the words “veggie sub”.  I even looked around to make sure nobody could hear me first.

He takes out some bread and layers with tomatoes.  I don’t like tomatoes.  He looks at me and says “what else do you want on it?”  I look around and complete the sandwich with american cheese, onions, lettuce, oil and vinegar and finally pickles.  I brought it back to my desk and took a bite without even looking at it first.  First impression… i really like those pickles.

After work today i’m going to whole foods and see what I can try and hack together as far as grocery shopping.  I see veggie pizzas, noodles, pasta and bags of salad in my future.  Things I still don’t have to figure out how to cook… but just things I already like that won’t have meat in it.  I’m not trying to eat healthy… i’m just removing my default and still going to eat like crap.

I recalled the story to Cassie last night on how I started drinking only diet pop.  I stopped drinking regular pop for a whole year first and only drank water.  Once you lose your comparison then settling for something not as good is easy.  So I don’t think you’ll see me eating tofu anytime soon, but I’ll stick to things that I’m already familiar with and in time i’ll try eating things i’m not.  By that time I won’t know any better?

Being this is an experiment I don’t see it lasting more than a couple months unless my life dramatically changes for the better because of it.  I have no idea with slaughtering animals and then ripping the flesh off their tasty bones so i’m sure i’ll be eating meat soon enough.  Besides Christmas is coming.. so that’s a given.

Today’s links

Teh internet peoples

So last night was a double header of drinking with complete strangers from the internet.

Up first was the way awesome Omaha Tweetup.  It’s where all the people who know each other through Twitter met up and hung out.  It was a great time and I met a lot of awesome people for the first time.  Everyone had nametags with their @names on them and it was just plain cool.  I spent a large chunk of the time talking to @jdisney and @detwiler, neither of them I was even following previously on twitter.

After leaving there I went to the Athiest meetup.com group. That’s right, peoople getting together to discuss what they don’t believe in.  But it was rad.  The people there were smart, had good stories to tell, and I could relate to them.  I was hesitant about going, but I’m glad I did.  I even dragged along a friend of a friend who I saw on facebook had interest in atheism, and she really enjoyed it too.

So that’s that for now.  Wednesday.

New City Slump

Another obligatory update.

I’m always on the fence when it comes to blog posts.  Do I post all the little things along with feelings and stupid crap that nobody really wants to hear about, or just the big things that are valid points of time when people who read look back at?

Well, I have nothing big.   Just stupid little petty things.

I fell recently into what I can kindly call a “slump”.  One day I woke up and I missed Chicago, I missed my friends, I missed everyone who loved me and I wanted nothing but to be back with them.

What set this off?  It probably started with the bullshit surrounding my expectations for christmas.  In no way can I be expected to do anything for anyone right now, i’m just not capable of of it.  From one day to the next I may feel the happiest ever, or the loneliest ever.  It really depends.  It’s kind of a mess.  The thought of added pressure when from one day to the next I don’t know what my life consists of just really sets me off.
I think it slightly falls on the fact that I have so few people that I know, and even less that I would consider friends.  So if you have two friends, and both aren’t talking to you because they’re busy… you’ve lost connection with 100% of your friends that day.  No big deal to most, but when you’re in a new place and you’re looking for some sense of belonging, it takes a hit.

That said I do have friends.  Kat, like I mentioned before and Cassie.  Both amazing people.  But I can’t expect them to hang out with me all the time.  And Jim, who I know through work has been awesome at introducing me to everyone he knows and inviting me out at every turn.  The thing is they all had lives before I showed up here, and it just makes me feel like I have to try harder to make more friends to make up for it.  Failure to do that is just another hit and makes me feel shitty.

On the flip side, of course there’s good things.  Kat adopted me for Thanksgiving and let me spend it with her and her family.  I was very hesitant at first.  I’m not good with my own family, I wasn’t sure I could handle a strange one very well.  But I ultimately was glad I went.  It was low pressure and I felt welcome, and that’s what I needed.  And the littlest thing happened yesterday that brought a smile to my face.  I walked down the street for coffee yesterday morning, and the barista at this little cafe I recognized as the bartender from a venue that Cassie and I went to the week before.  The fact that I recognized someone in the city for the first time just felt really good.
So i’m sure this is nothing that anyone else in a new city wouldn’t feel, i’m nothing special.  Therefore I shouldn’t even be blogging about any kind of stupid “slump”, but I have to blog about something every once in a while.  So why not that?