Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Month of Living Pescetarianly

At the beginning of the month, I embarked on an adventure: I decided to give up all meat and poultry for one month.

I had a couple of reasons for doing this. The most important reason was that I've been trying to be healthier since my mom died, and I thought that a mostly vegetarian diet would be healthy. But honestly, the idea only occurred to me after reading some literature about how meat is not particularly good for the environment.

So I decided to try it out.

The results have been mixed. Ultimately, I didn't lose any weight, and I may have gained a pound or two. I don't feel any healthier, and in fact, before I started taking an iron supplement, my anemia was so bad that, for a couple of days, I was barely functioning.

My conclusions:

1. I have no problem giving up poultry. I did not crave it at all during the entire month. I can't say the same thing about red meat.
2. I really like fish, and, despite eating it all month, I have yet to get bored of it. There are a lot of varieties and a lot of options on how to prepare it.
3. Even keeping a mostly-vegetarian diet, I don't eat enough vegetables.
4. I eat way too much cheese. It's probably my favorite food.
5. I really don't eat a lot of shellfish. I don't order it in restaurants very often, and I don't cook it in my house -- except for lobster ravioli from the Italian Store.
6. Actually, I really don't cook anything in my house. Even with watching my diet, I only cooked in the house about 8 times during the entire month.
7. Cupcakes are not a healthy dinner.

So, am I going to stay pescetarian? Probably not. The siren call of steak will, ultimately, be too hard to resist -- but I'm not rushing to eat it either. I think what that means is that I'm going to limit my meat and poultry consumption, now that I know that I don't have to eat it every day.


Friday, May 22, 2009

The good, the bad, and the ugly -- Twitter style

It's been almost a month since my last confession post. I've been neglectful, but mostly, I've been busy. I have, however, been twittering as much or more than usual. I'm not sure whether that's because it's quicker or because most of my thoughts are not more than 140 characters long.

Today, I had a bunch of things happen, but I did not twitter them. Here is what it would have looked like if I had.

The good:
1. thinks that, in her case, casual Fridays are really flip-flop Fridays.
2. just ate a sandwich from Cowgirl Creamery and cupcake (Morning Call) from Red Velvet. Dee-lish.
3. is looking forward to sitting out by the pool. Loves three-day weekends.


The bad:
1. started the day with Metro doors closing on her, causing a painful and unsightly cut on her hand.
2. got a sunburn from being outside for twenty minutes at lunch. Clearly this means that she does not get out enough.
3. has so much work to bring home that it's not even funny.

The ugly:
1. developed a new Tourette's like tic after finding large bug in her hair.
2. can't believe that she may have agreed to drive to the beach this weekend. Ugh, can you say 'traffic nightmare'?
3. while packing up her computer, stumbled across an inventory of her mother's jewelery. What a depressing way to start a weekend.