Fat Tuesday

Facebook has informed me today is Fat Tuesday, and fittingly, I feel fat. I guess not "fat" according to Webster's Dictionary, but I have a sickly and bloated feeling that is interfering with my ability to get out there and run. I know what's caused this. Over the past few weeks, I've helpfully driven to pick up lunch for a coworker and I. The office has been busy, she hasn't had a chance to get away, and so I'll run out on my break and get food for both of us--which she typically pays for, as thanks for my willingness to drive around town on my break. It's been a great arrangement for everyone except my pants, which now protest when I put them on.

I'm hardly a person who needs to diet, and I'm not so much a follower of the "giving ______ up for Lent" crowd, but I think the time has come to get a bit healthier again. Lunchtime (and too often now, dinnertime) laziness isn't going to get me in the kind of condition I need to be in for upcoming races, and it does get me a general feeling of "blah" that I know will disappear if I quit the cherry limeades and Whataburgers I've come to enjoy lately.

So I'm going to get back into the routine of cooking actual dinners, not just spaghetti or frozen meals, on weeknights, and healthy ones at that: chicken not drenched in BBQ sauce. Maybe even fish, and not the kind coated in batter and sold in the freezer section, if only to try to get my kids to eat something I can't eat myself. I'm going to stock the work kitchen with healthier food to raid for breakfast and lunch. No more sausage and egg croissants from the microwave...hello, oatmeal. No more chocolate-coated raisins for snacks...hello, veggies and cliff bars. And lunch will have to be some similarly healthy fare. Hopefully this will be easier to stick to with half the office giving up various foods or activities.

Although I may need to keep my cherry limeades, at least on an occasional basis. With the lime slices and cherry, and all the ice they put in the cup, I'm willing to call Sonic drinks "semi-healthy." Fruit and water = acceptable in my book!