A Little Healthy "Rule-Breaking"

June 2010
Do you ever just sit and glower in hate at those beautiful people who can eat whatever they want? Well, now I do. I've considered myself a healthy person for a while, several years I would say. I'd eat red meat just now and then, eat granola bars often, lost all the baby weight 4 months after giving birth. (But let me tell you, I did not do it the healthy way. I was simply too busy, catching up at work, catching up with baby when I got home, and never, ever, did I look good enough to me). Somewhere along the line I allowed my son to drag me back into the fast food habit, sometime after becoming a divorced, working mom. He loves Chik-Fil-A, for one, and so do I! However, their chicken is still fried.

For some reason, although I've always been a non-smoker, I got pleurisy last year, probably as a result of my almost-yearly spring-time bronchitis. My boyfriend calls me the allergy queen...though I don't think I'm as bad as his dog, who scratches himself against the metal fence! All these people who smoke, and I have to have the lung problems. Luckily I got over it. Only months later, I was having what seemed to be a gall-bladder attack. Cue in the guilt over my non-cooking, fast-food, eating-out, working mom lifestyle. After multiple tests, the doctor said I had spastic colon. "Watch the rich foods, fried foods, and sweets. Here's a prescription to calm down your digestive system." That prescription works like a charm, even calms me too! I also watch what I eat, haven't had a burger since last August, and only had roast beef once. I've gotten many great healthy ideas from my dad's wife, and from the Whole Foods Market.

I just wish I could be one of those rugged, cowgirl types. Like these men who always say "Gotta have my meat and potatoes." My boyfriend is one of them, but I'll tell you, he sure doesn't over-eat and always has some type of vegetable. Remember the song, "Where have all the cowboys gone?" Love it. It makes me think of those mavericks who ride hard, chase the herd, work all day, and eat what they want, some of them even lighting up a smoke after the work is done. The good old days, without consequences. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't sound romantic to me to smoke and I won't. I just want a blasted cheeseburger!

So, over this next weekend, probably on my boyfriend's birthday, I'm going to get one. I will not think about the consequences, though there most likely will be some, but I am going to enjoy it! Maybe I'll make it a yearly tradition. Rules are no fun if you don't break them now and then. To me, that's a little bit of what freedom is.