Well I finally found a way to stop the insanity.

Bad habits were taking over.  Like the one where I don’t take the time to bring anything for breakfast, so I just stop at McDonald’s or Burger King on my way to work.  There were several days when I even double dipped and had fast food for breakfast and lunch.

It wasn’t too long ago that I gave up fast food altogether.  I imagine by now you have heard of the documentary Super Size Me.  The filmmaker goes on a 30 day “binger” where all he eats is McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  And when they ask the infamous question, “do you want that supersized”… he always smiles at the camera and says yes.  The filmmaker makes it through the 30 days, but throughout filming, both his girlfriend (a vegetarian) and his doctors (who are tracking weekly labs) essentially beg him to stop as he is killing himself.  There were other parts of the movie that helped wake me up, including the french fries sitting out for the better part of a month, yet looking exactly the same after weeks going by as they did freshly cooked out of the fryer.

After watching Super Size Me I decided that although I loved to eat it, I had to abstain.  And I did for quite a while.  At the time I allowed myself the one vice of Chic-Fil-A, figuring any food business that was generous enough to their employees to close on Sunday, was surely not putting anything harmful to the human body in their food (yeah, yeah).  Who knew that years later I would boycott Chic-Fil-A for other reasons than nutritional value.

But back to my initial point… over time I allowed fast food to seep back into my everyday lifestyle.  First, just once in a blue moon, but then before you know it, it’s a couple times a week.  Of course when I started this journey, fast food was once again essentially eliminated.

However life gets in the way, or in my case, laziness does.  And even though I knew how bad it makes me feel after eating it, and remembering what it actually can do to my body over the long term, I still found the convenience, convenient.  And lets be honest… it tastes so good in the moment.

But a couple of Saturday’s ago I had to work.  On my way in, I stopped at the Ronny Mac Steakhouse (a.k.a – McDonald’s) for some breakfast.  Nothing like running late and eating in your car while driving 80 mph.  Then once again the day slipped away from me and I never got a chance to eat lunch.  Realizing that I had a race just a few hours later, I stopped (again) at McDonald’s to get some fuel in my body on my way home.  I thought perhaps if I stayed with chicken, it would be a safer bet.

Yeah, I lost that bet.  Luckily my race that night was just a 5k.  Because at about mile 2 I was having a hard time holding everything down.  I didnt think there was any way I was going to make it to the finish line without hurling.  Thinking to myself as I was trying to run as fast as I could, thank God this race is at night in case I have to “pull over” and take care of business.

Looking back now, I wish I would have just puked.  Because the effects that I had seemed to last the rest of the night instead of just a little short term pain.  Maybe I did throw up and I essentially swallowed it back down.  Disgusting I know, but at least you are just reading it… it actually happened to me.

The good news is, since this episode I haven’t touched fast food, and don’t intend to for a while.  I wish I could say I will never have it again, but I know there will be a time and place.  Hopefully I’ll remember the taste, the burning in my throat, of the night of Novemeber 17th…