Pescatarians and Flexitarians

I woke up this morning dreaming of regression lines.  My mind is literally spinning from everything I have learned.  I have been here two weeks ... and I am taking midterms.  I don't know how people who didn't go to business school can keep up with this amount of work.  I have only had three classes and we've plowed through half of each book.  I don't even have my things from Chicago here yet!

I've also decided to make another big life change.  No meat in my fridge.  I would be eating vegetarian, but I have just moved to a place where seafood is unbelievable and I can not pass up a bowl of clam chowder.  It will be the reason I leave with a muffin top.  It's been about six months since I regularly ate meat, and honestly I can not believe how much better I feel.  It's such a huge difference that when I have the option to eat it now I don't want any because I know it's going to make me feel bogged down and sluggish.  Interesting how my week of vegan life made me give up meat alltogether.  I found it helpful though ... not to tell anyone I was vegetarian because I always have this conversation:

Stranger: "You're vegetarian! But you eat fish"

Me: "Well I like fish, so I eat that.  I just don't eat meat a lot anymore."

Stranger: "You're pescatarian?"

Me: "WTF is that."

Stranger: "Oh you must be a flexaterian."

Whyyyyy must we label everything.  I just want to do what I want when I want to do it.  Although, with midterms happening this week, I have barely been remembering to eat at all...

200 Miles Down 115 Miles To Go

Complex Labyrinth of Rules

I thought running outside was intense when I started doing it.  Running outside, in June, in Chicago, on the Lake, is intense.  I almost stopped after one mile, but I passed a woman running with a dog in a stroller.  A dog in a stroller.  If she can run, I can run.  I kept thinking about something my brother said over the weekend.  I've been trying to become vegan.  I've been making a point to be vegetarian.  This weekend for fathers day we were going to have a cookout.  Meals at my dads house generally include one very large portion of meat, and possibly chips on the side.  Last time I was there, we made burgers, hot dogs, beer brats, and no sides.  Not super vegan friendly ... So this weekend I asked him to get me a veggie burger:

Me: "Dad, can you pick up some veggie burgers for this weekend?"
Dad: "Oh right! I forgot you're doing that vegetarian thing. I'll get salmon."
Me: "Dad, salmon is fish.  It's not vegetarian."
Dad: "Ok fine.  I'll get a veggie burger.  Or how about something fancier, I'll get you crab cakes."

It is so hard to just up and change!  We ended up going to a restaurant, and I ordered something that had shrimp in it.  My brother proceeded to say "I'm vegetarian, I eat fish, I am vegan, I had a hotdog."  I didn't realize I was so wishy washy.  I think I'm using all these rules to try to shape what I want, to be in this case healthier, when I could just focus on eating fruit.  Occasionally cheating is ok, but time to stop downing bags of cheetos and giant bowls of pasta.  Instead of designing a complex labyrinth of rules that are designed to shape my life into the thing I want it to be, I'm going to change my perspective.  I'm going to decide what I want, and instead of focusing on what to cut out I'm going to focus on what to include more of.

123 Miles Down 127 Miles To Go