McDonald’s and Me

      4 Comments on McDonald’s and Me

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Thursday was my day off running, but it’s normally my strength training and “ab workout” day.  I had promised I was going to do something different this week, to help me “shake up” my metabolism, and after discussing it with my husband, I decided to start the Insanity workout.

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However…let me be clear—my plan is to do it in a much moderated form.  I know it’s a very tough workout, and I don’t plan to do it six days a week. I figured I would just do it two days a week, to the best of my abilities, and still do my strength training in addition. It will be harder to fit in the extra time, but I’m going to try.

I did the fit test on Thursday, and I won’t lie—it was challenging!  However, one thing I think I have going for me is that my cardio abilities are pretty damn good.  Running five days a week will do that for you! I actually had as much difficulty with just trying to perform the moves as I did with trying to do them quickly and for the length of time required.  I am absolutely not anything close to graceful, believe me!  😛 We’ll see how long I can do this without falling flat on my face or injuring an important body part.

The other challenge I had was because of my ankle. It started hurting me on Thursday morning and although it got better toward the end of the day, I found that all the jumping and twisting required of Insanity exacerbated it. :/ I wasn’t expecting that, and it definitely impacted my ability to complete the workout effectively.

Friday morning, I had a 40-minute tempo run on the schedule.  For those who don’t know (like me in the old days!), a tempo run is done in stages: you do a warm-up for about 1/3 of your total distance, then a slightly-faster-than-race-pace segment for about ½ your distance, and then a cool down for about ¼ of the distance.  You don’t just “switch” paces, either…you’re supposed to gradually speed up to the tempo part, then gradually slow down to the cool down segment.  It’s often called “the thinking runner’s” workout, because you really have to think about your transitions, and it honestly requires a lot of “math thinking,” which I’m not fond of. 😉

When I awoke Friday morning at 4:45am, I found that my ankle was still hurting me.  I still went downstairs and started to get ready, but then I thought about it and realized that missing one run would not kill me, and that it was probably better to just let my ankle rest.  So, as shocking as it was for me, I actually went back to bed! It wasn’t hard to do, but I knew it would be hard to get through the rest of the day, knowing I’d skipped a workout.  I’m an incurable rule-follower, you know, and if the plan says you’re supposed to run 40 minutes, well, then, you have to run!! 😉

Later, on the way to work, I encountered a freeway closure. :/ (We’ve had a surprising number of freeway tanker fires in Detroit this year!)  I knew about it ahead of time, so I just got off the freeway at the exit before and made my way around using surface streets.

Back when I was in college, I had a job in Livonia (1989-91), and in the summer when I worked full-time, I used to take the same freeways I do now.  Back then, I regularly exited one stop early in order to take a detour to…

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Yes, McDonald’s.  McDonald’s and I go way back: I got my first job at McDonald’s, the summer after I graduated from high school (1989).  I made $3.35 an hour (ha!), and I was “the biscuit girl”—back when they actually made the biscuits in the store! (They don’t anymore; now they come frozen.)  I somehow became addicted to their biscuit sandwiches (you’d think an entire summer of making them over and over would have made me sick of them, but no!), and I ate them every chance I could.

Later that year, I got a job for a plumbing and concrete contractor. I was young and was just learning how fun it was to have money of my own, and I didn’t hesitate to eat out all the time, including breakfast. The next summer, when I worked full time and started at 9am, I would stop at that particular McDonald’s on the way in and get one of my favorite breakfast sandwiches, usually a sausage biscuit or a bacon egg cheese biscuit. Every day.  I was also pretty fond of their double cheeseburgers, and they were a pretty common dinner for me for many years.

Now, flash forward 25 years: I haven’t eaten anything from McDonald’s in about 3 years.  Most of the time I don’t even think about it, but yesterday, as I pulled off the freeway and made my way down the same exit ramp that I’d taken so many times before, I had this crazy flashback feeling where I suddenly found myself thinking, “Oh! I could stop and get a bacon, egg, cheese biscuit on the way…”

Say what?!

The moment passed, but for a few brief seconds, I really did crave one.  Which is kind of crazy, because it has truly been years since I had one and I don’t think about them anymore.  😮  But just taking that route brought it all back for just those few moments, which is either a testament to the power of memory or a testament to how addictive that stuff is, lol!

Just for the heck of it, I decided to look up the points for a bacon, egg, cheese biscuit, and I was actually surprised:

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Yes, 12 points is a lot for one item, but I honestly though that it would have been more with all that grease.  My first thought was, “I could actually splurge on that without too much trouble, what with all my running.”  But then I realized that I wouldn’t want to. I can think of so many other things that would be 12 points that would be so much more filling and would taste so much better.

So, I just drove on by the McDonald’s and turned down the side street next to it on my way to work.  But I did wax a little nostalgic as I drove past.  Mostly I was nostalgic for the days when I was 19 years old and had no responsibilities in life, ha ha!

I told this whole story to the kids last night at dinner, and when I got to the part where I was driving by the McDonald’s, JJ interrupted me to pipe up eagerly, “So, did you stop??”  Thanks mostly to my sister, JJ loves McDonald’s. 😉

True to form, I spent all day feeling guilty about not running in the morning.  So can you guess how my day ended?

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Yep…I did the damn run in the afternoon (I hate afternoon running).  It was hard, but I busted it out, and thankfully, my ankle only twinged a bit.  Or maybe I just stopped thinking about it as the run got harder, ha ha!

Thanks for reading!

4 thoughts on “McDonald’s and Me

  1. Katie @ Runs for Cookies

    I love McDonalds! I hadn’t eaten it in probably 4 years, and then got over my “fear” of it, and it tastes just as good as I remember! Haha. I got a Filet o Fish recently, and it was a very filling lunch for 380 calories. I’m not trying to convince you to eat there again… I think reading this post just made me really hungry 😉

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      Ha ha! I really thought long and hard about stopping that day, and getting over my “fear” of McDonald’s. Part of me says it’s silly to think that I can’t have it, when the reality is that everything truly is OK in moderation, but the other part of me is worried that it won’t taste nearly as good as I remember, and all feel mad about wasting the points. One of these days maybe!

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  2. Meg B

    One of the things I truly love about Weight Watchers is how easy it is to incorporate something like that, something you would think “never in a million years could I eat that”. It’s nice to know it’s an option.

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      I totally agree with you! I love that about weight watchers too, because I’ve learned that knowing I can have something usually removes the “mystery” and keeps me from dwelling on it too much.

      Thanks for commenting!

      Reply

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