I've chosen to give up a great many foods in my life. A few examples: at age 12, I gave up beef; age 16, all meat; age 18, caffeine; age 25, citrus.
With all these things, I gave them up because of how they were making me feel.
See, my mom stopped cooking meat at our house when I was seven years old. During the summers or at other people's houses, I ate meat like crazy for a few years. I loved me some hamburgers. Oh, hamburgers! But then I started eating them so rarely that my stomach became upset on the rare occasions that I did. I decided that I needed to step up on my cow consumption or give it up completely. Perhaps it was laziness, but I chose the latter.
The same situation is true of chicken and turkey. By eleventh grade, I was eating turkey on Thanksgiving only and chicken just occasionally at McDonald's. And my stomach was unhappy on all of those occasions. I went ahead and gave up fish, too, just because with the exception of tuna, I never really cared for it anyway.
The caffeine and soda, I gave up my first quarter in college. I was taking a class called "Total Wellness." I was also suffering from insomnia, and had been all through high school. I discovered that when I gave up Coke and mochas for a class experiment, sleep came much easier for me. Who knew, right?
The citrus I gave up because I was having allergic reactions. After about two years of abstaining, I was able to very, very gradually add citrus back into my diet. Now, citrus and I are great friends, once again. Hooray!
Yesterday, I made an important decision: today, I will give up Taco Time's crisp bean burritos. Forever.
Beef is depicted in the above picture, but the bean version looks similar. It's beans, cheese, and spices, wrapped in a tortilla and deep fried. I order one of these about once every month or two or three--whenever I have a craving, really. I get a side of ranch sour cream and dip the burrito into the dressing for every bite. And then... for hours afterward, I feel like vomiting.
THIS NONSENSE HAS TO STOP.
So, yeah. I'm giving up the crisp bean burritos. I am committed to taking not even a single bite if my husband orders one -- for at least a year -- because I don't want to fall back into that misery.
My taste buds will be sad, but my stomach will thank me. I have to go with the stomach on this because, you know, not doing so has worse side effects.