Over the years, dining out has been a costly indulgence for my family, both from a financial standpoint, as well as for me personally, from a fitness standpoint. When we started working on our Total Money Makeover, my wife and I looked at the numbers and realized that we were spending far more money...
I admit it…I’ve long been a bit of a picky eater. While my habit until recently was to eat too much of the things I liked, there were many things that I just didn’t like, and didn’t eat any of. For me, it was usually a texture thing. Eggs, eggplant, mushrooms, etc. are examples of foods with displeasing textures that I just didn’t want to eat, and refused to try again.
As I’ve previously noted, during the first couple of weeks of my new workout routine, I started craving more protein in the mornings, and specifically found myself wanting eggs, which was a little weird. Then I stopped drinking diet coke, and switched to a combination of coffee (usually just 1 cup in the morning), tea, and mostly water.
Well, my recent business trip gave me another surprise, which is that it turns out that I really like salmon…or at least, I really like it when it’s cooked right. I guess my previous experience of salmon, which consisted mostly of the stuff you get at banquets, which is usually fishy tasting, and a bit on the rubbery side, was not really representative of what Salmon can be like. At a party one evening last week they served cedar plank-grilled salmon which was just amazing. Light and tender and not at all fishy tasting. To say I was surprised would be an understatement.
Remember how our mothers used to tell us “you are what you eat?” OK, maybe it wasn’t our mothers, but it’s certainly deeply embedded conventional wisdom.
Well, it’s also easily forgotten. While I haven’t been compulsive about it, I’ve been eating (and drinking…lots of water) better than average of late. Which made it all the more obvious when I decided to start my pre-lent feasting a little early, courtesy of the bake sale to benefit the preschool at my church.
One of the challenges I've had to face over the years is my weight. While there have been periods in my life when I was not overweight, such as college and my days in professional technical theatre (both of which had a good deal of built-in physical activity involved), much of my life has been marked by carrying more weight than is healthy.
The obvious answer to why we eat is that if we didn't we'd starve. But here's the thing. In the U.S. starvation is not the problem, obesity is. And part of the reason for that is plenty. While there may still be folks out there who have trouble making ends meet, the fact is that today in the U.S., food is more available, and in larger portions than previous generations could possibly have imagined. Even those of modest means can sit down to a meal that would have been rare or nonexistent for even some wealthy people of previous generations.