Eating Well

When I was in Middle School and early High School, the welfare department gave us commodity cheese, powdered milk and big cans of Spam. Breakfast was milk, I took cheese sandwiches to school, and grandma cooked that Spam every night while it lasted. I delivered newspapers, cleaned toilets and mopped floors but there was just no money for frills, like much food.

It wasn't just Ethiopia where boys were undernourished.

When I was a starving college student, I ate almost exclusively 9-cent boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and it was unusual to have a burger. My diet had little protein, so I wonder how I stayed alive those years... at 21, I was 6'1" but my pants waist size was 28" Slim. When I visited grandma, she'd try her hardest to fatten me up with what she had.

When I got my first career job, I had money, and I actually went out for lunch daily. It was burgers and fries or steak and loaded baked potato. Then some honey saw that and grabbed me and married me, and there went my brief good eating time.

All of a sudden I was a young man with a huge mortgage, cars, demanding wife and two kids. We ate oatmeal for breakfast, I again took cheese sandwiches to work for lunch, and we had an awful lot of beans for dinner.

In general, it was not until I progressed in my career and made more money, that my eating got good but bad... because milk, oatmeal, rice and beans... the poorman's diet... are real good for you, not lots of steak and potatoes nor a steady diet of fast food.

So, when the wife went crazy with demands and left us, things got good and we three started eating out at McDonald's, Taco Bell and Arby's, and I got heavy and so did my daughter. The son did not but he had hollow legs. We called Taco Bell "The Kitchen."

That was a while back. The kids left long ago and I've had some awful relationships (the grabbing honeys were still out there). It's just terrible how some people treat themselves and others.

More recently, I'm staying away from fast food and fast women. I eat soy milk for breakfast, a reasonably balanced lunch at the work cafeteria, a protein bar for an afternoon snack and try to eat a small dinner at home after gym or ride. I haven't eaten beef in years but stick to chicken and fish. It's a constant battle to stay at a weight at which I can do all my outdoor activities I love so much, like hiking and bicycling, while maintaining the muscle mass to weightlift at the gym. Since I live alone now... ignoring the grabbing honeys... with my iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner "dog" and a forest backyard full of wild birds and animals... I don't have any excuse except to eat right.

So I'm eating well now and I'm having the best time in my life.


- © 2008 by Willy
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