Food is Fun.

Given a carefree choice, with no negative repercussions, I would happily live on junk food… probably? maybe? ummm…

Yes, I truly could hungrily wolf hamburgers, feast on french fries, slurp milkshakes, gobble pizzas… inhale chocolate, and devour cheesecake. Ad libitum…

The perfect atheist Heaven for me would be a hybrid McDonald’s and Cheesecake Factory that served me fat, sugar, and sodium-laced breakfast, lunch, dinner, and multiple snacks in-between.

My early childhood was replete with the chemical and technological wonders of 1950’s and 60’s-style technology.

This was mostly new-age junk food fed to us under a strange and implicit (mis)understanding that it was actually the best food for the human body… created by humans, sent into the world and marketed with a message telling us it was the easy-peasy, modern road to health using the very best scientific knowledge of the day (and yup, a lot of that messaging still exists).

Cruddy pseudo-food was sold on radio, TV, and magazines presented alongside esteemed doctors preaching from on high about the healthiest cigarettes you could smoke. It was a Mad Men diet filled with truly terrible choices like Cheez-Whiz, Spaghetti-O’s, and Pop Tarts. Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam…

My loving mother doted on me by making chocolate chip cookies and muffins each week that I happily scarfed down resulting in my “husky” size as I entered my teen years.

One major truth in my life is that despite being a very active sports and fitness guy… sadly… I’ve always been able to easily out-eat my exercise compulsions, even while training intensely for Ironman races.

So, like a zillion others, I face a day-to-day love-hate relationship with food.

In this perpetual war (I’d like to call it the Hundred Years War, but that is still TBD!), I lose many battles. My weigh scale and I have been mortal enemies at times…

But also, to my good fortune, I win back a few food’ish battles too (kind of reflects the Russia/Ukraine scenario doesn’t it?).

The end result over my many decades is that I tend to hover – back and forth – in a BMI (Body Mass Index) category that sits in the category called OVERWEIGHT.

I say good fortune, but I’ll accept personal responsibility like a good adult for whichever direction the needle wavers on the weigh scale.

When the needle creeps up, I’m usually not surprised. French fries or potato chips twice in one week + movie popcorn + a light beer? Especially when I could have the side salad in their place? BAM… another pound.

A second (or… third!) piece of chocolate cake at a birthday celebration? What was I thinking? Yup, another BAM!

This is never good for someone who is striving to join in the Centenarian Olympics. But it is human nature and I love myself despite these weaknesses!

A New Era?

In the past year or two, I’ve been intrigued and captivated by the Intermittent Fasting trend (fad?).

The judgment of science on this nascent movement is in limbo, but common sense at least says that fewer hours spent eating usually means fewer calories going down.

So these days I typically adhere to an Intermittent-Fasting-Lite approach to eating.

Twelve hours on, 12 hours off. No special adjustments to what I would normally eat otherwise, EXCEPT… No evening snacks or anything else passes my lips other than green tea until the following a.m.

For me this is doable, and doesn’t – in typical DIET fashion – feel like a struggle or an imposition. It’s become a habit like regular exercise and eating lots of vegetables, which is what I want.

And most importantly, my weigh scale rarely – almost never – tells me I’ve strayed. We hardly ever argue anymore. Sure, we don’t vacation together or share inside jokes but the expletive deletives have dropped right off!

Food is life. Food is pleasure. Food sustains us but it is so much more.

Food is like sex. You can do it fast or you can do it slow. Both have their enjoyable moments, both can be wrapped in guilt…

… and thankfully, both are highlights of the human condition that we savour.