Gnawing matters
Growing up, I was quite the skinny kid. I remember my parents loading me up with vitamins to “improve my appetite.” I even had the requisite minimum of a cup of rice for each meal, that I must consume, or I never get to leave the table.
In high school, a friend and I were racing to hit the 100 lb. mark. We thought that the added weight may be what would give us some form atop our scrawny looking bods.
So weight gain was somewhat a quirky issue for me back then. And food was sometimes a bit of a nuisance that was forced on me when I was younger.
My, how things change.
It, perhaps, started with the onset of all the buffet offerings that started sprouting about, and the number of restaurants that has kept on opening. In the last 15 years, the concept of food and dining has certainly evolved into something that pertained to more than just nourishment or the communing of family during get-togethers. It has become an activity of leisure, of pure enjoyment, of indulgence.
Thus today, I am on my road to being a glutton. Unless somewhere I long the way, I change my eating habits. These days, I always find a reason to eat: a bad day at work, an achievement to celebrate, a reunion with family, a nearby takeout counter, another person eating, a boring television show. Furthermore, eating nowadays means eating well. The problem is when eating well easily becomes eating too much.
Sometime during my underweight days, I talked to a nutrionist at a gym (of which my family were lifetime members), and she told me that the meat I was to have at each meal should be about the size of a matchbox. I left muttering that she was nuts-had she seen how much weight I didn’t need to lose?
These days, however, a lot of things have been said about portioning. That misguided nutritionist may have been on the right track if I wasn’t a mere adolescent with more than enough metabolism to burn then. I probably should take that recommendation to heart now, as overstuffing myself at meals has recently become too easy. I’ve never been the athletic type and I’m still dealing with my distaste of working out, but as my ass expands during the 8 hours I am glued to my seat in the office, I know the day has come for me to truly start watching what and how much I put in my mouth.
But God help me, I still have a chocolate mallow waiting for me to get to it later in the day.
In high school, a friend and I were racing to hit the 100 lb. mark. We thought that the added weight may be what would give us some form atop our scrawny looking bods.
So weight gain was somewhat a quirky issue for me back then. And food was sometimes a bit of a nuisance that was forced on me when I was younger.
My, how things change.
It, perhaps, started with the onset of all the buffet offerings that started sprouting about, and the number of restaurants that has kept on opening. In the last 15 years, the concept of food and dining has certainly evolved into something that pertained to more than just nourishment or the communing of family during get-togethers. It has become an activity of leisure, of pure enjoyment, of indulgence.
Thus today, I am on my road to being a glutton. Unless somewhere I long the way, I change my eating habits. These days, I always find a reason to eat: a bad day at work, an achievement to celebrate, a reunion with family, a nearby takeout counter, another person eating, a boring television show. Furthermore, eating nowadays means eating well. The problem is when eating well easily becomes eating too much.
Sometime during my underweight days, I talked to a nutrionist at a gym (of which my family were lifetime members), and she told me that the meat I was to have at each meal should be about the size of a matchbox. I left muttering that she was nuts-had she seen how much weight I didn’t need to lose?
These days, however, a lot of things have been said about portioning. That misguided nutritionist may have been on the right track if I wasn’t a mere adolescent with more than enough metabolism to burn then. I probably should take that recommendation to heart now, as overstuffing myself at meals has recently become too easy. I’ve never been the athletic type and I’m still dealing with my distaste of working out, but as my ass expands during the 8 hours I am glued to my seat in the office, I know the day has come for me to truly start watching what and how much I put in my mouth.
But God help me, I still have a chocolate mallow waiting for me to get to it later in the day.