[public] how come you're always such a fuzzy young man?

[scintilla72]

(I actually thought that was the first line of "Eat It" when I was a kid.)

in the course of reading Scott Adams's (remember, the only names you should be omitting the S after the apostrophe in the possessive of are Jesus and Moses) book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013), I eventually got the chapter that Adams devotes to the topic of one's diet.

the following bit jumped out at me:

If you know anyone who maintains an ideal adult weight without the services of a personal chef or a personal trainer, wouldn't you like to know how? Ask anyone who has a healthy weight what he or she eats, then be on the lookout for the pattern.

well, one of the few things that has unequivocally gone right about my adult life, and I feel confident that any objective observer would agree, is in fact my weight. I stand 5'10", and for many years my weight was in the 130-140# range. I took some photos in the summer of 2017 and labeled them with my weight at the time, which was 141#, as a "before" point of comparison so I could see how much improved my body would look if I put on a few (okay, a lot of) pounds of muscle. now, in 2021, I've been right around 150# consistently for the past month or two, safely out of the "underweight" BMI range (we all know BMI is a poor metric in isolation, but apparently insurance companies and so forth still care about it).

and -- though I don't like to admit it -- the majority of that time was without any sort of regular exercise. and my weight remained in a healthy range all the same.

so in the interests of starting a healthy dialogue and maybe uncovering some patterns that could be of use to people, here's what I generally eat.

• cereals, usually without much added sugar (because sugar is bad for teeth, with which I tend to have issues, and for skin, which I actually care about); I usually end up with Cheerios, Honey Bunches of Oats, Life, or Peanut Butter Crunch. sometimes Rice Krispies, but not as often as the others. also, I adore Quaker's Honey Oh's -- a throwback to my childhood -- but I've never seen it available anywhere outside Morris County.
  
• oatmeal, which (combined with the Cheerios) seems to be keeping my cholesterol at really good levels
  
• 1% milk
  
• orange juice
  
• Greek yogurt (usually Chobani's "less sugar" vanilla, which is no sacrifice because it still tastes good)
  
• cheese
  
• eggs (when I remember to buy them)
  
• carrots
  
• Craisins (original only these days; I've tried the "less sugar" variety, and while the taste is still acceptable, the texture is sufficiently harder to chew that I get sick of them halfway through the bag)
  
• Wheat Thins (unlike the previous, I heartily suggest the "less sodium" variety, because I cannot taste a difference and I have high blood pressure in my family history; too bad BJ's doesn't carry it)
  
• strawberries, blueberries, cherries
  
• apples, pears, nectarines (plums and peaches are good too, but nectarines are my favorite of the three)
  
• broccoli, zucchini
  
• frozen vegetables, usually mixes including broccoli, zucchini, cauliflower, carrots, corn, peas...
  
• peanut butter and honey roasted peanuts
  
• bread, never plain white but not exclusively whole grain either (often in combination with the peanut butter; before the pandemic struck, I basically included a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my lunch every single weekday for 14 years)
  
• Lärabars (usually chocolate chip cookie dough and peanut butter chocolate chip, because that's the only combination that BJ's carries anymore, dammit)
  
• protein bars, often two a day recently (Clif Builder's Bars are cheap and tasty; Premier Protein was better on paper due to less sugar, but always too chalky and hard to eat; I remember liking certain PowerBars but I can't remember which kind it was, the kind that ate more like a 3 Musketeers bar; ZonePerfect is quite good and cheap, if not as full of protein as the others; same goes for Clif non-Builder's, of which I'm partial to the white chocolate macadamia flavor)
  
• stuffed chicken breasts (broccoli & cheddar flavor)
  
• TV dinners (most often lasagna because it's always the cheapest per pound and I like it, but I also like things like chicken & broccoli Alfredo, and I'll always take Hungry-Man dinners when they go on sale for $2 each)
  
• skillet-fried frozen dishes (such as Bertolli chicken florentine, Tastee Choice shrimp alfredo, Birds Eye chicken dishes...)
  
• canned tuna
  
• breaded chicken cutlets (sometimes nuggets)
  
• frozen fish fillets: sometimes breaded (like Gorton's), sometimes not (like Sea Cuisine)
  
• tapioca pudding
  

I almost never eat out (I couldn't name three non-chain restaurants in the town I lived in 2010-2021), and I never get fast food unless I'm on a road trip or desperate. both of those are really more for reasons of money than for my health; but, when I was on a long road trip in 2018, having to eat fast food so often (for lack of alternatives) introduced me to what heartburn feels like... and the usefulness of the acid reducer famotidine.

and I think that about covers it. comments?

This entry was originally posted at: https://scintilla72.dreamwidth.org/761475.html. Please comment wherever you prefer.