Friday, May 1, 2020

From gluttony to privilege

I didn't eat much in the way of junk food -- chocolate, ice cream, chips, cakes, etc. -- until my mid-30s whence I started a job that involved heavy travel to client sites. Around the same time, all my friends started marrying and disappearing.. and I started feeling a bit bereft. I was at that job for almost five years. Good money. And my client-facing skills improved and went through the roof. But my diet? My diet, workout regimen, discipline, etc. went out the door. Then, after I turned 40, I started reining things in. It was a bit of a struggle at first. These things always are.. otherwise everybody could develop clean, lean habits at the drop of a hat. But eventually, I stopped eating junk and started cooking pretty much everyday at home. There was still the once or twice a week dining out that was almost always accompanied by a couple of gin and tonics.

Bread out. More eggs back in.

Now with this pandemic roaring on, I finally put an end to that habit as well. I have not touched a drop of alcohol in almost six weeks now. After the early weeks in the pandemic experimenting with a variety of whole foods, I have pretty much settled on a macro diet of fish, vegetables, fruit, rice and oats. I was occasionally cooking chicken thighs at home but stopped once chicken became available in only humongous packs. I have not eaten red meat in almost a month. Not by design, you see.. just sort of fell out of it. Saturday nights, I have started a habit of getting chicken wings from Domino's through contact less delivery. And Domino's delivers in 20 to 30 minutes now.. used to be an hour or so before the pandemic started. So.. for all practical purposes, my diet has become as clean as it can get.

I have had to deal with some irregularities down in the deep, dark depths of my bowels because of both the change and volume in my diet.. as I am eating a 1/3rd less food every day than I was before the pandemic and had also added those little sandwich rolls. So I took the bread out. And "everything" is regulating itself out with elan. The calisthenics are being done with renewed vigor. And I have never slept better than I have in the last two months. The bags under my eyes , never significant before, seem to have shrunk a little bit. I have lost ten pounds of weight and yet.. and yet.. still look muscular, feel energetic and am moving with remarkable lightness and grace.

My one weakness: a bar of white chocolate that I get when I step out of my cave once a week to forage for groceries. When I get home, I sanitize what needs to be sanitized. I change into comfortable clothing. Then I slowly sink into my recliner. No TV, nothing. I slowly unwrap the bar. I take my time with it. I talk naughty to it.. before my mouth starts savoring it.. just like these chaps do in the video below:


Is it better to work out in the morning or the evening?

If you do a web search on this topic, you will get all kinds of studies pointing out why training at one time or another in the day is best ...