Thirty-five
years ago, almost to the day, I became a vegetarian, but I wouldn’t exactly call
it a resolution. I had given it a lot of thought, talked to some folks and read
a lot of books before I started. What I did do to help, I fasted for, and I don’t
remember the timeline, 30 days. It was the start of a new lifestyle.
I do
remember, those last few days in December, 1978, what I ate. My buddies and I would
gather together, stop by McDonald’s and get a meal. The last thing I ate,
before the New Year arrived, 2 big Mac’s, a large order of fries, two cherry
pies and a very large strawberry milkshake, my last, meat meal.
After the fast,
for the most part, I worked out in the gym every day. The one thing I liked
about this particular gym, it had a juice bar. After every workout I would
guzzle down a Strawberry and spinach drink, it also had a raw egg in it. When I
finished that concoction I would go across the street, to the health food store
and get a few items, like those big chocolate carob chip cookies. In fact, I
got stuck with the nickname, Cookie Monster, because when I got to work you
could always see me nibbling on one of those cookies.
During those
early years I tried Macrobiotic diets and other kinds of vegetarian diets. I
enjoyed the macrobiotic diet but no matter how you eat it, it’s still bland and
boring. To this day I still eat the lentils and brown rice, but I bathe it in
ranch dressing.
I stayed a
vegetarian through the first few years of my marriage, but got tired of hearing
my ex talk about cooking for me. So, I started eating chicken and fish. On
Thanksgiving my mother was the only one who cooked vegetarian meals for me, or
anytime she cooked anything, like family outings and stuff, that’s why I loved
her so much. Anyway, I guess with my ex’s cooking it lead to me getting away
from what I was doing before and I got into real cookies, cakes and pies, my
ultimate downfall, in regard to eating a healthy diet.
So, just
about every year I made resolutions as to how I was going to eat, starting the
first of the year, not realizing that those were lifestyle choices. I continued
to eat chicken and fish, only because, when I went on dates, whoever I was
with, for whatever reason, couldn’t understand why I would only eat vegetarian.
I have no
problem with just eating a vegetarian diet; sometimes I prefer it to having a
turkey burger. Heck, I can get down with just a tomato, cheese, lettuce on a
sesame bun. I even throw in a fried egg. And Burger King would always comply. I
don’t know if they still do the veggie burger, though, but it was good, really
good, to me.
Now that I
think about it I could eat a veggie diet and not think about chicken or fish.
My problem is them darn cookies. When I retired I really didn’t get out much
and my son was living with me at the time. What he did was, after he got off
from work at 1a.m., he would buy donuts, but he would get me a bag of donut
holes. In the morning, when I got up, the smell of coffee from my automatic coffeemaker
usually woke me up; I would have those donut holes and a pot of coffee.
This went
on for months, or as long as he remembered to bring me those donut holes. Of
course, not working out was also a contributing factor in my weight gain. But, I
couldn’t stop. In November of 2009 I found something I kind of regretted, sort
of. CVS was, is selling Almond cookies for $1 a pack of 30 cookies. So, every
week I purchased about five packs.
And those
cookies go good, no, great, with coffee. So, I was kind of hooked. In March of
2011, my doctor told me that my sugar (triglyceride) level was over 296!!
Cholesterol, 247, my bad cholesterol, 149! That is about the time I joined the
gym.
For the
most part of 2011, I my diet consisted of eating six meals a day. Oatmeal for
breakfast and salads for lunch and dinner. I usually put tuna in my salads,
many times nothing. That regiment went on until…my nephew got sick and moved in
with me, and because that coming weekend was his birthday. His mother and his
friends came over to celebrate his birthday and they brought over lots of food!
Then
Thanksgiving came, again it was at my house and they brought food, lot more
food and cakes and pies, ice cream and stuff in that same vain. I had a ton of
food, I thought. But little did I know that when they left they took most of
the food and left the pies and cakes and other sweet stuff. That was the start
of my downward trend to the dark side, of food. Of course the cookies and
coffee started up again and anything else that was sweet.
January 1,
2012, it was resolution time or lifestyle change, again. Well, I had resolved
that I was going to do the diet I started in 2011, that and exercise again. But
this time I was going to start fasting. I started on the second but could only
go to the fifth; I wasn’t feeling it this time. I would have to guess, it was
bad because I hadn’t fasted since early 2010. I had been fasting for…33 years,
to that point, four times a year for a week.
Anyway, I
enjoyed with I did last year and hope to keep it going this year. It’s a diet
that helped me lose and maintain. Sounds weird, but it worked. I had stayed away
from coffee, anything sweet, beer and wine. I had a great year and that was one
resolution that worked. Before I started writing, today, I had a salad, smaller
than what I usually eat, Lentils and rice tonight. Hey, it’s a start.
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