When I was a kid, every woman in my life was an amazing cook.

Last summer I drove up to Boise for a long weekend and my Mom made the world’s best meatloaf and scalloped potatoes for me. I didn’t even ask, she just knows how much I love them. My Grandma Riley was the best baker on Earth. Cookies, sweet rolls, breads. Everything she made was great, but the baked goods really stand out in my memory.

The house I grew up in was a block from the house where my Mom grew up, so my Grandma and Grandpa Jones’ house was a second home to my sister and I. Grandma made about 100 different foods that were nothing short of amazing and I’m really glad I got some of her recipes from her before she died. I miss them both, and not just because of the fantastic food.

As good as my grandmothers were, my (Great) Grandma Bywater was even better. She didn’t make anything that wasn’t the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted. It probably didn’t hurt that Grandpa Bywater grew a huge vegetable garden and kept chickens. She had good fresh ingredients to work with. I would give two pints of blood right now for a plate of her chicken noodles, and her gooseberry pie was just unbelievable.

With all that great food around, I grew up loving to eat and I did so often and with great enthusiasm. Despite my superhuman eating abilities, when I went off to Army boot camp at age 17, I was 6’1″ and weighed 155 pounds. You could see my bones poking out through my skin. I don’t have that problem any more.

Why didn't I send in that coupon!

I stepped on the scale the other morning and it spun around to exactly 250. Last spring when I decided to actually do something about hating my physical self I was at 270, so there has been progress. It’s not all about weight though, the goal is to feel good and feel good about how I look.

My other concern is the my blood pressure is high. I took pills for that for a while, but I really don’t like taking pills for something that I should be able to fix myself. For me to take blood pressure medicine is admitting defeat without even putting up a fight. It’s not a good first option.

So I’ve been on this loosely organized personal crusade since about last April and I’ve made some progress. My biggest problem is that I have always loved to eat and I never learned how to eat healthy. As a dumbass teenager the farthest thing from my mind was preparing for the day when I’d be an old married guy. I had more important things to do. Thinking wasn’t one of them.

At age 42 I’m now having to teach myself how to eat, which is harder than I thought it would be. It seems like everyone has a diet plan. I just searched Amazon books for the word “diet” and it returned 62,547 results. There’s a billion dollar industry built around the word “diet”. It’s silly to even think that money isn’t the main motivation for the majority of the people involved, which is fine but it doesn’t really motivate me to buy a book.

The Celebrity Makeover MIRACLE!?!? Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!

And I don’t even want to be on a diet. I don’t want to lose weight. My goal is to be become healthier and maintain good health for the rest of my life. Losing weight and eating right is just what I have to do to reach the goal.

As I learn more, my plan changes. Last April I just jumped on the treadmill and busted my ass every morning and cut back on my food intake. It worked great. I lost 25 pounds in a month. I was very happy with what I had done, but it wasn’t sustainable the way I was doing it. My legs were killing me after about three weeks. My food plan was to eat three small meals a day, drink nothing but water and never have snacks. Doable, but most of the time it wasn’t much fun.

So I’ve taken what I learned over the last nine months and put together an updated three part plan for myself. The plan is healthy eating, exercise and general self-improvement.

Exercise

The exercise plan starts with being in bed by 9 o’clock every night so I can get plenty of sleep and still be up at 5 to work out. My commitment is to at least walk for 30 minutes a day. If I’m sick, have a headache or am just fatigued from the previous day’s workout I should be able to walk. This is more of a mental requirement more than a physical one – I have to keep the routing going seven days a week.

Now that I’ve got more workout choices, I don’t anticipate getting physically burned out like I did before. If my legs get sore I can lift weights or put on the gloves and beat the shit out of the heavy bag for a day or two. If my upper body is sore I can hop on the bike for 40 minutes that day.

Adding 45-60 minutes of leisure walking in the afternoon is probably going to happen too. We have a great walking trail right by the house, so when it’s warm enough that’s a great option. Otherwise I can walk on the treadmill and listen to a podcast or something.

I’m toying with the idea of adding one or two days of yoga to the mix, but I don’t know much about it at this point. So it’s just something I’m thinking about.

I can imagine doing that

Healthy Eating

I’ve created a list of foods for breakfast and lunch that I can choose from. Having the meals written down gives me concrete choices every day and will, I believe, make it easier to limit myself. I’m giving myself 3 small meals and 2-3 snacks a day. I made up about 100 individual servings of wheat crackers, rice crackers, dried apples, cashews and almonds for my snacks.

BREAKFAST (7am)
Any 2 of...
 3 Scrambled Egg Whites and Green Salsa
 Fiber Cereal
 Yogurt
 Oatmeal
 1 cup Fruit
 Cottage Cheese
 1 English Muffin
 1 Hash Brown

LUNCH (Noon)
 Rice and Vegetables
 Rice and Fish
 Turkey Sandwich with Pickles
 Hummus and 1 Pita Bread
 Tuna Salad on Crackers
 Healthy Choice Frozen Meal
 1 Lean Pocket
 Healthy Choice Soup Cup

DINNER
 A small portion of the regular family meal

OPTIONAL SNACKS
 Frush Fruit (Apple or Orange)
 6 Triscuit Crackers
 1/4 cup Dried Apple Chips
 Dried Fruit (Apricots or Prunes)
 15 Rice Crackers
 Glass of Naked juice
 1/4 cup Cashews or Almonds

We generally eat out or get take-out food a couple of times a week. Unless we go out, this usually means Anita is picking up food on the way home from work. So I’m making a menu of what I’ll have from all the places we might get food from. For example, as much as I like Macho Nachos and a Dr. Pepper from Del Taco, that’s like 1400 calories. A half-pound bean and cheese burrito and water or tea is less than 250 calories and tastes good. So that’s my Del Taco order now.

But I'd rather have sushi

I should have access to an actual nutritionist through the health program at my wife’s company this year and I plan to take advantage of that. Her company requires that employees and spouses participate in one of a variety of their health plans, but they’re notoriously slow when it comes to implementing something new like this so I don’t know when it will happen.

Spiritual / Self-Improvement

This one is harder to nail down. It involves reading more, both for pleasure and spiritual/self-improvement kinds of things. It also involves writing this blog every weekday to help me stay on track and flesh out the things I’m working on. (Thank you for your participation in this part of it, by the way.)

The self-improvement part of my plan is really a blank page. The general goal is to become more patient and forgiving. The path isn’t clear to me and may never be, but I’m going to keep moving and do my best.

I’ve been interested in Buddhism for many years, but there’s only so much you can learn from a book. There’s a place called Shambhala Mountain Center not too far from where I live and I’ve been thinking about taking one of their weekend retreats to learn about meditation from someone who actually knows.

So in a nutshell, that’s my plan right now. I’m putting the most emphasis on the diet portion right now because that’s the area that needs my attention the most while I build better habits and improve my food choices. Once I’m out of bed at 5, the exercise is going to happen and it’s not that hard to get out of bed. And the spiritual / self-improvement part is more of a freestyle thing at this point.

Since I don’t have a 9-5 kind of job, I’m free to focus on all of this stuff and I appreciate the opportunity I have right now and plan to take advantage of it. But the next time I visit my Mom and she makes those scalloped potatoes, all bets are off.

As always, I appreciate your comments