Am I Supposed to Change?

There is some math in the back of my mind, and I considered discussing it in this post … but I hate math. So we’ll skip BMIs and what percentage a rider’s weight should be of a horse’s weight for a safe and comfortable ride for both. I am within the acceptable range in both cases, so those are not very good rubrics for how I want to approach this.

At a recent doctor’s appointment, I saw a number I had never seen before, associated with me. It was … a new experience. A variety of factors contribute to this number — desk job, the holidays, total lack of paying attention or giving a crap, prescription medications, erratic weather, my age, want of discipline …

Realistically, which of these factors can I control? Let’s start with discipline. I don’t have it, not consistently, not for everything. Not for much, at all. However, I think this will be the first place I start, the first place I can change. Discipline is totally up to me.

You see, I have been pretty active most of my life and have eaten and drank whatever, whenever most of my life. I haven’t had to think much about fitting into my clothes. Where I am right now, I still don’t. Yet. But I need to cut out some behaviors that are detrimental to my health, such as eating lunch out of a snack machine. Or I’m going to need a whole new closet and ain’t nobody got money for that.

I also owe it to my horse to be a little less slovenly and a little more athleticly-minded in my habits. I owe it to myself to develop new habits that on balance will be really, really easy to do. I am not talking about following whatever diet people follow, or trying meal services, or joining any kind of gym-like facility. I have tried such things and they are not to my taste. Convenience and simplicity are to my taste, at least when it comes to day-to-day nutrition.

I am going to stop eating cookies every damn day. I am going to stop going for the all-you-can-eat peanut M&Ms telling myself they are a great source of protein. I am ditching mayonnaise and creamy salad dressings (already had to give up most ranch dressings on the market because of msg anyway). But can I be bothered to pack a lunch for work? Eh, nah. I can still get a salad at work, but instead of augmenting that with cookies, candy, pop tarts, and sodas I am trying stuff I have never tried before: Soylent and RXBARs. Less sugar, right away. I can subscribe to both, either through the brand websites or Amazon — I am going with Amazon because I have other subscriptions via Amazon, too, and you get discounts for subscribing to many things. Soylent’s “Let us take a few things off your plate” speaks to me.

RXBARs, I just ran across on social media and thought they sounded good, and once I compared their nutrition labels to other “healthy” or “protein” bars, I knew I wanted RXBARs. No added sugars, unlike almost everything else.

But that is not to say I want “whole” foods or I am going to go on some crazy ass Candida cleanse that would probably leave me starving to death wondering why I can’t have some buttered rye toast with my coffee. Did I mention I am NOT giving up bread or cheese? I am not a masochist. GMO? Fine with me. Meat? I am eating less and less of it but I have no plans to give it up entirely. (Yet. The way America does factory farm feedlot meat is pretty much unsustainable but that’s outside the scope of this post.)

Soylent piqued my interest some time ago when I somehow caught one of the founders interviewed, and he was his very own tech bro guinea pig, even wondering why he had the formula totally right and still came up anemic and realized, oh yeah … iron … I thought he was absolutely adorable and because of my love of classic sci-fi I couldn’t help but snork at the name. I held off, though, because initially the product was one flavor in powder form and that was just not convenient enough for me. But I liked the idea. This could be like lembas bread in a bottle.

I am still going to cook myself food, to the extent that I cook — if salads, sandwiches, and pastas even count. I eat nuts and berries anyway, too. (Cue Talking Heads (Nothing But) Flowers.) I need a desk-job-doable solution to my abhorrent eating habits. I’m trying these two things first.

As far as palatability, I can recommend both Soylent Cacao and the chocolate sea salt RXBARs. I also get that satiated feeling after consuming either, a feeling I do not get at all ever when snacking on the sugary stuff. I am just trying to evolve some of my worse habits into less bad ones. Maybe my breeches won’t feel quite so tight in the waist in a few months. Hopefully I can keep myself in the kind of shape I try to keep Eli in. Conrad can stay smooshy, though. Except in reality he is probably in the best shape out of the three of us creatures right now.

I am not getting anything from Amazon, RXBARs, or Soylent for writing this. This is just my brain hatching its weird little plans. But I’d happily take free stuff from any of those companies. Has anyone tried the Soylent Chai?