I’m going to sit down
Here’s my new plan, formulated last night: I will try to eat actual meals, and I will sit down to eat them.
Most of you might say: whaaat? Don’t you already do that? Doesn’t everybody?
No, and no. I’ve mentioned in the past that, because of my bad back, I stand to blog and to do work at the computer in general.
What’s more, blogging is an unpredictable thing. But one pattern is that things tend to take longer than I estimate they will. For example, today’s previous post—all 2,000+ words of it, plus the research that went into it—gobbled up a lot more time than I’d originally estimated it would. That’s the way it often goes, which means I’m usually playing catch-up, racing and in a hurry.
Which means that I tend to grab food on the fly and to stand while eating. It doesn’t hurt (or maybe it does) that my computer is not far from the refrigerator.
I don’t think this is a good thing. So today I actually forced myself to sit down to eat breakfast/lunch/brunch, or whatever I want to call my first meal of the day. It was a somewhat novel experience, and I think a good one. I’m not sure I can sustain this program, but I’d like to try. The food tasted better, for one thing. I felt less hungry when I was done, for another. And it got me away from my love/hate affair with the computer.
What did I eat? A half of one of these:
And one of these (minus the pears):
With a bit of this on it:
You keep eating like that we’ll have to stage an intervention to keep you from just wasting away.
The pears on the English muffin actually looked pretty good.
But they’re just an excuse to eat cinnamon.
KRB
Butter AND olive oil? In one product? Is this a great country, or what?!
Brian Swisher:
The best of both worlds.
1/2 a yogurt? what do you weigh…. about 75lbs? kidding aside, hope your plan works out for you. I’ve got a sit/stand desk and leaning seat on order now. A couple of weeks ago my hip started killing me when I sit down. Hoping it will make a big difference but I guess I still need to see my doctor since it came on so quickly and with no reason.
Gluton…
😉
Neo, did you decide that the ultra-ergonomic machine for operating a computer would not work for you? You told about it a few months ago. I thought it looked well worth a try for anyone who has discomfort at the computer.
Alan F:
I bought some sort of special adjustable stand for the computer. It was too difficult to operate, and it didn’t have enough fine calibrations so I couldn’t get it to just the right level.
I have a method of propping the computer up on books that actually works pretty well, although it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world.
seconding vanderleun..
Sit down for breakfast, eat some oatmeal, fruit, yogurt (a whole little cup for crying out loud) etc. As my youngest daughter used to tell me when she was in grade school, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”.. It was her subtle effort to get me to make pancakes I think actually.
Sitting for a meal, even if by one’s self, is the civilized way to eat at least the first meal of the day. Let the hordes wait until you finish.
bdh:
That English muffin with the butter/olive oil is a pretty big item. All together that breakfast has about 350 calories, which is quite hefty (the yogurt is lowfat rather than nonfat). At this point in life, even with exercise almost every day, if I eat more than 1300 calories or so a day I gain weight. So that breakfast is actually rather large if you look at it as about 25-30% of my calories in a single day.
Me, I gave up Chobani Islamic Yogurt.
I refuse to fund the global jihad.
The tyranny of calories. It is all too true that you can’t outrun the fork. Stay well!
Blert:
Free country, 0.065 g NaCl
blert:
See this.
The CEO, by the way, is a Kurd. See this.
You may still not want to buy Chiobani (the best yogurt, in my opinion) because he gives immigrants jobs—legal immigrants, it seems. But he’s no jihadi or jihadi-sympathizer.
If anyone has been looking at sit/stand, or adjustable height desks but has been put off by the price – I recommend looking at the Jarvis desks by ergodepot.com. They got a great review at thewirecutter.com site. About half the price of other comparable quality desks.
Blert, stick with subjects you know something about. The myth that Chobani is somehow part of global jihad was invented by bottom-feeding Internet sites to get clicks from the gullible. Neo’s links spell out the details of the libel directed against Chobani, which is made in upstate New York (right in my neighborhood) and in Idaho. The owner is a Kurd from Turkey with no Islamist associations. He’s well known and well respected in this very small, non-P.C., fairly conservative community, where he’s proven himself to be community-oriented and as devoted to the American ideal of entrepreneurial success founded on hard work as any home-born businessman. His company has provided a way out of unemployment and poverty for many working poor Americans already, and there’s nothing Islamist or un-American about his decision to do the same thing for legal immigrants — NOT for illegals and NOT just for Muslims, despite the lies you fell for.
It’s also damned good yogurt.
For what it is worth.
Always been a ‘breakfast is a pot of coffee at work’, type, other than on vacation where I tend to “country breakfasts”
Recently, having figured I needed a more balanced approach I decided to do a little reading and discovered that eggs – which I don’t really care for much – were not as dangerous as we had been led to believe.
So I forced myself to eat a boiled egg and half a bagel in the morning along with juice.
Not exactly “yogurt, green figs, and coffee very black” impressive, but something.
Was shocked at the result. Went all morning, and unlike the oatmeal experiment of a previous year, had no extreme hunger near lunch time.
Have no explanation and am too lazy to research it, but something seemed to work out right.
Maybe we should eat breakfast.
Just realized I don’t even know what yogurt really is. Some kind of stinky clabbered milk eaten by weird people and secret agents, I assumed.
Google … oh google
I was wrong. It is not just clabbered – stale and stinky – milk. There is a heating process involved to keep it from curdling, and the intentional introduction of a specific type of bacteria to produce a particular result.
My apologies for my food bigotry, and to healthy types everywhere.
DNW
Fat in the eggs takes longer to metabolize than carbohydrates and sugars in the oatmeal.
Since you stand so often Neo, you might as well take up Tai Chi.