Making it a year for New Things (TM)(R)(C)

I need to make use of this year to do new things. This post isn't radio related. It is "getting older" related.

My life, as it is now, started late. I didn't settle until I was into my 30s. Until that point, I had been carrying a bit of extra weight. My diet had been more protein than carbs, I was on my feet a lot, and I didn't have a lot of snack food about the house. I was always in range of being able to drop a few kilograms and get back to a respectable weight for my height.

Once I met my now wife (again), that all changed. My wife is a type 1 diabetic, so there are usually sugary snacks floating around in case she has a hypo. Being on a pump allows her to follow a far less strict diet than she might otherwise have had. I'd introduced her to "Chips, Cheese and Gravy", and then the wheels really did fall off. That was a meal, snack and otherwise evil dish that haunted much of my late 30s. Full of fat and carbs.. and well, kind of delicious. 

I also had a bit of a heart scare in my late 30s. A stress test initially indicated some concerns and a follow up angiogram was performed to ensure that I wasn't sitting on the brink of disaster. Luckily I wasn't, but at 38, I was unusually young to be going through it. My son was still an infant, we had a new mortgage, and yet again I was spending hours laying around in hospitals debating my mortality (not the first time, but the first where I was actually worried about seeing my kids grow up). 

Going back to that time between (re)meeting my now wife and that event, I should mention I inherited my step daughter. 

The problem with having young kids is food. There's a wonderful point where they'll eat almost anything then all of a sudden they don't like anything that isn't deep fried, full of carbs, sugar or otherwise rubbish. When you're in your late 30s and going into mortgage mode things get interesting. Unlike your early 20s where you don't have to blink at the idea of a 30 year commitment,  in your late 30s, you're trying to balance that against the reality that those 30 years will get you to retirement. Assuming you stay healthy enough to work until then. Personally, I don't want to waste the rest of my working life pouring all of income into a mortgage in time to fall off my perch. I work to live, not live to work and pay off the kids inheritance. The house is to pay for our old age. The missus will need some good care. I'll be wanting a trip the knackery once my mind is gone.

All this means is that you tend to get a bit tight on the food front. Put a meal in front of the kids they won't eat and it's waste. The inexperienced will argue the point.. at least until they've gone through it long enough and realised it's a moot point and finally give in. A lot of the meals - especially those quick thrown together ones, wind up being based around the garbage the kids will eat. It's faster, it's cheaper, and there are only so many hours in a day.

Anyway to avoid this post becoming as long as my belt - and you can already see where this is going - something's gotta give. This constant eating of high carb food (ie chips), deep fried crap (chips) and other garbage has got to stop. 

I've taken this year to smoking meats. By no means terribly healthy either, but I don't get to eat a lot of meats, and I need to. My theory is that it's protein I don't get a lot of. If it's smoked, it's not deep fried, so the flavour comes from sources other than just throwing it in oil. The vegetables that I need to eat more of will even be more palatable prepared this way rather than boring old steaming. 

I can't take to steamed vegetables. If I was going for a hard core diet, I'd have to, but it would be short lived and likely to fail. I'm going for reducing carbs - they turn to sugar, sugar turns to fat, and that's not great. 

Increase the protein intake, try to use other vegetables that I otherwise wouldn't eat and find ways to make them palatable. 

The kids will need to eat some of it too. It won't hurt them. Smoking good meats will give me left over meat, and that's good.. that'll hopefully reduce the convenience of take away for lunches and quick dinners.

I'd fail at a diet - I mentioned that. I don't like many veggies. I don't like much that is terribly healthy for me, so my goal is to substitute deep fried for flavourful, cooked meats that I can introduce vegetables with to pickup those flavours. It'll expand my palate (and hopefully the kids) and I'll have to learn a lot more about cooking and food to get there.

All this does though is slows the growth, assuming I can get my portion sizes under control.  That's going to be a challenge. 

I also need to do something about the "spare tyre". That's a tough one. Since I changed positions a couple of years ago, I've traded my feet for a chair at a desk. When I have been physically active, all I've managed to do is develop bursitis in my shoulders and aggravate it no end. A tread mill will be a good start. I could do with walking the dog and what not as well, but given the weather here, that's about 60/40 proposition that isn't in its favour. This is gonna be a bigger challenge than getting my portion sizes down.

So, this year, on top of getting more active with my radios, studying to upgrade my license and push on, I need to do some more professional training at work to learn some new technologies we're going to use and at home I need to learn to cook things I've never tried before, experiment with flavours, substitute most of the carbs, reduce my portion sizes and improve my fitness. Possibly this way I'll continue to grow everything except my waist and live long enough to pay off a mortgage that will end when my career does. There's also that learning to be a "better" parent bit, but that's kind of a given. That one feels fairly futile and knowing if I was successful won't occur until I've qualified for a seniors card.

I'm looking forward to smoking meats at least. There's a lot of experimentation involved and there's room for a lot of "new" things to try, new things to eat, and generally changing my pallet away from the garbage I've been eating for so long. If I can't eat a lot of it, I'd at least like to have something that I can enjoy the taste of and appreciate the effort put into creating it. 

I'm never going to be an 80kg, 180cm tall guy eating this stuff. I don't want to be. I'll happily take 100kg and an increase in muscle mass.  No fad diets that can't be sustained for life. No eating rabbit food that I'll hate. Just a change from garbage to food that I'll enjoy, limiting the carbs, cutting back the deep fried stuff, getting away from the lollies, appropriate portion sizes and a bit more time on my feet. 

It's another hobby. That'll make me a bass playing, reef keeping, ham radio, pit boss. Trier of many, master of none.