Retirement and Food

Retirement & Food

I hadn’t anticipated that retirement would force me to examine and redefine my relationship to food.  Primarily, I expected that retirement would offer me the ability to eat in a more healthful fashion.  I would have more control over what I ate and when I ate it because I would be spending more time at home.  It would allow me to eat in a way that wasn’t possible when I had to pack up a day’s worth of food to bring to school and squeeze my snacks and meals into the briefest of breaks between classes.   In that sense, retirement makes it easier for me to eat healthfully.  I now have the ability to eat good, healthy food throughout the day. 

However, as you might guess, this additional time and near continuous access to food can have a negative impact as well.  I keep the kitchen well-stocked with the nutritious stuff:  fresh fruits and vegetables, hummus, Greek yogurt, olives, whole grain bread, almonds, peanut butter, eggs, tofu, fish, oatmeal, tomato juice, quinoa, and more. Whenever I find myself anywhere in the proximity of the kitchen (which means at least once an hour), it’s difficult not to sample some of these tempting items.  After all, I rationalize, this food has proven health benefits, and I want to stay healthy, right?  And I can’t waste all of this food.  What I haven’t been acknowledging is that even healthy food contains calories, and I’ve probably been going over my target calorie intake on a regular basis since I retired.  In fact, I know this is true because I’ve dared myself to step on the scale a couple of times in the past week, and the scale doesn’t lie.  So it’s time to confront not only what I eat, but how much I eat. 

My problem is that I simply love food, and I enjoy variety in my diet.  On a typical day, I’d start with old-fashioned oatmeal cooked with bananas and soy milk, and then topped with homemade granola and a tasty blend of fresh cranberries, apples, and oranges.  Along with a cup of green tea (no calories there!), that’s seems like a pretty healthy  breakfast.  I can’t survive until lunchtime without a snack, so I might make myself a little pizzette:  a whole grain English muffin topped with olive tapenade and low-fat yogurt cheese melted in the toaster oven, along with a glass of tomato juice.  And if I need a little extra protein pre- or post-workout, a hard-boiled egg does the trick.  Lunch might be a bowl of Greek yogurt, feta, tomatoes, cucumbers and green onion with a drizzle of EVOO and lemon juice.  If there’s some homemade soup, that would be good, too.  I can’t get through a day with hummus, so I’d probably use a sesame whole grain cracker or two to scoop up some of that.  Mid-afternoon, when my energy is running a little low, I reach for black tea, grapefruit and a few forkfuls of whatever leftovers I see in the refrigerator.  I’ll munch on some crudités (carrot, celery, raw cauliflower) with hummus while making dinner.  Before the mushrooms go into in the salad bowl, several end up in my mouth.  And if there’s an open bottle of wine, I find that it helps to take a few sips while cooking.  At this point, I’m usually not very hungry any more, but it’s dinner time and I have to put a meal on the table for Elliott.  He wants “real” (i.e. recognizable) food so I make a complete dinner:  fish, a roasted vegetable or two, a salad, fruit.  He’ll generally finish off his meal with ice cream.  I would love to indulge as well, but I limit myself to licking off the ice cream scooper after I’ve served him a bowlful of vanilla or mint chocolate chip (his favorites). 

By the way, Elliott consumes cookies at an amazing rate.  At any given time, we must have at least three varieties open in the house – graham crackers, ginger snaps, and biscotti.  I exercise great self-discipline and manage to avoid snacking on these.  As I put uneaten food away after dinner, I try not to let the potential leftovers find their way into my mouth when no one is looking.  My last calories of the day come from the small square of 85% dark chocolate that I allow myself along with a cup of decaffeinated coffee after I clean up the kitchen.  Now, looking back over what I might eat during the course of a day, I see that several opportunities where I could scale back my eating and eliminate calories.  Sadly, I must change my mindset about food.  I can still eat everything I love, just not all of it on the same day.