When you “snack”, what do you usually choose?  Do you eat healthy?

I am middle aged now, like it or not, and I’m really trying to make the right choices. I’m trying to avoid white bread, rice, pasta and sugar as much as possible. Those starches turn to sugar in your body, so I'm told, and sugar should be avoided. Pasta is a tough one for me.

In the past, when I was younger, healthier, and less sedentary, I would think nothing of eating a couple chocolate frosted or honey glazed bakery doughnuts around ten o’clock in the morning. There are few things in my life of late like fresh, warm bakery doughnuts. There is a bakery close by, right on the route to work, well no more than a few miles out of the way really, and they have daily, fresh made doughnuts to die for. (They must weigh a half pound each!)

Most weekdays, I would eat breakfast, a toasted cinnamon-raisin bagel slathered with real butter and half inch thick layer of peanut butter, a tall glass of OJ and a cup of good strong coffee. Two or three days a week I’d cruise by the bakery and pick up a few doughnuts on my way to work. No harm, right? I shared with my co-workers.

Later in the day, after a typical lunch of pasta and chicken, or Italian sausage, or nmeatbals, with two or three slices of good Italian bread thickly buttered and a twenty ounce cola, I’d snack on a box of Junior Mints and a Hershey bar. Or, a package of Hostess cupcakes and an ice cream sandwich.
 
Man, but those cupcakes were a serious weakness. You know, the moist chocolate cake with the cream filling and the chocolate frosting? I got the chills just now as I wrote the previous sentence. My wife says that they should be outlawed.

Anyway, the point is that I was not making the best, healthiest snack choices. Too much sugar, too many calories, too much fat and too many carbohydrates. Did I mention not as much physical activity?

So, I decided to buy more fresh fruit, nuts and whole grain breads and cereals.

A large jar of mixed nuts has replaced the cupcakes and cookies in my desk drawer at work. At lunch time on Mondays I go to the grocery store and buy a few apples, bananas or pears to snack on during the week. I have a couple of boxes of whole grain Cheerios in a cabinet in my office. (One Honey Nut and one regular.)

At lunch time if I get a burger I’ll get mixed veggies instead of fries, and I’ll not eat the top half of the bun. I take the top off and then cut the burger up with a knife and fork. If I get Chinese, I’ll have them hold the rice or noodles.

I’m trying to do the right thing; to make better, healthier choices about what I eat.

Recently one of my female colleagues came into my office and spotted a banana on my desk.

“Do you know how much sugar is in that banana?” She demanded. She spit out the word "sugar" like it was dirt.

“Um, sugar?” I asked. Not near as much as in the two glazed doughnuts I was going to eat. I thought but didn’t say.

“UH!” She grunted while waving her hand toward the banana and turning her head.

A few days later while I was in the grocery store with my wife, I picked up a can of mixed nuts to add to the grocery cart and, while shaking her head, my wife remarked, “Those nuts are very high in calories.”

Then she picked up the can and studied the label.

“Two hundred calories. One hundred and sixty from fat, per each three tablespoon serving!” She announces, still shaking her head.

How many nuts are there in a tablespoon? Give me a break.

How many calories from fat do you think there are in two Hostess chocolate cup cakes? I wanted to ask.

Here’s a puzzle. Why is it that only women know or focus on these things?

No guy that I know has ever picked up a food item, studied the label and then lectured someone about the content.

I know, though, that my wife has nothing but my best interest at heart. We are empty nesters and life is just beginning to get fun again. She wants to enjoy it with me. People who don’t like you or don’t care about you will never lecture you about your health.

I keep thinking of the old adage, “If it tastes good, spit it out.”

What’s a person suppose to do? It seems that no matter what you choose, there is going to be some sort of a problem with it.

I guess the only thing you can do is do the research, make informed, educated decisions and choices and stick to them. Do the best that you can do. Don’t listen to other people's convictions. Get a set of your own and stand by them.

Me? I’m going for a hot fudge sundae. There are no labels on the ice cream dish.

C-ya