healthy – Subjects to change

Show me your mussels..

Sometimes I crack myself up with the headlines for these posts. But enough random food blogger banter let’s get down to business. The dish below is a favorite at our house for a couple of reasons. It’s healthy, uses one pot, cooks in 20 minutes and will cost you under $10.00, and uses only 10 ingredients. That alone should be enough to get any weeknight cook excited for what’s coming next. It utilizes frozen precooked mussels in a tomato sauce. We purchase ours at Aldi’s and at less than $3.00 for a 1lb box how can you go wrong.

Bloody Mary Mussels

1/2 tbs olive oil
3 ribs of celery finely diced
1 whole onion finely diced
1/2 tsp each of sea salt and cracked black pepper
3 large cloves of garlic minced
16.9z can of fire-roasted tomatoes with the juice
1.5 tbs of horseradish
1 TBS of Worchester sauce
1.5 tsp cayenne hot sauce
2lbs of precooked mussels in sauce thawed

In a large heavy-bottomed dutch oven heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the diced celery and onions and cook for 3 minutes or until they start to soften and go a little translucent. Add the minced garlic and the salt and pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes. lower the heat to medium and add the entire can of diced tomatoes with the liquid along with the horseradish, Worcester, and hot sauce and allow the sauce to reduce for at least 5-6 minutes (Depending on your tastebuds feel free to add more or less of the hot sauce and horseradish) Add the mussels with the sauce to the pan and bring the heat back to medium-high, cover with the lid and allow to cook for another 4-5 minutes or until mussels are heated through and the shells have opened up. I usually give the mussels a stir once or twice during the cooking process to make sure everything is cooking evenly.

If your feeling fancy garnish with leaves of celery and scallions and you’re ready to eat. We usually eat this over pasta or with some crusty artisan bread. The sauce is really the star of this dish and you’re going to want to make sure you scoop up every bite.

If you are going to use fresh mussels add about a 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce to the recipe and add it when you put in the other wet ingredients. The key with cooking mussels or any other shellfish like clams and oysters is they are ready once the shells open. If a mussel or clam doesn’t open during the cooking process don’t eat it, it very well could make you sick.

So dinners on the table in under 20 minutes and when you finish up all you have are the plates and probably two pans to clean up, what could be better than that? The only thing I can think of is if someone else does the dishes.

breakfast club… 1

I don’t know about you but I’ve always been a fan of savory/spicy breakfast dishes than sweet breakfast items. In fact, I bet I haven’t had a bowl of cereal with milk more than a handful of times this century. So without further ado here’s another recipe you can add to your repertoire.

I know I said I was going to get down to business but I want to talk about the word “recipe” here and elaborate that I see them as a general set of guidelines that will help point you in the right direction. I’m always more interested in the over reaching concept of a dish than a lot of the specifics. This way if you don’t have peas but you do have zucchini you can improvise and still create something delicious. Do not take this approach to baking as it will end in a total disaster.

Kedgeree. aka Indian fried rice.

Kedgeree is traditionally made with smoked fish and a small number of vegetables and often cream and butter. This version ups the vegetables and although it calls for boiled eggs you can easily leave those out to make it vegan

cup basmati rice
8z package of baby portobello mushrooms
Thumb sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
1 red chili
¼ of a bunch of fresh cilantro
2-3 scallions
1.5 teaspoons curry powder
olive oil
15-20 cherry tomatoes cut in half
4oz of frozen peas
2-3oz fresh greens, (kale, collards, spinach)
Fresh Lemon

Cook the rice following the instructions on the package and allow it to cool off and dry out a little bit. If you can do this step a couple of hours in advance it will turn out even better.

Quarter the mushrooms and add them to a dry frypan over medium heat and cook for 3-4 minutes, stir them frequently allowing them to get a bit of color. Chop half of the cilantro, deseed the chili and finely slice, reserve some of the chilies for plating, and finely chop the ginger and the green onions. Move the mushrooms to one side of the pan and add 1 TBS of olive oil. Add the above-mentioned cilantro, chili, ginger, and green onion and saute for 2-3 minutes. Add 1.5 teaspoons of curry powder and mix thoroughly into the vegetable mixture. After 1-2 minutes add the tomatoes and the greens and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add your peas to the vegetable mixture and cook until they are heated through. Add your cooked rice and stir regularly to avoid sticking to the bottom of the pan, at this point zest your lemon and add it to the mixture. The goal here is to bring everything up to temperature. just before service juice half your lemon and serve with remaining cilantro leaves, sliced chilis, and top with the cooked eggs.

On Work.

You may have noticed that I say I have a lot of favorite things, I don’t think this is a bad character trait I just feel lie it makes me well rounded. The quote below is one of my said favorite things.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison

I don’t know as many things as I did when I was younger but I have come to the complete realization that the above statement is a cold hard truth. We know this down to the core of our being but it doesn’t stop us or clever marketing executives from trying to convince us that they in fact have finally figured out the shortcut to success that does not contain excessive amounts of work but it will cost you at least $39.95 to get started. There is no easy path to growth and change in our lives it is filled with bumps and obstacles and the relentless fact that you have to get up and do it all over again tomorrow. Add on the hecklers telling/selling you the short cut and it’s easy to see why it’s so hard to make and stick to a plan of personal development.

Were at that natural time to reflect on things we liked to quit, start or improve in our lives this week. Can I make a suggestion from personal experience?

Often times we think that working the absolute hardest is the best path to opportunity when in reality taking a controlled and measured approach will get us better results in the end. It may take us longer to get where it is we want to be but the likelihood of reaching the goal is far greater when we put in a little bit of work every single day.

Call to Action.

If you’re thinking I need to start exercising every day or I’m going to go on a super restrictive calorie deficient diet starting Friday morning it’s highly likely that it isn’t going to last, It’s never worked for me in the past anyway. Biologically speaking one of our greatest strengths as humans is our endurance and when we look past this characteristic and rely on a change to happen like a sprint we are left dejected on the sidelines trying to catch our breath and getting further behind in the long run.

What I’m suggesting from personal experience is that we work efficiently to drive change in our lives. If you haven’t been working out for months running a 5k on Friday is not where you start or if you’ve been relying on the standard American diet for the better part of the last decade switching to whole 30 like a light switch is the fastest way to end up back where you started. Try this instead, find one or two small things that you can do fairly easily and start there and grow into your work, it won’t be long before you start to notice those other opportunities to put in a little more effort and before you know it you will be miles down the path instead of saying “well there’s always next year”

Wining streak.

We, you, and I are the summation of all of our life experiences. For better or for worse we are where we are at in our lives based upon the multitude of our life’s choices internal, external, and the things that we have absolutely no control over. I came to that realization after walking on the beach earlier this year when I needed to brush the sand off of my feet. The beach aka our health looks like one big giant homogenous thing from a distance when in reality its made up of millions of tiny grains of sand aka life choices when you look a little closer.

A beach just like our overall health and well being grows/diminishes over time oftentimes so slowly that you don’t notice for months or years that things are looking a little different. And oftentimes when you do finally see a difference the change is so big that doing anything to fix it seems like an insurmountable task. This is where the old adage of how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time comes into play. When you’re faced with a huge task in your life the best thing you can do for yourself is do a quick OODA loop.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop#:~:text=The%20OODA%20loop%20is%20the,operational%20level%20during%20military%20campaigns.

Find something small and readily easy to accomplish and get going. When you start small and get an early win that massive obstacle starts to look a little smaller and easier to overcome. Just like it took thousands of choices to get to the point before we realized there was an issue it’s going to take thousands of choices before we ever see a noticeable difference.

It’s taken me 5 years’ worth of mostly positive choices to get to where I am today after years of poor choices. An almost 40-year-old in above-average physical condition. I can run fast, climb boulders and do a ton of pull-ups, and surf a 5’7 lis fish. I’m not going to win ultra-distance races, climb a v6+ boulder (extremely difficult) or break any pull-up records, or get sponsored. And you know what? I don’t give a damn about any of those things. What I care about is having fun, sharing those passions with my kids, and most importantly stacking up one good decision on top of another so hopefully my health/wellbeing stays clean so I can do all of those things for years to come.

External forces remember those from the opening paragraph? I’m not naive, We can make all the right choices when it comes to diet, exercise, and the thousand other variables in our life and still get side-swiped by disease, or for that matter, an actual car could take us out. Life isn’t fair, we’ve talked about this multiple times over in the blog, and that’s why the occasional slice of pizza or Christmas dessert is fine by me. We aren’t promised tomorrow but like the 96-year-old man that I see walking the neighborhood often likes to say

” I woke up alive again today, I’m putting together one hell of a streak.”

Easy tortilla soup

I learned to cook through spending time in the kitchen with my parents and through watching cooking shows on Saturday mornings on PBS as a kid. Yep , I wasn’t watching Spiderman as a kid I was watching Julia, Jacque and Graham. In fact right now I’m watching cooking shoes on tv and I’m not talking about the watered down reality shows you see on food network.

I’m not sure when and where I first learned this recipe while sitting in front of the TV but one thing is for certain it sure is tasty and really easy to get on the table. 30 minutes from start to finish, minimal chopping and clean up make for an awesome mid week meal. Along the way I’ve taken some creative liberties and short cuts to make it my own.

Ingredients

1 TBS olive oil
1 onion roughly chopped
1 Jalapeno sliced. – ribs and seeds removed
5 cloves of garlic smashed
Cilantro stems finely chopped
4 large ripe tomatoes
1 quart of stock. Chicken or vegetable
Tortilla chips
1/2 tbs cumin powder

Optional toppings- diced avocados, pumpkin seeds, shredded chicken, cotija, finely diced cilantro leaves

In a medium sized soup pot heat the olive oil over a medium heat and sauté onions for 2-3 minutes or until starting to turn a light golden brown and then add the jalapenos and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Follow with the smashed garlic cloves, cilantro stems and cumin powder and cook for another minute or so. Add your stock of choice, the tomatoes and a handful and a half of tortilla chips and cook for 10-12 minutes or until tomato skins have started to peel off. This next step can get a little dangerous so just proceed with caution! Transfer a 1/3 of the mixture into a blender and leave the lid cracked just a little, cover with a clean kitchen towel and give it a 30 second blitz or so. Transfer to another sauce pan and repeat until all of the soup has had its chance in the blender and allow to come back to temperature over medium heat for a few minutes.

When ready to eat, add 6-8 tortilla chips to a bowl and cover with the soup. At this point you can add your desired toppings and go to town on this bowl of deliciousness.

Advanced version

The above recipe is amazing but if you want to push it over the edge here are a few suggestions. Roast your tomatoes, onions and jalapeno in the oven with a gentle rub of olive oil for 30 or so minutes at 375. Or if your really feeling adventuress or have the grill going fire roast and then set off the vegetables to the side of the grill for a gentle smoking.

The Search…

The problem with life is that it doesn’t come with a set of instructions on how to assemble a plan for it. You know a detailed step by step set of instructions on how to make sure what you build ends up looking the picture on the box. How great would it be to turn to the book of life and read “make sure you do step G and let it dry completely for 24 hours before moving onto step H.” How much pain and frustration could we avoid in our lives if we just had the directions to get from point a to point b in the most efficient path??? On the surface, this sounds pretty nice until you start to realize that would probably lead to the most boring, beige, milk toast, and pedestrian life you could ever imagine.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book note’s from the underground he espouses that if the world were perfect and nothing ever went wrong the first thing people would do is break something or desire for even more of a great thing just to see what would happen. Seems pretty counter-intuitive if you ask me but leaning back on past life experiences I tend to see the wisdom in his thoughts. If everything were perfect nothing spontaneous or truly miraculous would ever happen and although that predictable path may be efficient it sure would be boring.

I recently had the chance to drive route WY-22 between Jackson Wyoming and Victor Idaho. Its a mountain pass between the two towns on the southern edge of the Teton Range. Its by far the scariest road I’ve ever driven in my life and if you’ve had the privilege of driving that stretch of highway you’ll probably agree with me. With its 10% gradients, switchbacks, and sheer cliffs that but up against the edge of the roadway its a “10 and 2” drive the whole time. One minute your flooring it to get up the hill and a minute later it’s stomping on the breaks to make the 180-degree turn. The road is about 20 miles between the two towns but at an average speed somewhere in the 30’s it sure takes a long time to make that drive in comparison to traveling down a highway in pancake-flat “boring” Florida.

Once I safely got my wife, kids, and father in law over that mountain in our rented minivan my first thought was ” I want to do that again but in some kind of sports car so I can really push it” And there it is I made it through something perfectly fine and there I am wanting to throw caution and speed limits to the wind and charge up and down that mountain like there’s no tomorrow.

For my money, I’d rather my life highway be somewhere between Wy-22 and I-95 through north Florida. A good amount of ups and downs and some turns out of nowhere with plenty of miles of open road where you can get out and cruise for a while. In other words, a life that has some adventure and unexpected surprises smattered in with the day-to-day predictability of suburban life.

I’ve been absent from this writing thing for a while. I’m not really sure why it happened other then maybe the tank ran out of gas in what has been a long stretch of windy roads that has been highway 2020. Never the less on that little detour we had quite a few adventures and I’ve got some new fodder for our journey together on this adventure of life where we can make it up as we go along. If we were given directions we would have chucked them out the window a long time ago anyways.

Why do we scream for ice cream ??

It’s the middle of summer here in the northern hemisphere and on these scorching hot days, there’s no denying that ice cream is pretty much the answer for all of life’s problems. But have you ever wondered why foods like ice cream are so crave-worthy?

The answer to that question is relatively simple once you understand the science behind it. All forms of fat pack 9 calories per gram and all carbohydrates aka sugars pack in 4 calories per gram. Ice cream along with a lot of our other favorite foods is the magical combination of both. This combination of chemicals is the most energy-dense partnership in the world of food and I think we can all agree they taste pretty amazing as well.

So why is it that we crave that combination so much? The answer dates back to the beginning of our species and has a lot to do with food insecurity. If you were a nomadic hunter and you happened to stumble across something high in fat or in sugars your brain would send a message through the reward circuit that this is pleasurable and you should keep eating. This reward circuit was massively important for the success of human beings when food was hard to come by but now it’s a major pain in the butt when the next meal is as easy as tapping a few buttons on your phone.

You can read more about the science behind the reward circuit here. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-sugar-and-fat-trick-the-brain-into-wanting-more-food/

Fat and Sugar in nature

The combination of fats and sugars are for the most part a man-made culinary combination. There are very few if any naturally occurring foods that are high in both of these categories. You either get high fat in foods like dairy and eggs or high in sugar like fruits and honey. I’m not sure if you’ve ever read a recipe on how to make homemade ice cream but those last four food Items I just listed would be in the vast majority of them.

Sugar Coated Lies

The first food that I was able to seriously reduce in my diet was added sugar and it was thanks to Jocko Willink and this epic little piece of wisdom.

Call To Action

Now we know why we crave ice cream, the desire to eat more of foods like that have been hardwired into our brains since the beginning of time. But we are 21st-century beings, we built self-driving cars, put people into outer space and have been to the bottom of the ocean. We are smart, we are disciplined and just like Nancy told us to do back in the 80’s we can “just say no” to ice cream and all of her nefarious cousins, or at least we should 95% of the time.

Ogres, Onions and Fathers Day…

One of my favorite movie quotes of all times comes from the original Shrek movie, its funny but has some deep-seeded wisdom lurking under the surface. Shrek and Donkey are walking through a garden discussing why Shrek didn’t torment a village, Shrek’s response is Ogres are a lot like onions, they have layers.

Ogres and people are very different, at least that’s what I’ve been able to infer from the movies, I’ve never met one in real life before. But just like onions and ogres, we do have a lot of layers. I’d be willing to bet that I could put my self in at least 2 dozen categories of groups I belong to. Like a surfer, aspiring farmer, runner, cook, husband, and father. Of all of my layers, those last two are at the core of the onion for me. They are why I go to work, eat healthily, exercise, and try to be the best version of myself I can be. I hope that I am better at those now then I was a year ago and that future me is better then I am today.

I am very grateful to have both my parents in our lives as they are fantastic parents and even better grandparents. They are a literal encyclopedia Britannica of wisdom on everything from parenting to building an outdoor shower. I’m 37 and I still need my parents for that wisdom and perhaps most importantly to watch our kids a few days a week so we don’t completely lose our minds as a result of working from home with an almost 2-year-old.

The most important thing I will do with my life is to be the gentle guiding influence that will hopefully turn my kids into kind and successful members of society as they grow and mature throughout their lives.

The best way I’ve come up with so far on how to accomplish that goal is to lead through example and take care of myself mentally and physically so I can be around for along time.

I want to take the next few minutes to implore you on the importance of taking care of yourself so we can be great fathers for many more decades to come.

If you haven’t been to the doctor to get a physical because your young and invisible in the past 5 years you need to stop and make that happen. In the spirit of brutal honesty, I belonged to that camp until about a year ago. I went, it didn’t hurt and I felt grateful walking out of there after getting my lab results knowing that nothing unforeseen hadn’t been lurking under the surface.
Take an inventory of what you eat this week, maybe even write it down. If you see something that surprises you next Sunday, pick that one thing and try to eat half as much the following week and in half again the following week. I truly believe that quitting cold turkey is bad for long term success.
Pick a couple of bodyweight exercises like push-ups, squats, lunges, dips, crunches, planks you get the picture. Now pick a reasonable number of reps and days a week you will commit to putting in the work and start TODAY!!!

I promise you that if you put these three things into practice this year that you will be running circles around your kids come, fathers, day 2021.

Whats a portion

11 years ago my wife wanted to go see the movie Avatar in theaters. I wasn’t completely on board with this idea as going out to the movies is not on my top 10 list of favorite things. After a bit of negotiating we landed on an agreement. She would buy me one single beer at the world of beer before we saw the movie. My wife was speaking my language with this offer and pretty soon we were in the car headed to the theater.

On the drive I hatched a devious plan to make sure I got the best end of the deal and it went a little something like this.

Bartender – What will you have?

Me – Liter of Hofbrau please.

Bartender sets down beer.

Me – Thanks

Wife – Wow, that’s a lot more then one beer.

Me – It’s 1 beer because it came in 1 glass.

Wife – I hope you pee your pants in this 3 hour movie.

In theory I was totally correct in ordering that 33 ounce beer but in spirit I was way off base. And I did have to take a restroom break half way through the movie.

Thanks for sticking with me through that little story, I hadn’t thought about it in years and it made me laugh but I feel like it can teach us a good lesson.

What we eat and burn

The average American consumes more than 3,600 calories daily – a 24% increase from 1961, when the average was just 2,880 calories. I know right. That factoid is from a 2013 study released by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAOSTAT)

For a reference point the average american male burns between 1,900 and 2,500 calories a day, that number will vary with activity level. That leaves an excess of a 1,000+ calories a day. Which in theory sounds like a ton of extra food but in reality can easily be accomplished when your 1 beer has 440 calories.

Understanding portion size.

Our view of a portion size is completely out of wack with that we actually should be consuming. This is most evident in restaurants where studies have shown that we could be consuming up to 4 times the correct portion size based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Think about the giant bowl of pasta the last time you ate out at your favorite Italian joint. That’s probably what Nona Maria would have served to her entire family back in the old country.

Practical Advice.

Consult with a registered dietitian and see what you really need as your daily calorie intake. If you can’t do that a Basal Metabolic Rate – BMR calculator will give you a good idea of where you are supposed to be.

Buy a digital scale and read your nutritional labels. It’s a bit of a shocker in the beginning when you realize that you’ve been eating what is considered 2-3 portion sizes. https://www.amazon.com/digital-scale/s?k=digital+scale I agree it seems really silly to weigh out everything you eat but after a few weeks of retraining your self you wont have to rely on it nearly as much. ( we will dive deeper into this subject in a future blog, there’s some sneaky business going on with nutrition fact panels)

Fill your plate the correct way. A well designed plate will look like this. 50% vegetables, 25% whole grain carbohydrate and 25% protein. Vegetables are nutrient rich, relatively low in calories and are high fiber/high volume foods. When you get that digital scale try weighing out 300+- grams of vegetables its a lot more than you think it will be. P.S that’s a pretty good number to aim for at dinner and I almost guarantee you wont leave the table hungry after that portion of vegetable.

Like I’ve mentioned before in so many of my posts the key to long term success is to slowly but surely eliminate those junk food items from your daily diet. If you need some Doritos’s in your life right now i’m cool with it. But instead of taking the whole bag to the sofa for the ensuing T.V binge fest make friends with your new digital scale and weight out a correct portion and then get your chill on.

1. Stop drinking your calories

So I would like to open by saying I am not a dietitian or a doctor, I don’t have any letters after my name making me a subject mater expert in the field of nutrition either. what I can offer up for your consideration is some anecdotal evidence from my personal experiences as well as some cold hard science and perhaps plant a seed of change in your mind.

What if I told you that a year from now if you changed this one thing in your life you could lose a serious amount of weight and save a couple thousand dollars. Maybe you would think its crazy or another round of click bait marketing that isn’t even remotely based on anything factual.

Over the next few minutes I want to show you how drinking an excess amount of sugary drinks over the period of a year will hit you hard around the waist line and the wallet.

The science

Sugars are a type of carbohydrate and all forms contain 4 calories per gram.

Alcohol has 7 calories per gram.

1 pound of fat roughly contains 3,500 calories.

Beer and Alcohol

The average american spends roughly $435 dollars per year on alcoholic beverages, to be completely honest I was a little surprised at this number as I thought it was a little low. I’m sure in my hay day of $10.00 6 packs of craft beer I was spending way more then that on an annual basis.

Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in american and over the past decade we have averaged a consumption of 26.2 gallons per year.

The Math…

26.2 gallons equals out to 280 beers or twenty four 12- packs over the period of a year. based on an average cost of 10.50 a 12-pack that equals out to roughly $250 dollars. The average beer has 130 calories which leaves us with a total calorie count of 38,460 calories or 11 pounds of potential fat/stored energy.

Soda

We Americans spend several billion dollars a year supporting our sugar laden fizzy drink habit to the tune of 44.7 gallons per year according to a study released in 2010. The good news is that in the past decade soda sales have begun to decline but other sugary beverages have helped to fill those gaps.

On a daily basis we average 94 grams of added sugar a diet in our diet, that equals out to 358 calories. That’s close to a 1/6th of the daily calories based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. One 12 oz can of Coca Cola and you have reached your daily allowance of 36 grams of added sugar.

The Math.

44.7 gallons of soda is equal to 487 twelve ounce cans of soda or 41 twelve packs. At 140 calories per can that equals out to an annual calorie consumption of 68,180 calories or 19.48 pounds of potential fat/stored energy. Based on a $5.00 price that would cost you about $200 a year.

To make things even worse we spend 1 trillion dollars a year here in the United states treating diseases closely associated with excess sugar intake. Diseases like, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and non alcohol fatty liver disease all have been linked with consuming an over abundance of sugar. Divide that 1 trillion dollars out by the 328 million Americans and you have an annual cost of $3,136 dollars per person.

Coffee

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the coffee its self its what we add to it that is the problem. I drink coffee every day and sometimes twice depending on how the kids slept the prior night and how things are going at our home office/day care center during this pandemic.

These numbers are a little shocking to me when I did the research for this blog. On average millennial’s ages 25-34 spend a whooping $2,008 a year on coffee, that equals out to $5.50 a day. HOLY CRAP!!! That’s a ton of money over the period of a year. So much in fact that the 1/3 of millennial’s spends more on coffee in the period of a year then they do on investments towards retirement. Now we know why Starbucks can afford to have a location on almost every street corner.

The Math. So we already know the financials on this habit but lets consider the calories. This is one is a bit tougher to do as a cup of black coffee has very few calories. in fact if you drank a very expensive cup of black coffee everyday you would easily come in under 500 calories for the entire you. However if you are spending $5.50 a day on coffee your more then likely moving towards the problem. Checking out the Starbucks menu online helped me narrow it down to 300 calories per drink on average.

so 300 calories times 365 days a year is equal to 109,500 annual calories or 31lbs worth of potential fat/energy.

THE REALITY

I’m not asking you to give up all three of these drinks cold turkey or suggest that if you did you would lose an upwards of 60 lbs over the next year. Both of those are completely unrealistic as a habit as hard as sugar is hard to break and the calories consumed in these drinks do help fuel our daily activity. Losing weight is not an exact science and none of us are exactly the same.

My goal with this exercise is to show that little uneventful decisions made on a daily basis can add up to some serious caloric intake and cost us a lot of money over the period of a year.

Over the period of a year all those drinks cost us $2,460 and account for 216,400 calories. Even if we fail miserably on our goal and only hit 25% reduction that’s still $600.00 and 50,000 fewer calories. That will make a huge difference in your health over a year.

CALL TO ACTION

Beer has always been my number one vice in life, I love it way more then I should. When I was younger and very active the increased calories didn’t seem to catch up with me. When I hit my late 20’s and the activity level dropped that’s when I started really putting on the weight. I had tried to limit/quit many times in the past but it was only when I took measured approach that I was able to eventually cut it out of my life.

Here’s what I did, maybe this will work for you. My goal was to only drink two beers a week one on Friday and one on Saturday. If I went to the store and bought a 12 pack thinking it would last 6 weeks in the fridge I would inevitably fail on this goal mid way through the week. So I stopped buying beer by the case and would ride my bike to gas station and purchase a single beer on the weekend. This way I had to take physical action to leave the house and go get that beer, and that’s not always easy when you have two kids.

After a couple of months of this pattern I noticed the spare tire starting to shrink and that motivated me to find other things I could do get even better results.

THE MORAL…

Start today but start small, You aren’t going to give up beer,soda or sugary coffee drinks tomorrow. If your drinking a 12 pack of soda a week lets start by trying to only drink 8 next week and then 4 the week after that. Make it a little more difficult to fall back on that vice in a moment of weakness. Put the money that you would have spent on those sugary drinks in a jar/separate bank account and watch it grow. Set a goal for something you need like a new surfboard, retirement or a vacation. Chances are by the time you’ve saved the money you’ve broken the habit and can move onto the next small step to better health and financial freedom.