Eating to Live

Eating to Live

I’ll like to start this blog post by saying;

I was never one to believe in the concept of eating to live.

I have always seen myself as someone who lives to eat. There is practically nothing I won’t eat, I have never met a rack of ribs I didn’t like, actually that is a lie, those St Louis dry rub ribs at Sonny’s BBQ are disgusting. Oh and yea uhhhhh

I don’t eat cou-cou

I know, I know A BAJAN don’t eat cou-cou what the firetruck right? Well if every time you see a plate of cou-cou you get flash backs of the strongest woman you ever knew besides your mother,(gran gran) holding a belt that looked like it was once used to whip slaves, standing over you while you ate the “food” chocking and fighting back snot and tears, you’d probably would not eat that stuff either. Also I cannot stand plantain, it’s disgusting, I can’t stand the smell of it cooking at all. Again I know not very “Caribbean man“, but oh well.

Anyway I loved to eat, I still love to eat, I don’t, well didn’t believe in portion control. The bigger the plate piled the better for me. Some years ago I had a mini scare and decided to give up fried chicken. I remember the days my cousin would fight me for the fried chicken skin, gaaaaaaaawd that stuff was so good. I remember the days I would eat an entire Sara Lee double chocolate fudge gateau cake in one sitting while watching a movie or couple movies or just because it was Tuesday. I remember when I used to partake in the heavenly herb every Friday night, I’d get blazed and eat an entire box of Kellog’s Crispix no milk, wake up the next say with yellow crumbs everywhere and a sore mouth/gums. I remember when I was at College/University in London, the local chicken shop had my favorite 3 piece chicken, 2 ribs, fries and a drink for £3.99, They saw me so often, I seldom had to say my order.

Hello my friend 3 piece chicken, 2 ribs, fries and a drink PepsiMax right?

Thinking back on that chapter of life, that’s really kinda disgusting. The thing about my eating habits, I never really considered them to be that bad, I had increased my consumption of food after I was forced to quit smoking. The doctor was good, he gave me a choice stop smoking or your dick will die.

Yes those were his real words, he said penis, but you get he point

Faced with that possibility, the risk of going impotent, have a limp doodle nah it was really easy to give up cigarettes. But back to food if it wasn’t that chicken meal it was Fish & Chips, Kebabs, Burgers, Egg mayo bagels, Mcdonald’s big breakfast after the club geeeez I just ate whatever I wanted too. After moving to the US, it only got worst from there. Sweet Tea became my beverage of choice, I ate so much red velvet cake and bought so many glazed donuts it was almost addictive. Not to mention my ability to clean up at the Chinese buffets, six to seven stacked plates easy. But anyway the point here is I never was one to count carbs and calories,

think about cholesterol, heart disease, elevated blood sugar, strokes, erectile dysfunction, sodium levels, GMO products, blindness, toe/foot amputation etc.

I mean why the hell would I? These things would disturb the focus on the meal at hand, am I right? I was 215 pounds of pure loverman, living and loving life!

So here’s my story on why I decided to “make the transition” to cut down on meat and eventually cut it out altogether. Couple years, well more like over half a decade ago, (this is the mini scare I mentioned earlier) I had some routine blood work done as part of a general check up. The results came back with higher levels of Cholesterol. The over zealous “healthcare professional”/ receiver of back-handed cash incentives for prescribing medication hack of a doctor wanted to toss me on Statin. You know those drugs that eventually wipe out your body’s own ability to fight the bad cholesterol so you become dependent on a stronger and stronger dosage, then they completely destroy your liver, yes those Statin drugs. Side effects include; increased risk of diabetes and muscle damage. Luckily for me, I have a few healthcare professionals in my family/friend circles that actually do give a damn about the job they do and not what they can get from exploiting a person’s ailment.

So after consulting them, I was told no way in hell should you get on statin drugs, get some exercise, eat less BS and you’ll be fine. So I did, I cut out fried fowl, switched to baked or rotisserie, cut down on the red meat, beef, lamb ect and pork, yea nothing like a good ole pork chop but I remember having a conversation with Trini Guy who told me when he cut pork out of his diet, his health issues improved drastically. So I decreased my intake of these other meats and increased the fish. Now this was stupid on my part and I really should have known better, but I was always under the impression that fish did not contain cholesterol, seafood yes but fish no, I dunno why I believed that, I did no research to support my stupidity, I just went with it. I also decided to cut out soda completely from my diet, which was hard since Pepsi Max was my drink of choice. I drank that delicious dark poison with everything, so I decided to replace it with juice. The problem was that back then I didn’t realize the difference between “juice” and “juice drink”. There really is no difference both are still packed with sugar, but it disgust me to peek at a label and see 10-30% juice, what the hell am I paying for water, sugar and preservatives?

Fast forward to now, couple months ago, I saw one of my co-workers fade to black, fainted, passed out on the floor dazed and slightly confused. Now this is big strong ex-high school football player brotha. I know this cus he helped me move some stuff one time and he was snatching it like it was 2ply toilet paper. So although we’re not close, I consider him a cool ass dude and his situation threw me for a loop. Turns out he had mixed Day-quil and Ny-quil and was over working himself while having a cold and his body just said “fuck it”! Apparently this stuff is dangerous and can kill you, even make you stroke out, I overheard the EMTs saying they see that shit all the time. It shot his Blood Pressure so damn high he was in real danger. Now of course he was back to work like nothing had happened the next day, which is why I also say “strong ass dude”. But can you imagine of all the nonsense out there in this world, some damn cough medicine kills you?

So considering this year, I was forced to get health insurance or pay the penalty of the great United States of America healthcare racket, i got an exploitation plan. Now I could have had health insurance a long ass time ago and for a lot cheaper, but some know it all people who grace your life at some point, don’t know the important shit just the fantasy. So I decided hey go get yourself a medical/physical, let this be your annual gift to yourself on or around your birthday. So after all the crap of calling my insurance to see what I’m covered for what is considered “preventative” and then finding a doctor in a “good area” of town, I saddled up took a trip to the doctor’s office, checked out the cute ass red bone nurse, not wearing the ugly ass Crocs but the white air force ones and she was like a size 8 very nice!!

yea I have a short attention span and I like women with small feet…. ehhh I know.

After some awkward moments of having things clipped to my fingers and stuffed in my mouth, I took my physical: Blood pressure, chest x-ray, blood work, cold ass stethoscope on chest/back breath deep, open wide say ahhhhh, pee in this cup, let me cup your balls, cough two times, the whole nine. I was pleased to know the digital rectum exam or doctor/man rape was not a part of the standard medical/physical exam, I was not ready to experience that trauma again so soon. After the diagnostics I sat with the doctor for a lifestyle chat, non smoker, single, social drinker but only Guinness, with the occasional fireball shot, moderate exercise only, not really sexually active, yadda yadda yadda. Right off the bat she tries to write me a prescription and tells me I probably need a dental appointment, I think she was trying to to tell me my breath was stank, but in a nice way.

you try fasting for 10+ hours and your mouth is smelling like potpourri

Job done, chat done I settled up and left the doctor’s office feeling accomplished and slightly uncomfortable, with my arm stinging, not from my abused vein provided by the friendly redneck phlebotomists with the duck dynasty Uncle Si calendar on her wall and polite conversation about having gun licenses and the importance of having the gun with the license at all times, but the band-aid ripping my arm hair at every movement.

Couple days passed finally got a phone call from the doctor to discuss my results, she gave me the round up over the phone and scheduled a follow up for me to come into the office to talk more in dept. Needless to say I was not pleased with some of the results, a lot of “normals” but somethings needed attention, but being a natural hypochondriac I expected worst. Now, I’m not going to sit here an share my ailments, but lets just say I need to change some things to avoid situations potentially getting worst. I will say that I can almost confirm that I was not being slow poisoned for years like I assumed, due to some weight lost which I will now attribute to “life stress” but even that is a long story. Now after hearing this news part of me was pissed off that I had not kept a more keen eye on my health. Given my previous situation when you try to do things within a partnership and the focus of others is elsewhere, life will get in the way I guess. So now I am living on my own terms I have to deal with the situation of now! My choices are clear, I know what has to be done, I choose life, I’m finally a person that is eating to live.