I thought I should show you what my diet used to be like as pictures are worth a thousand words.
Its easy to say "I eat crap food" and most people would know what you mean, they think you eat the odd B&E roll and the odd Maccas.
I wanted to show you what crap food really is.
Breakfast
My breakfasts are bad
At home breakfast usually consists of cereal, sometimes toast and jam with coffee on a weekend, but most workday mornings I would have something healthy.
It's the days when you are a bit stressed, didn't eat much the night before or are a bit hungover that the healthy breakfast goes out the window.
This is the take-away I used to go to regularly for breakfast before starting work.
It is conveniently located near my bank and shops that I regularly go to however there was a more sinister reason for me to choose this place over the many places I could easily obtain my vice.
This place would cook fresh chips for me when I ordered bacon and eggs!!!!
And when they ask "do you want your toast buttered" they don't mean with margarine.
my typical eat-out breakfast
It doesn’t help that I like bacon and eggs for breakfast but add fresh, well cooked chips and its hard to decline.Its not like I had to go there, I could have done my business and kept going or eaten breakfast first, but I was addicted to the fat, starch and sugar.
I stopped cooking bacon and eggs at home a while back, partly because it was not worth the effort in prep and cleaning and partly because it could never be as good as my regular fix above.This, combined with the recent move of my office to Castle Hill had slightly reduced my bacon and eggs intake to a couple of times a week. (well OK maybe 3)
But then in summer on the weekend there is the BBQ at Nippers where they sell bacon and egg rolls ( to support the club mind you), at least I would usually have had a surf before eating it. Alas, that must change too along with the bacon and eggs during winter from Avalanche or Cascades whilst in Thredbo.
Morno
After eating the breakfast shown above, I have been know to buy 30 donut balls at a time for morning tea.
You see, 20 donut balls cost $2.80 but for fiddy cents more you get 30 of the little suckers.
I would eat them and wash'em down with the remainder of my breakfast can of coke.
That's a shit load of donut balls on that counter eh?.......nah about a weeks worth for me !!!
num num num num num num num num num
Lunch
I regularly have hamburgers, pies, donner kebabs or KFC (with chips and coke) for lunch.
I have attempted to eat lunch at work as much as I can but it is difficult for a number of reasons:
Regularity - I cant guarantee I will be there to eat lunch at work every day
Variety - sometimes you cant eat a sandwich 5 days in a row
Spoilage - both reasons above cause stuff to go off
Every now and again, especially when you are out on the road, it is hard to say no to take-away and buy a salad sandwich for $8 when you know they cost two and threepence to make.
I canned Maccas (and Hungry Jack's) lunches recently, not because of the nutritional value of what they sell but how they present it.
I was sick of opening the box and finding the stuff just chucked together and oozing with sauce/mayo.
This is your typical Cheeseburger meal, like how it used to be served.
It is rare to get one assembled like that now days.
The change in quality has been since MacDonald's stopped making the burgers in advance.
In the old days the server just turned around and picked up one of many burgers from a chute and gave it to you.
Back then you accepted that it was pre-cooked and the trade off was that it was quick and cheap and convenient.
Now days the customer has to now wait for fast food to be made and there is pressure for the (I wont say cook) "assembler" to make the burger in a specific time.
So in the end we have to wait for crap food to be assembled poorly without care and we have to pay a premium for it
It is cheaper and sometimes quicker to go to a cafe or even a burger/fish n chips shop
Look at the sloppy presentation - wouldn't pass Masterchef
Look at the mayo - shit ...no one wants that much mayo - another USA supa-size syndrome
I had to use a french fry to scrape it off - even then it oozed out and dripped down my arm
It was frustration with all the mayo/ketchup dripping off and the contents falling onto the tray.
Mmm Apertizing
Another lunch issue is timing, as there are not many places at 3pm that serve fresh food which only leaves road food.
Recently I have swapped the drive-thru for a Vietnamese Cafe that does not close between lunch and dinner and for 10 bucks makes a great "bespoke" beef stir fry with veges and rice.
You really appreciate the food and service when you can hear it being chucked into a wok and you know that your meal will be served 30 secs after the sizzling stops.
Dinner
Dinners OK
We don't go out that much for dinner but we love going to Hogs Breath or a Pub Bistro and eating steak or chicken schnitzel (with chips and lots of beer) every now and again.
It would be about once every week or two that we go out for a meal and a beer.
Dinner at home is usually well balanced stuff, pasta, curries, stir-fry, salads etc., not fatty steak or pork sausages or pizza every night. We rarely cook chips at home and would have about half a dozen BBQs a year and if so would be lean meat.
We dont usually order take away anymore, since we cook a bit of asian food and Jenny makes her own pizza dough, there is no attraction to "cook with the phone".
Snacks
Snacks are a problem:
Savory - Potato/corn chips, peanuts, dips, lunch meat, crackers etc
Sweet - Chocolate, chocolate biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, cakes, muffins, desserts
BEER
When I am out and about I drive past KFC and Maccas all the time without chucking a U-turn and buying a Big Mac or a chicken so it has to be a timing thing.
I find that convenience is a big factor in these decisions.
Another analogy is beer, I like beer but I drive past pubs all day long and don't need to stop for a beer. That's because I have a job to do and a license to keep.
However, It wasn't always like that.
Over a year ago I used to knock off work early since I was "self employed" and go down for a "few beers with the boys"
I would drive Jenny's car to the pub most days at "beer o'clock". Jenny would catch the bus from the station and then drive home, do some shopping if needed, pick the kids up and then come back and get me.
Sometimes it would be 9pm before she returned which equates to at least half a dozen schooners and more often than not, not much for dinner followed by a seedy morning.
Other times she would come back with the kids and we would have a meal there.
It was a friendly environment, great bistro, we knew everyone and the staff new us as locals so we did what ever we wanted, most of the time we ran the place.
Every now and then we would run amok, usually on the weekend or on Wednesday's when they had a band on. You could drink a dozen beers, get blind and never get in trouble or get chucked out. It was great fun.
The good thing about the place was I could walk in and say G'Day to about 10 people even if my old mates weren't there.
After a while I started to realise it was ground hog day, conversations started to have that de ja vu feeling of "didn't he tell me this bullshit yesterday" and people did the same stupid things over and over, same old story, someone lost their job, someones got the shits with so and so, someone whinging about their boss, I've gotta find somewhere to live, my cars out of rego, I got booked for drink driving, can you lend me $50 etc etc
There was no history, there were no real conversations or stories, just mundane day to day whinging about life, work, bills and the ordinary things people all around the world put up with every day.
I realised these people don't do anything but go to work and drink beer.
I had had enough.
Pubs are like hospitals you know, they are full of sick people who, like the ones in hospital, sometimes are there for a long time, some come and go quickly never to be seen again and some are terminally ill and just stay there till they die .
The only ones that aren't sick are the ones that are only visiting, rather than being "admitted" they have freedom to check themselves out and live a normal life and return when they want, usually on a Friday to "visit" the sick people who are there all week day in day out.
After losing a close friend from the pub who I had know for 25years and done many things with over the years not just drank beer at the pub with, I realised that the people there didn't have anything else, they were inmates in a prison, locked up by their livers.
I had nothing in common with them other than being a drunk. I tried towards the end to involve some of these people in some of my outside life, despite being warned by Potsy many years before not to rely on "Oak people" to change.
I thought maybe if they got an interest outside the pub they would choose to come mountain biking or kayaking or snow skiing and the benefit would be two fold.
I would have a partner to do some sports with and would also have a break from the pub, they would benefit likewise.
He was right, none of them followed through with their inebriated promises. The attraction to sit and drink beer was too much. They would not go to the effort of getting up and doing something new because of the opportunity cost - doing the activity with me took away their ability to sit in the pub all weekend and get drunk.
I gradually lost any interest I had in the people of the pub and after Xmas 2010 I stopped going to the place all together and surprise surprise, have had almost no contact with any of the pub people since.
It was a hard decision as you are voluntarily giving up a part of your life, like leaving your home town or quitting a long held job.
As upsetting as it was, I looked at it like giving up smoking and I knew it would be for the best.
Even though I haven't given up beer altogether I have dramatically reduced my consumption.
I still enjoy a beer or two at home after work and on a weekend.
Not going to the pub regularly makes it more enjoyable to have a schooner of draught beer when I do, especially since I only drink light beer at home.
So am I addicted to junk food?
When you apply the phrase "you are what you eat", then I am made of fat and sugar!!!
I generally eat OK,but I cant help taking the junk food option.
However, I don't eat enough fruit ( since I get my sugar fix from Coke and beer)
I think that breakfast, lunch and snacks is where I need to focus
I eat too much fried food, so chips, donuts and KFC have to go as well as all the snacks.
Next blog will be about how I am going to achieve this change in my diet
