Coreyshead - Looking at the World 1 Pixel at a Time

(this post is part of an aborted 1 year experiment in material abstinence I called The Necessary Year)

How many cups of coffee do you need a day?

Well I want about three or four – and when I say “cup” what I really mean is around 12 ounces, and when I say coffee, I don’t mean that wimpy, tan, Folgers type stuff that has all the punch of some frou frou herbal tea. No, I like a nice, thick, strong cup of coffee: fresh ground french roast or espresso beans, please, with just a touch of sugar at the bottom to pleasantly round that bitter edge into a smoky nuttiness.

mmmmmmmmm

Anyway, in answer to my opening question; considering the cost, dubious nutritional value, and deleterious effects, I need approximately zero cups of coffee a day but I really, really like the stuff, so I feel a compromise of some kind is in order. As a matter of fact, I think my whole daily diet could use a makeover:

Typical Daily Diet:
– 2 large cups of coffee in the morning, 1 before breakfast, 1 for the road.
– Breakfast: 2 eggs, 3 bacon, 1 slice buttered toast, glass of grapefruit/orange juice mix (this breakfast, in slight variations, has been a constant for me for over 10 years – no, I’m not tired of it)
– Midmorning snack: banana
– Lunch: leftovers or a thin, meat and cheese sandwich and a single-serving yogurt
– 1 16 ounce americano (four shots of espresso in hot water with 3 sugars – yikes!) after lunch.
– Dinner: varies greatly between healthy and craptastic but always washed down with two beers and often followed by a sugary treat of some kind like a one of those chocolate cookie and green mint Toll House ice-cream sandwiches.

New Daily Diet:
– Breakfast: reduce egg and bacon down to 1 each
– Coffee: reduce to 1 for the road. period.
– Dinner: nix the beers and dessert, and if the main course is craptastic (pizza, spaghetti, etc.) eat smaller portions

So: I’ve been implementing this new diet since Monday – the result? Come mealtimes I’m HUNGRY … and yawning.

To combat the former, I’ve learned to approach the food I take to work differently. Instead of eating the banana out of boredom around 10am, I now save it until I get the hungries around 11:30 am, when I used to hit my lunch. Then, when I get hungry again, around 1:30 or so, I eat my sandwich only, saving the yogurt for an afternoon snack, as opposed to wolfing both down in one fell swoop and then suffering through the afternoon with distracting hunger-pangs. I’m still darned hungry come dinner time but it is far more bearable now that I am spreading my food out over the day.

I also recently read that, if you sniff a banana, apple, or peppermint, it will trick your brain into thinking you have eaten said food and kill your hunger pangs – and, after testing it, I know this is true for me in the case of the banana. Unfortunately, you have to crack the banana to get that smell (sniffing the unbroken peel has little to no effect – plus you look like an idiot doing so), thus you might as well just eat the damned thing and be done with it.

As to the sleepies, instead of wandering across the street to the record store for my daily americano and barista flirt, I now walk five blocks up a steep grade, about 30 degrees, to the local post office to check my PO box, then back down to work.

Waitaminute … what is this, a diet plan? I thought we were just trying to control our spending here.

Well, they’re attached, aren’t they? Sure they are.

My newish job entails me sitting on my butt all day; I don’t need anywhere near the number of expensive calories I was taking in when I was dashing about as a retail manager of a two-story bookstore – I was just used to them.

I was also slowly outgrowing my clothes, which would have meant investing in a new wardrobe – which, with a little adjustment, just wasn’t necessary.

Tags: Coffee, Conservation, Food, Materialism