I workout daily and I’m a bit obsessive about my diet. At my age, working out means weight training four days a week and various forms of cardio a few times a week. Sports are no longer sensible. I guess cycling is a sport, but I don’t do it competitively. I do 30-40 mile rides at a 20 mph pace. At my age that’s good enough. As far as diet, I track calories, keep my carbs down to about 25% of my intake. That means avoiding take out, fast food and a lot of common snacks like chips and ice cream.

Now, I exercise because I enjoy it. The health benefits, if any, are unimportant to me. An hour of lifting heavy weight gets out the stress of the day and clears my mind. Plus, I can listen to music and not talk to other people. Similarly, cycling and running offer a nice respite from the daily grind. I obsess over my diet because I don’t want to get fat. I have a very slow metabolism. I weigh 200 pounds, about 20 over my fighting weight, and I maintain it on less than 2000 calories a day.

In other words I do these things because I enjoy them. Physical and spiritual health play no role.

Even so, I enjoy ice cream on occasion. I have pizza once a month and cheeseburger on Friday. Life is for living and denying yourself pleasure is just stupid. That’s why I liked this post at Maggie’s Farm.

We have commented on the subject of the human diet and health before, but it’s time for another comment, because the NYT Science Times has written on it.

“Healthy food” has been an on-and-off American obsession, comparable to the obsession with flavor in France.

This is a great point and something I attribute to the German and Calvinist influences. There’s some overlap there, obviously. We got way too many of the tall-serious type of German. I’m kidding about that, of course. It is a strange bit of American culture. Self-denial is always seen as good, while pleasure is always assumed to be decadent and immoral.

Since Rev. Sylvester Graham, a minister, vegetarian, and food-obsessive invented the Graham Cracker in the 1820s to provide “digestive fiber,” Americans have been food faddists and vulnerable to food quackery.

More famously, Dr. John Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, an 1870s charlatan with a diet fad, fooled Americans into thinking that cereal was breakfast food. It is not. In Yankee-land, breakfast is eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, potatoes, fruit and apple pie.

I like oatmeal and some cold cereals, but nothing beats eggs, bacon, sausage, toast and spuds for breakfast. Eggs Benny, maybe. Chipped Beef is a favorite at Che Z, but that’s more out of loyalty to my class than anything else.

Eat what you want, and be happy. All humans are prone to “magical thinking” – aka “wishful thinking.” We’d like to imagine that we have some control over things like health, and that things we put in our mouths will make a difference. There is essentially no evidence for that idea, assuming absence of a disease, or a problem like high cholesterol, or pregnant, etc.

Even being fat doesn’t seem to make any significant difference to health. (Being obese is a bad plan, though.) I advise patients to eat plenty of salmon, trout and char for their magical properties, and whatever else they want; to exercise and work out if they want to be strong and fit but not because they will live forever; to lose weight if they want to look better and feel less tired; to eat all the salt and steak they want; and to avoid magical health diets. Vegetarian? Fine. Leaves more lamb and steak for me. Just don’t imagine that it’s about health. What’s a healthy diet? Any average mix of stuff, but most of all – enjoy it, and don’t fuss about it too much.

Yep. Life is for living.

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