Habits are strange things. Some you do on purpose, like wiping your shoes on the doormat as you enter a house. Some are unconscious – maybe you tap the table when you are making a point. Some are healthy – like regular workouts. Some are not as healthy – like eating a Dove Mini for a snack.
I was thinking about habits the other night when I saw the couple next to us eating sweet potatoes with dinner. It dawned on me that I used to have half a sweet potato almost every night, and I wondered why I stopped. Somewhere in the past three years, I just quit ordering them. (Could it be that they added onion rings to the menu?)
That got me thinking about how my habits have changed over the years. I’ve gone through eating phases. For years I drank blueberry smoothies for breakfast. I stopped when we moved into our current home and there wasn’t room for the blender on the countertop.
Each move has changed my exercise habits. Until our move in 2012, I loved my three spinning classes each week. In the new city, the classes weren’t nearly as engaging, so I started spinning on my bike at home. We brought the bike to Florida, but somehow I’ve never restarted the 3-day a week spinning habit. Part of it may be the environment. In our previous house, I had an exercise room with a TV. Now the spinning bike is in the walkway in our kitchen. And yes, I do occasionally use it as a towel rack.
Some habits aren’t broken by choice. Over the years several things I liked have disappeared. Years ago I had “Sunday read the paper day.” That’s what I’d announce when I grabbed the thick Sunday paper from the porch and curled up with an Afghan on the couch. With that announcement, the cat would dash over and curl up beside me as I read the Chicago Tribune. As years passed, the once thick Sunday paper diminished to ¼ its previous size. The reduction started when the Tribune removed the Book section, my favorite section, from the paper and started to charge for it. Somewhere along the line, the Lifestyles section shrunk from a thick section to four pages. And the Lifestyles articles, once interesting to me, seemed to target young adults – articles on raising your kids and getting your first job. I aged out. The only thing left to read was the news, the op-eds, and the funnies. The cat didn’t even bother to curl up next to me because I was done reading the paper before she could get in a good nap.
It’s interesting how one trivial change in your life can trigger a change in habits. We used to eat at six pm. We moved to the CCRC, which provides one meal a day, the dining rooms were closed due to Covid. When the dining rooms reopened, reservations were parceled out to minimize the number of eaters in the restaurant at a given time. As new residents, we got the most unpopular time – 4:30. For over a year, that’s the only reservation we got. We formed the habit of eating early. We noticed early eating has some perks. We ate less at that hour and eating that early relieved any tummy issues we had at bedtime. However, when we eat early, we want a snack later in the evening.
And since we get one free meal a day, our cooking and eating habits changed. While the restaurants aim to serve healthy food – they still offer irresistible bad foods like the onion rings. We used to eat mostly vegetarian bean and nut-based meals. The restaurant’s only vegetarian offering lacks protein most nights.
And the unhealthiest thing of all – they have fabulous desserts. We never ate dessert at home. I wish I could be like some of my healthy neighbors and order the fruit cup but the Italian lemon cake is not to be missed.
I’m sometimes tempted to start cooking dinner again despite the free meals, but dinner has become a social event. Each night we eat with different people. Besides, I could list a million reasons why we don’t cook each night. We hate the new stove (but we do have induction cooktops). Cookware isn’t convenient – in our new, smaller kitchen everything is stacked (never mind that most of our previous kitchens had the same issue). We don’t have as much counter space (I’m ignoring the fact we lived in an RV six months of the year where counter space was about the size of a cutting board). Oh, the biggest reason: we’ve gotten lazy.
Over the years our habits change. They change because of external factors like moving to a new environment or internal factors such as age or illness. We mostly don’t think about the impact these habits might have on our quality of life. We hope the changes will make us better – but sometimes I worry I’ve exchanged many good habits for bad.
I haven’t eaten breakfast. It’s time to grab last night’s dessert, German Chocolate Cake, that I saved for breakfast. Now that’s a good habit, isn’t it? I don’t eat it for dessert – I save it for another meal. Never mind I could have ordered a fruit cup.
Epilog
Sorry about all the food references - guess you can see what I think about a lot.
I loved this. You are a day brightener for sure.