essay # 1

Eating for a Lifestyle

Big Mac, French fries, and a strawberry milkshake that sounds like a great choice to eat.  That was one of my favorite meals when I was grown going up. Fast food was my life doing my teenage years it was fast, cheap, and tasted great.  At the time I really didn’t think about the side effects fast food would have on my body.

Eating is part of human’s primal instincts. As an unborn baby we are connected to our mother’s by the unbiblical cord, which gives us naturists we need to grow.   For a long time I didn't think much of eating besides I do it when I’m hungry, bored, stressed, or upset. It wasn't until I was in high school when I learned didn't foods have different effect on your body. The more you the more you weight, I learned that’s not true. Some people can eat whatever they want to eat and stay the same size and some gain weight just by smelling a cake or Twinkies.

I learned as a man that there are right and wrong ways to eat.  Also that people can eat and not eat depending on their moods.  When I was growing up ate things because it tasted good not because of the naturists we get from eating.  Some people eat to bigger if they are training for a sport. Some people eat to fit in there old wedding or a favorite pair of jeans they out grew.

As a child I never put much thought into eating. The most thought I put into it was rather it tastes good or not.  Children tend to just care about how it taste.  I never understand why my parents made me eat vegetables.  All I knew was that I did not like vegetables.  I didn't know at the time all the vitamins that vegetables have that my body needed to grow.  I remember I would ask my mom if we could get fast food almost every night. She would say," NO you going to eat what I cook including your vegetables."  I would just pout and sit at the dinner table with nothing but vegetables left on my plate.  It wasn't until I got graduated from high school, and I started lifting weight seriously that made me change my mind on vegetables. 

Lifting weights became a major part of my life.  For the longest I couldn't figure out why my physique wasn't changing.  I started doing research on why my body wasn't changing.  This when I learned that certain food contains different vitamins.  So I began to eating more food are good for you. I figured the more good for foods you eat the better it will be for you.  The results wasn’t what I expected. My body was changing but in the opposite direction I wanted.  I was getting bigger and stronger but not in the sexy way.  I never really understood what was going on with my body. I figured it was just my genes from my family, so I didn’t worry about. 

Doing the process of joining the military I was forced to lose weight. It was always hard for me to lose weight.  The challenge of losing weight was harder for especially when I didn’t know how to eat right.  My navy recruiter made an eating plan to follow which helped me lose.  Although it was helping me, I wasn’t getting me the results I needed fast enough.  He also told me to stop inhaling my food as fast as I can. I needed to eat slow and enjoy my food.  The slower you eat your food the faster your body can digest.  Which in part helps your metabolism speed up.  Following those few tips on eating helped lose wright to join the navy.

Once in the navy I continued following the tips my recruiter told me.  Being in the navy on submarines the food was not good for anyone.  All the food was processed and/or fried.  I was trying to eat well as possible but, I failed horribly.  Eating can change depending on the situation you are in.  When I was back on land I start to eat good again so I thought.   I ate subway every day and, not realizing I was taken in a lot of carbs.  Plus I was skipping breakfast.  I haven’t eaten breakfast in years by this point in life.  Which by the way it’s the most important meal of the day. 

After doing my research I learned that breakfast is a jump start to your metabolism.  Skipping that meal keeps you metabolism down until you eat lunch but, by then your body thinks you are starving. So, you tend to over eat because your body is trying to make up for what didn’t eat.  A human’s body need a certain amount of calories to maintain weight.  As a result I started eating breakfast in the morning which help a certain point.  I began to eat a small breakfast every morning to jump start my metabolism but, I ate a big and a medium size lunch.  That isn’t a good meal order for me and my body type.

A person’s body type plays a big part on how a person needs to eat.  The different body types are ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph.  An ectomorph has a hard time gaining weight, so they pretty can eat whatever they want.  The second is a mesomorph has a large bone structure, large muscles and naturally athletic. This type of person finds it easy to gain and lose weight at will.  The last is endomorph which I am. This person finds it easy to gain weight but unfortunately it’s mostly fat and not muscle.   At the time I didn’t know there was different body types.

Me being me I tried to defy this body type thing.  I was supposed to do a lot of cardio to keep my body fat count down.  I figured if I lifted weights twice a day and only eat protein based foods It would work but I failed. Instead of packing on rock hard muscle I was packing on hard fat. Don’t get me wrong I was strong but, I was a strong fat physique.  As a result I fell out of military standards. They gave me the boot.

I realize that when you are working out was 30% working out and 70% diet.  By this time I pretty much hated eating because I associated with gaining weight so I stopped a lot which made my body go into starvation mode. My body stored everything I ate because my body didn’t know when the next time I would eat. I gained more and more weight.  Eating became I depressing thing for me to do.  This eating problem started to affect my life a lot.  Playing football I wasn’t fast anymore, so I was moved from playing linebacker which, involves a lot of running and chasing, to offensive line. I has heartbroken about this.  Eating was my down fall until I met my roommate.

My roommate is super healthy he doesn’t eat anything unhealthy really.  He explained to me that if can’t control yourself from eating unhealthy foods I should have a cheat meal once a week. On top don’t have that type of food in the house to avoid temptation all together.  Me being a very proud person I set forth to make him proud and change my eating habits.  I began eating breakfast every morning again not matter the size. If my breakfast was small all meals to follow was small than breakfast. On top of that I started to eat six times a day so my body would never store food for any reason.  The fear of my roommate calling me fat, chucky butt, or porky made to only buy that was healthy.  Portion size is a big deal when it comes to eating clean.  A lot of foods may come in one package it can contain more than one serving a person needs to eat.  For example, an eight piece chicken breast package you buy at Walmart it says eight servings.  Each chicken breast contains enough for two people to eat.  Simple things my roommate showed me helped a lot.  I hated my eating habits so much I made a huge change to how I was eating.

Eating can be a person’s drug. A tool used to make one feel good a period of time.  Some people do for a past time because they was bored they started eating.  Some foods do contain chemicals that make people feel good these foods are known as feel good foods. Most of feel good foods are not good for you or eating too many of these food can be no good for you.  The fact that a lot of people don’t know how to eat effect society.  America is one of the fattest countries in the world. 

Till this day I haven’t mastered eating yet.  I thought cutting pork out my diet would help me but according to my blood type I need pork in my diet.  So some people would think I’m crazy or I’m very interested in my health. It doesn’t matter to me I have come a long way from where I was at.  Eating is one of those things a lot people look past or over look as one those things that is not very important.  For those people who have the body type which allows them to eat anything they want they can overlook eat. For me eating became one of my worst enemies.  This experience was long, hard and still continuing through my everyday life.