Eat your age not your appetite

Middle-age men like me are like the cartoon character Yogi Bear in Jellystone Park, hungrier than the average bear always on the hunt for a picnic basket to steal and eat. Not all middle-age men but most.

This voracious appetite started early in our lives as growing kids, playing outdoors from sunrise to sunset in a generation of no indoor computers or video games. These outdoor activities made us extremely hungry and, because we were growing, we ate lots of food. Sure some kids didn't have big appetites. They generally didn't have a good sense of smell, or always had a bellyache from drinking milk because they were lactose-intolerant.

This appetite continued in high school and even grew for us who played sports. High school football players ate the most as they were bigger and all their training required food around the clock. Wrestlers were hungry too but since always trying to make weight, they had the appetite but couldn't do anything about it.

So with years of adolescent appetite training, our big appetite followed us into college and adulthood. Problem is that we were done growing, and the non-stop physical activities requiring big food consumption were substantially reduced; we were college students hitting the books. Those who didn't go to college instead went to work, earning a paycheck and making a living with less time to play.

But the appetite remained.

Fast forward 30 to 40 years later, the appetite is still there but the activities to support it aren't. So it comes as no surprise so many of us middle-age men are overweight with a belly badge of honor and girth, visible proofs for the world to see. Some of us figure it out sooner than later and resume regular physical and fitness activities into our complex middle-age men lives. Hiking, biking, running, pumping iron and good old-fashioned manual labor chores are things we do to fight our belly battle and girth. With awareness and appetite management skills, we try watching what we stuff in our mouths and down our throats. Yet despite these efforts, it's still very hard because of this big appetite developed in our youthful days.

No middle-age man likes to talk about it and many won't even acknowledge it privately, but it is the absolute truth - we are just plain fricking hungry all the time, like the cartoon character Yogi Bear in Jellystone Park on the hunt for a picnic basket to steal and eat.

If you're one of those always-hungry middle-age men like me, next time it's time to eat, before your first bite, take a deep breath and remind yourself to "eat your age not your appetite".

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum