I'll Take One of Those with a Side of Effort

I hate eating oranges.

I'm not saying that I hate oranges. Especially when the millions of tiny liquid balloons in each section are filled to nearly bursting with sweet-enough juice, and you feel your health soar just from getting some of that squirting into your mouth. But they are such a pain to eat that I rarely do. Even my Christmas orange--which should go into my stomach ahead of all the chocolate accompanying it in my stocking, if there is a mother's voice (Mom's or mine) anywhere in my head--sometimes gets overlooked until it rots.

I only have four things against oranges. You have to peel them. The skin is often so tough that a thumbnail gets pulled away from the skin enough to hurt for a couple of days and need to be band-aided back together tightly like a fresh tree grafting. They are surrounded by tough fiber, which, I know, is good for me. But still. And they are messy. I can never eat oranges without completely soaking my hands, and maybe my desk, because--let's face it--a paper towel is no protection from an orange. Often, they have seeds, which is a trial all its own.

Despite all of these very good, very true arguments, three days in a row this past week, I chose to eat an orange before eating anything else that day. (Did you note that, angels? That should make up for the past three Christmases.)

A health problem keeping me from working out in all ways but one (walking) for the past five months has made me lose a lot of ground, fitness-wise. (And made me gain a lot in another way that I really don't want to mention.) The past few weeks as I've worked to reclimb the fitness mountain I have been sliding down, I've made endurance and strength gains, but I haven't made progress in terms of the thing I don't want to mention.

I'm finally at the point where I can face the fact that I need to eat less, and smarter. And that food should be harder to eat than it is. Over the past eight weeks, I've busted my buttons to work up what I can burn off on an elliptical to 450 calories a day--still half of what I used to burn before I popped an artery. Yet, give me a frosted sweet roll, and I can easily down 450 calories in five minutes, with hardly any effort at all!

The easier something is to eat, the more likely we will reach for it. These days, an American can easily fill up every day without ever getting out a mixing bowl or turning on a stove.

A hundred years ago, you might eat a treat, but you would most likely first have to prepare it. Which didn't mean tearing open a box, adding water, and baking. It could have involved measuring out each single ingredient. Maybe even preparing the ingredients separately before adding them. Maybe even growing, grinding, shelling, churning, paring, chopping, hunting, gutting, plucking, picking, or kneading it. I finally realized more fully that nature intended us to burn a few calories before we can shovel any in.

This principle is not at all subtly illustrated by the movie WALL-E, where people spend their whole lives sitting down and shoveling in calories in the easiest way possible--drinking something that is all ready to drink. I know from experience that nothing flows down the throat more easily than a hot chocolate loaded with whipped cream. In this futuristic film, food has been processed to the point that it is completely unrecognizable and not dealt with by human hands, and humans have evolved to a huge water balloon shape and size and barely possess any bones anymore. Sad but true commentary, I find.

So, until we ran out of oranges at home, I peeled back my orange skins, dug through tough membranes with my fingernails to release seeds, soiled my fingers and desk, and chewed my way through more orange sections than I really wanted, to begin my feeding each day. Then stood up, walked to the sink, and washed off my hands, tasting orange juice in my mouth and feeling healthier already.