Lee has been working from home a fair amount lately. This is (mostly) a good thing, for me–I like having him around. It’s interesting watching him adjust to the relative solitude of a quiet house. A couple of days ago I saw him bolt up from his desk and go racing down the stairs and out the front door; I peeked out the window to see that he had waylaid some neighbors, out for a walk. It cracked me up–he’s like a little kid, looking for someone to go play with.
As far as I can tell, one of the biggest challenges for a person making a radical nutrition/diet change is the impact on social life. One of the first, and most distressing, things we figured out when Lee got out of the hospital was how hard it is to eat healthy, low-fat food in a restaurant. It’s just this side of impossible, really. Before his heart attack, we ate out ALL THE TIME. That was how we socialized–we met friends for dinner (or breakfast, or lunch, or dessert, or drinks). Then–all of a sudden–we couldn’t do that any more. It took us several years to figure out how to negotiate restaurant menus.
We’ve got two sets of friends going through this right now–one because they’re working on losing a significant amount of weight, and the other because they’ve got a sudden doctor-mandated dietary problem. For both couples, figuring out how to balance health and socializing is not just a challenge, but a full-on crisis. The sudden death of a full, vibrant social life can be emotionally crippling (and can undermine even the most well-structured diet/nutrition plan).
I don’t pretend to know the answer to this particular dilemma–we still struggle with it all the time. We’ve figured out how to order relatively healthy stuff in restaurants; what we haven’t figured out is h0w to not eat too much (I don’t care how low-fat something is; if you eat too much of it, you’ll gain weight, which is bad for your heart). Our solution-of-the-moment is to meet friends at coffee shops (we’ve actually been doing that for years). Lee gets a cup of decaf, no cream; I get a cup of tea (occasionally a small skim mocha, but that’s 250 calories, so not very often), and we get to catch up and gab and make general nuisances of ourselves.
If you’re trying to make lifestyle changes that will make your heart healthier, you need to have friends. Studies show that social support is crucial to long-term health and happiness. But it’s important to find a way to value those friendships without getting into the eating-out-over-eating trap.
Some non-food-centric things you can do with friends (and let me just say–I know some of you are going to read this list and laugh hysterically–fine. If you don’t like my ideas, think of something that you like to do):
–go for a walk or hike
–go window-shopping
–go to a museum or exhibit or historic site
–schedule a regular movie night (but skip the snacks)
–do volunteer work together: work at the soup kitchen, or get involved with habitat for humanity
–meet up at the dog park
–take the kids (or grandkids) to the playground
–join a team: bowling, or golf, or square-dancing, or extreme rock-climbing
–take a class together: bird-watching, or a foreign language, or intro to pottery
If you have other tried-and-true social suggestions, leave them in the comments. I’m always glad to get new ideas!