I'm Irish and lived in an Italian part of town. At home it was meat and potato's and when eating at most of my friends houses it was pasta and meat...I never ate veggies at all.
Ha, ha! I'm half Italian, and a quarter each Irish and English. Mom used to fatten up the entire neighborhood on "Pasta Thursday". Dad always got home later than most of the other dads, so when the other kids got done with dinner they'd come hanging around our place. Dad would always say, "Hey, kids, sit down and have some 'ronis", and I never saw one of them turn it down.
Dad was the Italian, but his mother taught mine how to cook Italian, and I still believe she made the best sauce in the world. Simmered for hours and hours, with meatballs, chicken legs, pork chops, hot and sweet sausage, and if we were really good (and we tried our best), she'd make a nice braciole. I did my part by hammering out the flank steak, then snuck meatballs and chunks of sausage when she wasn't looking.
Then there was the big meat and potatoes Sunday dinner, with maybe a nice apple upside down cake for desert. Then beef stew another night, chicken and dumplings, etc. Thankfully we were Catholic and ate fish on Friday or I would have ended up big as a house by my teens.
In spite of all this food (or maybe because of it) I was a pretty skinny kid until I graduated HS. A surplus of food at all times made it something you could always count on, so I just ate when I felt like it.
When I met my wife 35 years ago, I had gotten to the point where I never ate sweets, not even sugar in my coffee. I worked my ass off on a thoroughbred breeding farm at the time, slaving away at the wrong end of the horse for 60 or more hours in a 7-day week. I was a lean, mean 165# when we got married.
I have an easy going personality, and a slow metabolism. Like the riding horses we also boarded, I was what we called an "easy keeper" - I function fine on a "handful of oats". My better half OTOH is like those twitchy TBs we could never fatten up. More like a Chihuahua, actually. She can't just sit and relax without shaking her foot or some other thing. Consequently, she can eat all she wants and never gain a pound. She got me on those damn sweets so many years ago, and it's been Hell ever since keeping weight off.
Anyway, yesterday all I had was black coffee, celery, carrots and a big bowl of split pea soup with two small biscuits. No beer at all, but I did have a small glass of my best mescal. I sipped it slowly for hours, enjoying that smoky flavor while passing on a buzz. Like all addictions, I'll take it one day at a time, and try not to give up if I slip like so may times in the past.
Quitting is a learned art. You fail over and over until you finally get it right. I did that with smoking, although I still have the occasional cigarette. I was a 3-4 pack a day smoker, and it took dozens of heartbreaking relapses before I could finally take them or leave them. Food is tougher because you do have to eat, and it's not exactly socially unacceptable to do so. I still think it's doable, though, in spite of the published odds against it.
