N is for Nuts

We all have our crosses to bear; mine’s covered in peanut butter.

As my desperate tweet implied, I’d eat anything with peanut butter on it. If I was forced to choose just one thing I could take when stranded on a desert island, it wouldn’t even cause me to blink. Peanut butter.

I suppose I could write about the health benefits of nuts; how nuts are high in protein, rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. I could extol about nuts’ heart-healthy attributes or satiety properties (they make you feel full for a long time).

Indeed nuts and nut butters can be an integral part of a healthy diet and even a weight loss plan.

Unfortunately I carry a bit of residual baggage from my prior life when I weighed 265 pounds where peanut butter is concerned. Okay, a lot of baggage. So much so that it requires a checked bag as it won’t fit into the overhead bin.

Seriously though, peanut butter is a big-time trigger food for me. Always has been. If it were most any other of my trigger foods I would simply banish it from my house in keeping with my #1 weight loss rule:

Unhealthy food does not cross my threshold

But peanut butter’s a staple in a household with a spouse and kids who eat it every day. So I try to resist.

Some days it works, some days … not so much.

On my very best days I am able to put 1 tablespoon into my drop-dead favorite Peanut Butter & Jelly smoothie and walk away from the jar. Lately there have been too few days like that.

Ah well, I’ll keep trying.

In the meantime, I’ll keep adding nuts to salads and steel cut oats, as well as eating them plain. Despite my wavering willpower in the face of peanut butter, nuts and nut butters are very good for you, and when eaten in very modest amounts (typically a 1 oz. serving has between 150-200 calories, depending on the variety) can be part of your everyday eating plan.