Home cooking advantage erodes under work life imbalances

Sweet tidings beckon the arrival of my sweeter half like the first rays of dawn piercing through the dark cloudy enveloping. 

First moorings are always a bit trickier when you are in an unfamiliar environment, far away from the home nest and steeper into the unknown. Ostensibly, like Lord Tennyson in Charge of the Light Brigade " there's not to reason why, but to do and die".

The very initial days were grounded in a shared accommodation with another couple who also shared the same native background.However, the food arrangement remained dining in a nearby restaurant. Commute was hard, compounded by the punishing weather and the lack of personal transportation (apparently not possessing the country's driving license). Public transportation was abysmal, bus frequency low and shared private taxis off the route.

Too much traveling back and froth to the city centre where the office was situated and businesses dispersed. Things started to unravel. Business concentration dipped from this unwanted rigmarole.

Something had to be done. My significant other too began to slip on the anxiety trail from the dripping, saved nest egg.She wanted to initiate her cooking in bringing the savings and health advantage home.

We contracted a letting agent who was a childhood friend of mine, and he did the trick. Though we did the studio apartment a bit, yet we got a private space of our own. Viola! First blood drawn, the larger hill remaining to be climbed. 

Our baby steps were paying off, home cooking begins. While home cooking is ubiquitous in robust health, strong evidence coming from first of its kind study on adults in UK aging between 29 to 64 years by Susanna Miller, Heather, Adam et al in International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity (IJBNPA) August 2017, finds that those adults consuming home cooked meals 5 times a week, compared with 3 times a week, are likely to have a 28% lower overweight BMI    ( Body Mass Index) and 24% less excess body fat percentage. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5561571/

More irrefutable evidence indicates 47% survivorship bias among elderly after 10 years for those eating home cookings 5 times a week, against those who weren't so frequent home cooking consumers. 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/cooking-frequency-may-enhance-survival-in-taiwanese-elderly/D3AC16340A7166FD2DF6E423283B4E2C#

So begins the second coming in my health journey with the reintroduction of home cooking, this time my life partner supplanting the base role of my life giver. WOW! A rejuvenating change of a lifetime.

Life became more organised, things started picking up once again from where I left, before  accompanying my madam back to this opportunity shore. I cracked a substantial life insurance backed savings plan, reworking my business strategy in scaling up through the referential chain network rather than pounding the pavement by blanket cold calling.Somehow, I didn't like the label of being stuck as a life insurance, tied agent.I wanted to explore more revenue making opportunities in the financial savings sector. 

However, I had to keep focus on enhancing the existing business too.In this endeavour, a real saviour came along, a fine gentleman Doctor residing for long years in the country. He provided me references of everyone close to him, including his spouse. Business just took off, and I cracked more bigger policies. More income and company benefits raked into the tiller.

I was on a roll.My commission income was multiplying.It was an unheralded career change for me.So far, I had earned my living only through salary and stock investment trades back home. I was now purely on commission, and on my own.No fixed income, but no fixed office timings. Totally flexible! 

However, unwittingly there was a dark underbelly, hidden from the obvious sighting. The health dimension! Which I thought was taken care of completely by my spouse's home cookings. The unscheduled and open ended work layout affected my meal timings, and I had to consume the same trashy bits that I survived on before my dearest arrived.

Even her cookings were not enjoyed as fresh servings because of the business wanderings. I ended up on munching these heavenly fares quite overextended, worn down and already stuffed by some fiberless wonders on the way. What a total waste of such richness in cooking and health. 

I continued on the same pathway, ploughing the furrow for more policies, hitting higher sale numbers, and consecutive expanding of the belly line.Gorging on the freshly cooked, lovely delights at ungodly hours in the night. I kept reaching further on the losing end, in danger of giving up on regaining my once wonderful self.Staring at the downward spiral of a seemingly impossible fight against the flabby encircling.

A further 5 to 10 kgs bulk got added in the process on my physical frame. 

Watch for the next layer, I peel in this absorbing battle of seesawing weighty perfection. 

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