Hold the eggs, toast and sausage, please: Eating the same breakfast every day, year after year

I'm still at a stage in life where chaos is the rule and continuity the exception. The kids may be mostly grown, but there are enough variables in my daily existence to keep things interesting.

One thing that never changes, though – and that's almost a literal "never" – is my breakfast. Every day it's the same thing eaten at the same time and generally with the same utensils.

With very few exceptions, you will find me sitting at the kitchen table between the hours of 7:00 and 7:30am eating these exact foods:

• A 1/2 cup of rolled oats cooked (microwaved, really) in water
• A banana
• A cup of black coffee

The oats are eaten out of the same black plastic bowl designed for the purpose. The banana is usually medium ripe and medium-sized. The coffee is without creamer and drunk from one of only three mugs I have in rotation.

I should mention this is all by choice. No one is forcing any of it on me.

Whatever else the day may have in store, it starts with this never-changing breakfast.

There is a certain comfort in it, to be sure. For one thing, I never get sick of the plain oats, the banana or the coffee. Ever. They're as tasty for me now as they were when I fell into this routine however many years ago (I honestly can't tell you when it started).

There's also very little prep time involved. I mix the oats and water and microwave them for exactly 1 minute. The banana is quickly plucked from the fruit stash on our kitchen counter. And the coffee comes out of the Cuisinart machine Terry bought me for Christmas that I just love.

All told, from the moment I start making breakfast to the moment I start eating it is less than 3 minutes.

This comes in especially handy on days I have to go into the office or get myself to some other morning commitment.

Lunch and dinner will vary, but breakfast? It's my most important meal of the day not for its nutritional value, but for its reliability.

You will understand, then, how in some ways I have been a 76-year-old man for most of my life.

My fruit addiction is out of control

Soon after I started at Goodyear, I had an onboarding meeting with Laura, our Chief Communications Officer. She gave me great insight into the company, and we talked about our personal and professional backgrounds.

There was, in short, a lot of information exchanged.

But what Laura mainly took away from our conversation was that I eat a lot of apples. At least that's what she mentioned to my boss, Doug.

And I don't blame her. I eat four or five apples a day, and that's virtually every day of my life.

If that were the extent of my fruit consumption, it would be one thing. But it isn't. I also eat a minimum of three bananas every day, along with one or two servings each of whatever other fruit we have in the house...grapes, pears, berries, whatever.

All told, I have a minimum of nine and often as many as 11 pieces/servings of fruit every day. Not occasionally, but every day.

A lot of people who hear that immediately warn me about the ill effects of excessive fruit sugar. Yet my blood glucose levels and A1c are always comfortably within the normal range whenever I have blood work done.

This has been on my mind lately because I recently had a physical with a new health care provider and am enjoying the benefits of a roughly 25-pound weight loss.

I often mention here that I'm a Weight Watchers Lifetime member. The WW system, which is based on a daily allotment of points, has most fruits and vegetables at the zero-point level. That doesn't mean they're "free," in that you're supposed to keep your intake of them at a reasonable level.

My intake is pretty clearly somewhere beyond "reasonable." Yet it's exactly what has allowed me to maintain my weight where I want it to be. I never feel especially hungry because of all the fruit I push down my gullet.

I realize it's too much fruit by almost anyone's standards, but it works for me.

The only drawbacks are the expense and logistical hassles of constantly having to buy fresh fruit. Terry handles much of that work, God bless her, but I find myself making special banana and apple runs to the grocery store all the time.

It's a small price to pay.

I'm not kidding, breakfast is one of the highlights of my day

About five years ago, I took a business trip to Europe. My daughter Elissa, being the adventurous traveler she is, decided to tag along (and paid her own way, to her credit).

That trip took us to some very fun places, including London, Frankfurt, Southern Bavaria, and Barcelona.

The food was all around very good, but we had a special culinary fondness for the two German destinations.

Actually, what we had was a fondness for was German breakfasts. The morning spreads at our hotels were full of delicious, carb-laden treats, fruits, outstanding coffee, and even various meats. We always walked away from breakfast feeling satisfied.

The German word for breakfast is "Frühstück." It's pronounced with that semi-breathy 'r' that comes from the back of the throat, and of course the 's' sound is pronounced as 'sh."

We never bothered saying the 'r' correctly, but the 'sh' part was easy enough, so we always referred to it as "froo-shtuck."

One evening when we were in our room, Elissa sighed and said, "I wish it was froo-shtuck now." And I did, too. That's how much we looked forward to those breakfasts.

Breakfast remains my favorite meal by a wide margin. And as I have recounted here before, I eat the same thing every day, virtually without exception: A cup of cooked plain oats, a banana, and coffee with half and half.

Somehow I never get bored of this breakfast. If I happen to be having breakfast in a restaurant and/or am traveling, I order the closest equivalent off the menu.

I know it sounds bland, but it's what I like. And it makes me happy.

Which in large part is the point of food, right? Many of us develop unhealthy relationships between food and comfort, but seeing it merely as fuel doesn't feel like the right approach, either.

Somewhere in between is a fulfilling mental, physical, and even emotional connection between what we eat and the happiness it gives us.

My non-descript little breakfast routine never fails to make me happy, so I stick with it. Even today, thousands of miles away from the ancestral home of my German grandma Bertha Spitznogel, I still sometimes find myself wishing it was Frühstück in the middle of the afternoon.

Bananas are probably the biggest source of stress in my life

I eat a lot of fruit. We have covered this subject before.

In particular, not a day goes by when I don't eat multiple apples and bananas.

The apples are relatively easy to keep on hand. They last a long time, and you can buy large quantities of them.

Bananas, on the other hand, are a tricky business.

Bananas can go from green and inedible to brown and mushy in, like, hours. You have to constantly monitor them.

When you're at the grocery store and want to buy bananas, there are three important questions you must ask yourself:

(1) How many bananas do we have at home right now?

(2) How many bananas can we have and still be relatively sure they'll all get eaten before they go bad?

(3) What is the overall ripeness of this store's bananas, and in what stages of development should the bananas I buy be?

That last one is the toughest to navigate. If you're fortunate enough to live near a store that stocks bananas in a range of different ripenesses (as opposed to all very yellow and ready to eat or all green and days away from consumption), you have to work out a plan.

Ideally, you'll come home with, say, one very green bunch, one semi-green bunch, and one virtually-ready-to-eat bunch.

At least that's what I do. We are down to just five people living in our house these days, but they eat a lot of bananas. Much of my daily mental energy is spent reviewing the state of our banana cache, plotting from where and when I'll buy new bananas, and trying to decide whether the current bananas are OK to eat.

It's all enough to drive you...well, I'll let you say it.

The top 5 fruits of all time (Blog Rerun)

(NOTE: So this post originally ran on August 14, 2013, and it's one my friend Kevin asked that I resurrect, presumably because he's a fellow fruit fan. I've been friends with Kevin since I was 4 years old. He served as my phone-a-friend on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which I guess means he at least deserves a shot at selecting which blog posts get rerun. So here ya go, Kev...)

I love fruit. I mean, seriously, I love fruit.

Fruit, it turns out, is relatively expensive. And we can't keep it in the house because I eat it all. Fast. Which means we spend a lot of money on fruit.

Since the beginning of last December, I've followed the Weight Watchers PointsPlus plan. The best thing about this plan, by far, is that fruit is free. Meaning that it does not count against your daily points allowance.

Within reason, you can eat all the fruit you want in a given day. And vegetables, too. But we need to focus on the real treat here, which is the fruit.

Also, it should be noted that "within reason" is a phrase subject to a wide range of interpretation. I choose to interpret it as, "Try to keep it under 17 apples in a 24-hour period."

I like all kinds of fruit, but here in reverse order are my top five. Maybe you agree. Maybe you don't. Doesn't matter. The important thing is, fruit is free (in the WeightWatchers sense, sadly not the financial sense).

5. Bananas

I'm a fan. Bananas go a little too quickly, though. It takes me about 25 seconds to eat one. I could slow down, I suppose, but I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much. Given the chance, I would eat an entire bunch of bananas in one sitting. I would get sick, but it would be worth it.

4. Nectarines

And I do specifically mean nectarines, not peaches. I like peaches, mind you, but they don't crack my top 5. The texture of nectarines (and the lack of prickly little hairs) gives them the nod over what I presume to be their biological cousins. Plus they're not quite as juicy as peaches, which I consider to be a good thing. I can eat them at my desk at work without making a mess. Go nectarines!

3. Pears

We're talking strictly Bartlett pears here, people. Not those D'Anjou knockoffs. Bartlett pears, just like mom used to make. Well, actually, just like mom used to serve out of a can at lunch. Bartlett pears are awesome. They're like the BMW of the pear family. That's a really lame analogy, I know, but I can't help it because I'm too busy thinking about Bartlett pears. Mmmmmmm, pears.

2. Grapes

Again, a distinction must be made here: Green grapes. I have nothing against purple/red grapes. It's just that green grapes are the, uh, Bartlett pears of the grape world. I will not argue this point. It just is, in the same way that the sun, moon and stars just are.

1. Apples

I don't discriminate against various apple types, but I will let it be known that Gala is my apple variety of choice. We would also have accepted Fuji, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith (if only because I like the fact that any food is called "Granny Smith"). I eat three apples a day on average, and that's only if I'm making a conscious effort to cut down on my apple consumption. It makes me sad that apples are often sold for $1.99 a pound, because Terry won't buy them at that price point. I love apples. I really, really love apples.

The top 5 fruits of all time

(NOTE: Of course this is about actual, edible fruit. What did you think I was talking about?)

I love fruit. I mean, seriously, I love fruit.

Fruit, it turns out, is relatively expensive. And we can't keep it in the house because I eat it all. Fast. Which means we spend a lot of money on fruit.

Since the beginning of last December, I've followed the Weight Watchers PointsPlus plan. The best thing about this plan, by far, is that fruit is free. Meaning that it does not count against your daily points allowance.

Within reason, you can eat all the fruit you want in a given day. And vegetables, too. But we need to focus on the real treat here, which is the fruit.

Also, it should be noted that "within reason" is a phrase subject to a wide range of interpretation. I choose to interpret it as, "Try to keep it under 17 apples in a 24-hour period."

I like all kinds of fruit, but here in reverse order are my top five. Maybe you agree. Maybe you don't. Doesn't matter. The important thing is, fruit is free (in the WeightWatchers sense, sadly not the financial sense).

5. Bananas

I'm a fan. Bananas go a little too quickly, though. It takes me about 25 seconds to eat one. I could slow down, I suppose, but I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much. Given the chance, I would eat an entire bunch of bananas in one sitting. I would get sick, but it would be worth it.

4. Nectarines

And I do specifically mean nectarines, not peaches. I like peaches, mind you, but they don't crack my top 5. The texture of nectarines (and the lack of prickly little hairs) gives them the nod over what I presume to be their biological cousins. Plus they're not quite as juicy as peaches, which I consider to be a good thing. I can eat them at my desk at work without making a mess. Go nectarines!

3. Pears

We're talking strictly Bartlett pears here, people. Not those D'Anjou knockoffs. Bartlett pears, just like mom used to make. Well, actually, just like mom used to serve out of a can at lunch. Bartlett pears are awesome. They're like the BMW of the pear family. That's a really lame analogy, I know, but I can't help it because I'm too busy thinking about Bartlett pears. Mmmmmmm, pears.

2. Grapes

Again, a distinction must be made here: Green grapes. I have nothing against purple/red grapes. It's just that green grapes are the, uh, Bartlett pears of the grape world. I will not argue this point. It just is, in the same way that the sun, moon and stars just are.

1. Apples

I don't discriminate against various apple types, but I will let it be known that Gala is my apple variety of choice. We would also have accepted Fuji, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith (if only because I like the fact that any food is called "Granny Smith"). I eat three apples a day on average, and that's only if I'm making a conscious effort to cut down on my apple consumption. It makes me sad that apples are often sold for $1.99 a pound, because Terry won't buy them at that price point. I love apples. I really, really love apples.