My wife doesn't think my taste buds work

I have mentioned here before that I will eat anything. Or at least I'll eat anything considered to be safe and socially acceptable.

Seafood? I love it all. Kale? I'm a fan. Exotic and smelly cheeses? Bring 'em on.

I have preferences, of course, but when someone asks which foods I don't like, I tell them there are no foods I don't like.

I consider this to be a virtue, but Terry thinks it makes me somewhat of a freak.

She cannot fathom, for example, that someone can happily eat sardines straight from the tin as I do. I know they don't smell great, but they're one of those foods for which the smell and the taste seem to have little to do with each other.

At least to me.

Terry has half-convinced herself that my taste buds don't function like other people's. If they did, she reasons, there's no way I would eat some of the stuff I do.

Of course, she comes from a family of picky eaters, so I think she's just jealous.

On the other hand, I don't know any different, so maybe she's right. Maybe my chemosensory system is out of whack and has gotten more out of whack as I've aged.

I did, after all, used to dislike coffee, wine, cantaloupe and sauerkraut. Now I drink/eat all of those things without a second thought.

What changed? I don't know. But I can you tell it's wonderful, when asked to list your dietary preferences and foods to avoid, to be able to say, "No restrictions! I'll eat anything."

Pass the liver and onions, please.

What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

Somewhere in between 24/7 kale and a bag-a-day Cheetos habit is your sensible diet

I know exactly what I should be eating. You probably do, too.

I own a copy of a book called "The China Study." It's popular with the clean eating crowd, and while some quibble a bit with its science, I don't think anyone would read it and say, "Nah, this guy's wrong. I'm opting for the Bacon Grease Diet."

We know leafy greens are good for us. We know nuts and seeds should be part of our diet, as should fruits, vegetables, "good" fats and complex carbs. We know we should use some common sense when it comes to things like red meat, processed foods, and trans fats.

Yet we Americans still tend to eat in a manner that can only be described as decidedly unhealthy. We eat bad stuff and we eat a lot of it (ask a visitor from another country what strikes them about America, and stunningly often they'll mention the gargantuan portion sizes in our restaurants).

Still, you can't blame anyone for eating what they enjoy. People want to eat what tastes good. Dietitians, physicians and others whose job it is to guide us toward healthier food choices will tell you your palate evolves and that eventually the good stuff will start tasting better, but in my experience, well...that's at best partially true.

I eat pretty healthy, I guess. I get kale and spinach in my daily smoothies, I try to stick to whole grains, I eat a lot of fruit, and my dairy intake is relatively minimal.

But I'm inconsistent with nuts, almost never eat seeds, will drink multiple cups of coffee with half-and-half until the day I die, and don't get nearly as much fish as I should.

On balance, I feel like I'm doing OK, and over the years my blood work has supported that idea. I'm not perfect, but I am intentional about what I eat.

You may be in the same boat. Or maybe you have a much healthier diet than me, in which case kudos to you.

Realistically speaking, though, a lot of us are going to eat Ding Dongs and ice cream, and we're simply not going to stop. The secret, as always, is getting us to do it in some moderation. God bless the people trying to get us there.

This is the best song about green smoothies you will ever hear

Trust me when I say it will be three minutes well spent if you watch this video:

Admittedly, a song about green smoothies patterned after an ABBA song may not be your thing, but it's catchy, no?

The woman in the video is Victoria Boutenko, an author who has written about the health benefits of green smoothies. She is also a big Vitamix fan, and I've worked with her awesome son Sergei on a few smoothie-related projects during my time at Vitamix.

Sergei, by the way, put out his own green smoothie rap ("Green Smoothie Hustla"...really) a couple of years after his mother's chart-busting ditty.

I drink a green smoothie just about every day. It's a simple recipe: water, some sort of frozen fruit (I've been alternating between a mango/pineapple mix and berries), and some leafy greens, and then blend that puppy up.

Those leafy greens for me usually include some combination of kale, spinach, chard, collard greens, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

The flavor is excellent and the health benefits vast.

I guess what I'm saying is that, if you're not already a smoothie person, you might consider becoming one. It will make your doctor very happy.

Or at least keep singing that smoothie song. I feel like the world's a better place with that tune on our collective lips.

I know I'm old because I willingly eat lawn clippings now

You know what my favorite thing for lunch is these days? I call it a Green Leafy Salad. Others consider it to be Rabbit Food. And my dad would have called it Weeds in a Bowl.

I combine a cup or so of kale, a cup of Swiss chard, and a cup of spinach. Then over top of it all I pour a teaspoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Mix well. Enjoy. And rest easy in the perhaps-false notion that this Grass Souffle will prevent you from ever having a heart attack.

Because that's why I eat it, of course. Not because it seems attractive to me (though it does taste really good...honest), but because I'm supposed to eat it. Leafy greens and olive oil are apparently good for you.

That's how I know I'm firmly in the grips of middle age: When food becomes less about pleasure and more about disease prevention.

Mind you, not all of the good-for-you stuff is repellent. I eat a lot of fruit, for example. And I also try and eat a square of dark chocolate every day. Something about flavonoids and heart health. I just really like dark chocolate, though.

Still, the point is that my menu choices now are driven less by flavor than by grams of saturated fat.

My goal is not necessarily to live as long as I can, but to live well as long as I can. I'll take 80 years of active life over 95 years of total life with 15 spent in a nursing home any day.

Of course, none of this will prevent me from getting hit by a bus or dying in a plane crash. There's an old Yiddish proverb that says "man plans, God laughs," and I firmly believe that.

So when I'm killed by a lion that has escaped from the zoo, I at least want the guys at the morgue to look at my mangled body and say, "You know, he really does look good, doesn't he? Like someone who used to eat mulch."