fres[h]ca

4:30 am, the evening ends and a proper new year begins. Awash in the concept of avoiding this substance called High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) I already find myself reading into the contents of the evenings remains. All the alcohol is gone and its Coke or Fresca. I choose the latter. And so it begins.

12:30 in the afternoon. Awoke to a percolating coffee (no HFCS there) but presented immediately with a choice. To eat the yogurt we just bought with Fructose (a major ingredient in HFCS) or to pitch the purchase. There does indeed have to be limits. So that was my breakfast. A transition period is allowable as I learn the balance between the challenge at hand and being neurotically obsessed with this mission . I will indeed go forward with this idea of not consuming HFCS for one year. Generations before me never even had this cocktail of sweetness. It was essentially born with me but I refuse to die with it.

There are many reasons to re[solve] at the new year. Resetting of the clock. Creating a mental path in which you can reward or punish yourself as a result of veering from it. But through these most recent years of resolutions I have found them more rewarding than, for instance, the cliche - 'push ups and sit ups every day' ... then come march and you are mentally going crazy as the thought of having to rise from bed to meet the floor for another round. I have more recently chosen tangible goals. 2009, no cutting through (decidedly based on watching unfit and unhealthy residents take short cuts through parking lots rather than stick to the side walk ... i did not want to be that person), 2008, no plastic bottles (after reading that 98% of drinking water is just as safe to drink. We had been shunned from the public fountain for fear of contamination of the water or the machine. Additionally the photographs of the 3 mile wide plastic island floating in the pacific as a result of this oil based container). 2007, eating vegetarian ... this was a huge success in setting my mind in the proper direction for healthy eating habits. I have now again integrated meats but for sure find myself a step ahead in the grocery and planning meals. Looking back I should have documented that experience as it brought many things to my attention about self and health in a roller coaster of mini addictions to bread and sugars as well as an equal fluctuation in weight and body mass. (reason ... Hilary, now my wife, has been vegetarian for 14 years ... we were essentially living separate lives at meal time. This separation in lifestyle had been integrated to the point where we only had the side dishes to discuss. Three years of cooking magazines and countless evenings in the kitchen together was the result that continues today).

These types of resolutions provide not only self education but continue with you regardless of the end of the year. They are non-confrontational and create social interactions that are on a conceptual level rather than on a potentially threatening level (i.e. you are working out and someone else is not, so they will not engage in that conversation beyond ... 'i should be doing that too').

And So it begins, as i previously wrote, I rather only continues with a new ante to up.