So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

The closest thing I made resembling a resolution this year was deciding to become more informed about nutrition. I didn’t make promises to myself to run a marathon, drink more water, consume less sodium, or eat more greens. Those are my life norms, sans marathon, not promises for later or something I can fail at doing, because it has become simply what is done. Like a dolphin telling you, “Hey, man, this year I’m gonna swim every day,” to which you should be saying, “Well, yeah. I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing all along, right? Also, you’re a dolphin, so you shouldn’t really be talking to me. Spoilers.”

Sometime around mid-to-late summer I found myself getting annoyed by procrastination. You often hear people say, “I’m going to start my diet on Monday,” or, “Starting tomorrow, I’m not going to eat fast food anymore,” or, with the often lofty goals made for the New Year, “I’m going to quit smoking, quit drinking, buy a gym, lose all the weight, and then run around the border of the United States.”

I started to question why it was always later. Why not start right now? So you’ve had a Big Mac for lunch? It doesn’t mean you can’t have something healthier for dinner. You just finished a pack of cigarettes? How will smoking another help you toward your goal? Every single time you have a choice, you have a chance to begin fresh. There is no rule that says change can’t start in the middle of the day.

Back to my resolution-lite: We’ve been eating healthy for a while, and as I’ve mentioned two dozen times already, we were eating healthier than the average American before my Year of Brokenness. Now I’ve decided just doing it isn’t enough. I want to know why things are healthy for us. I also want to know what exactly is needed for properly balanced nutrition, and I want to know the most effective way to get the nutrients out of everything we eat. I’ve considered looking for online classes, and I’ve also been browsing, as much as is possible with Amazon samples, various books on nutrition, but it’s difficult to get a good idea when sample pages are all babble, and I can’t see if the book contains any actual data.

At least I’ve started the process. If you’ve made resolutions, I hope you’ve stuck with them and will continue to do so. However, if you should stumble, make your very next choice your new beginning. As the memes say, no one will do it for you.

Title From:
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams