Angela: [voiceover] What I was thinking, as like a New Year’s resolution, is to stop getting so caught up in my own thoughts. Cause I’m, like, way too introspective… I think.

Generally, I find the whole ritual of trying to think of something to change about yourself or your life just because it’s January 1 is silly. Sure, sometimes a change is a very good idea—but it doesn’t need that kind of schedule. Deciding that something in your life just isn’t working or could be better shouldn’t be a once-a-year event. Whenever it needs to be happen, you should try to make it happen.

But, what does occur annually, just before January 1, is that you have down time. That time before and between Christmas and New Year’s when everything just… slows… down…

OK, not everyone gets that down time. Jean is in a line of work where they get super-busy from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day.

But, I get that down time. Most people do. Even if you are at work, it’s so quiet and slow-paced. But likely you’re off and you have all this time to read… And to think…

Angela: [voiceover] … but what if not thinking turns me into this shallow person? I better rethink this becoming less introspective thing.

All that reading and thinking can lead, sort of organically, to maybe deciding to try to change something about your life, about now.

I got a bonus dose of that sort of time this year, because Jean wasn’t feeling well in the days before Christmas, so we did fewer activities than we otherwise would have. That meant I upped the amount of reading I did. I got through a number of books, including In my humble opinion. My so-called life by Soraya Roberts, a nice refresher of essays about that beloved series, and suppliers of handy quotes for this post.

But I was also keeping up better with online news, and newspapers, and magazines, which led to some pondering about how I could more routinely keep on top of my reading? But I haven’t quite cracked that nut, given that the biggest obstacle seems to be my job, which is probably wise to hang on to for the time being.

Angela: [voiceover] …okay, so I’ll stay introspective.
But I do resolve to stop doing Jordan Catalano’s homework.

Angela doing Jordan Catalano’s homework

One Globe and Mail story I read then was called Minimal carbs, lots of fat, incredible dieting results – but not enough science. It was about all the anecdotal evidence that people with diabetes often do really well on a high-fat, low-carb diet—though the point of the article was that there wasn’t scientific study of this, and there should be.

I am not diabetic, but my husband is, and I do the cooking. This got me wondering: Is this how I should be feeding him? I found another article, Low Carb-High Fat Diet And Diabetes: A Detailed Guide For Beginners, whose prescriptions were not only mind-blowingly different from what I thought of as a “healthy” diet, but also sounded fairly gross: pile up on meat, eggs, and high-diet dairy. Don’t eat much fruit or grains, and even limit root vegetables. And beans and lentils.

So bacon is the health food, and apples are the villain now?

There was no way I was going to eat this way. For one thing, I seemed to be keeping myself pretty healthy, and I somewhat feared that switching over to more saturated fat and less fruit and vegetables might be detrimental to me. Plus, there were all those ethical and environmental issues around meat eating.

(As an aside, I once told Jean’s Mom that we ate vegetarian twice a week, and she reacted with stunned amazement that such a thing could be possible. “Deux fois par semaine!” Funny.)

Anyway, I was rather relieved when Jean seemed equally unenthused about this approach. “I don’t like meat that much, ” he pointed out. “I get sick of eggs. I like fruit. I like potatoes. And this granola is actually really good!”

The funny thing is we’re discussing this at Christmas time, when we’re busily eating things like sticky toffee pudding and tourtière. (Hey, we still gotta live.)

Angela: [voiceover] The thing about resolutions is, it’s hard to remember them around somebody like Jordan Catalano.

Once back home, I experimented with moderately increasing Jean’s protein and fat intake, like giving him back bacon (organic and “humane treated”) as side dish on vegetarian night, while he rethought eating five tangerines in one go (“But they’re so good!”).

Then the Globe and Mail ran a follow-up on their “we need to study high-fat diets for diabetics” story with A diet high in fat is best – with the right kind of fat. It said that, no no, we have studied this thing, and the best diet for diabetics isn’t a high-fat, low-carb diet; it’s really the Mediterranean diet. I found a more full report on that here: Best Diabetes Diets.

Jordan: This is wrong.
Angela: What?
Jordan: You, doing my homework, it’s wrong.
Angela: Well I was just trying to help.
Jordan: It’s like I’m taking advantage of you or something.
Angela: You’re not taking advantage of me.
Jordan: Yeah I am. It would be different if we were like… but now you’re just… you know, a friend or whatever. [pause] I can’t do this anymore.

“So what is the Mediterranean diet?” asked Jean, by now pretty weary of my dietary resolutions du jour.

“Lots of fruits and vegetables. Fish, lean meat, and low-fat dairy. Plenty of healthy fats like olive oil. Nuts. Wine. Whole grains. Limit red meats. Avoid sugar and simple carbohydrates.”

“So,” he said. “Pretty much how we were eating before?”

“Uh huh.”

Angela: [voiceover] I couldn’t believe it. For the first time in my life I actually stuck to a resolution.