Moderation

At the start of 2021 I set a goal to lose a few pounds.  Then the shit hit the fan and I lost 40 lbs over 3 months.  A reasonable goal, but an excessive result.  On the flip side every New Year is a great time for setting goals we never meet – lose weight,  start exercising, quit smoking, get off Meth, climb the Himalayas, etc.  We plan and fail every year spectacularly.  It’s funny how we know these goals are attainable, but we’d rather delay working on them until they’re a crisis. Goals are actually easy to set, especially when you are lying in bed looking at the ceiling, but hard once your feet hit the floor.  Beating cancer is similar; since a lot of cancers are tied to moderating lifestyle, but if I can’t get instant results why bother?  Against our better judgement most of us would rather dive in with both feet after we hit the wall rather than just moderate behavior overtime.  It reminds me of taking Cost Accounting in graduate school at Duke.  The class was a bear and each day we had a boat load of mind numbing homework.  I hadn’t done any work at all in the Spring semester and skipped a bunch of classes.  One Thursday night I decided I was going to stay in all weekend,  read 212 chapters, and complete a 1/2 semester of homework in one sitting.  I got as far as sitting down after dinner when my classmate Bill Leonard called, “Hey, there’s a great Bruce Dern movie on tonight, I’ll bring some beers over.”  I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no, frankly I don’t like Bruce Dern, but drinking beers sounded better than Cost Accounting.   We watched the Bruce Dern movie, had a ton of beers, and finished with a night cap of rot gut Vodka.  By Midnight I couldn’t spell Accounting, let alone Cost.  By some miracle I passed the mid term exam a week later, so to celebrate Bill and I crashed an after hours party with Bob Levy.  The celebration got a little murky after Bob grabbed a bottle of ketchup out of the fridge and bet me I couldn’t chug it.  That followed with a jar of Grey Poupon, a Large Container of Vanilla Yogurt, then all of it washed down with a bottle of Catalina Salad Dressing.  It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out how this ended.  As we start 2022 with a clean slate of new goals, especially health improvement, don’t go crazy on yourself with the big blast.  Try instead a little at a time rather than all at once: punt the plan to train for a marathon and instead walk more often; drink Bud Lite rather than Bud Heavy, and last but not least,  a couple of table spoons of Catalina Dressing is just enough, you don’t need to chug the whole bottle.  Slainte!