From the Newsroom: Clean Eating, No Diet Pop, and Cutting Back Coffee in 2025
While I’ve never been a fan of going out to celebrate New Year’s Eve, I most definitely do love the hope and optimism that a new year brings. We have three young kids at home.
I don’t really tip ‘em back like I did in my college days at Syracuse University. I’d rather be in bed by 8:45 P.M. rather than out and about at the stroke of midnight.
That being said, I love the spirit of fresh starts and new beginnings now that 2025 is here.
Sure, most of us want to stop a vice or two (or ten) that hinders us personally and professionally.
No question I could go to lose a few pounds. A lot of pounds, actually. Eating clean is a big goal for 2025. A big part of that is cutting back on coffee for me. Friends encourage drinking black coffee, but that tastes like burnt motor oil to me. Not that I’ve chugged motor oil and know what it tastes like. But if I had to imagine how it would taste on my palate, black coffee would be it.
My issue is the heavy whipping cream and sugar I put in my morning coffee. Be gone in 2025 I say! The plan is to cut back by having a large coffee with cream and sugar every other day, then every three days, then once a week, then not at all.
Throwing all humility out the window, I did kick a bad consumption habit this year with the strong encouragement of my wife Ashley: no more diet pop.
In college I consumed a boatload of “regular pop,” then started dating a girlfriend who drank diet pop. That meant I started drinking diet pop. I’m like Donald Trump: I could easily down a 12-pack of diet pop per day. Easy. And I actually used to up until about two months ago. Not anymore.
It’s been two months since, and I’ve switched over the club soda. I just can’t drink plain water. I know, I know, it’s the way to go and healthiest for us. I get it. Water is just boring as hell and tastes “blah” to me.
So I’ve stocked up on some soda stream cartridges, kicked the diet pop habit, and I’ll try my damndest to stop drinking coffee with heavy whipping cream and sugar.
As for “clean eating” the best I ever felt was when I engaged in a vegan lifestyle for about two months in 2018. Believe me, it wasn’t by choice. It was by necessity.
Ashley was pregnant with our son Maksym. It was summer. Our Catholic Church hosted a lawn fete and my very pregnant wife was craving a BBQ chicken dinner from the carnival. We showed up with about an hour left in the lawn fete, and you can imagine Ashley’s dismay when we found out they ran out of chicken dinners, which cost $20 for two.
My buddy Jerry ran our church carnival at the time. We saw him, explained our predicament, and he encouraged us to drop the $20 on raffle tickets for the “big trip” since their sales were a little low. You can imagine our shock two hours later when the parish priest called and said we won.
The next year we were Jamaica bound. On our second day there, my right elbow exploded. It felt like I had a concrete bowling ball on my arm. I never, ever had my arm blow up like that. I quickly rang my brother Dan who is a physician. Based on my symptoms it was thought that I had developed bursitis, or gout of the arm.
The cure that was recommended to me: natural healing by implementing a clean eating, vegan lifestyle to reduce the swelling. No alcohol, no meat. Great news to hear while on an all inclusive, all you can eat and drink vacation in Jamaica.
Since I didn’t want to live life with a steel softball in my arm, I sucked it up and ate incredibly healthy food over the next two months. I didn’t think I could do it, but quite frankly, it was easy. Very easy. I felt great, lost weight, and my arm went back to normal.
So heading into 2025, as we begin anew with excitement and optimism, I’m going to try my best to stick to that clean eating, healthy living plan. Of course I owe it to myself to lose weight, eat better, and live longer.
Most important: I owe it to our youngest kids, ages six, five, and two. The last thing I want to do is videotape greetings for them for future moments that I won’t be there for: graduations, weddings, and birth of grandchildren.
The simple solution is eating better, drinking better, exercising more, and doing my part to join the Make America Healthy Again Movement.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be proud. So too will my wife and kids, and the many years I hope to spend with them as a lean, mean, South Shore Press News Director machine.