I've been thinking lately about the nature of anxiety. What causes it? Is it controllable without medication? And would I even want to control it if I could?

I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be a kick-ass year. I've gone though my usual routine of New Year's resolutions to make sure that I grab this year by the brass ring. I've done this enough to know that some resolutions stick, some only last a few months, and some never happen. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to live more intentionally.

My trainer has given me a new diet and it's pretty strict. Given that my diet has always been my Achilles heel, I'm actually looking forward to going on a relatively restrictive diet to see what will happen.

I've just gotten sick for the third time this winter. It's time for a change to the diet. At this point last year I was still on my high from India and was not eating any meat. And I didn't get sick once last year!

Well, it's time to get in shape. I've been kind of half-assed about it for several months, but the weather is good and there's no reason I shouldn't be outside being active.

Last year, my friend Sara asked me about my resolutions that I had for 2009. For some reason, I took it very seriously and wrote a lengthy post about my resolutions. I accomplished most of them to some degree. I'm not going to worry about the ones that I apparently wasn't as resolute on as I could have been. But we both enjoyed the process so she wrote me this year for my 2010 resolutions. And here they are...

Today was my first acupuncture session. I had pulled my back out about a week and a half ago. I told myself in Africa that it was time to try acupuncture, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. So with my back out, I decided it was time to make an appointment and try it. I had heard various stories of people going to acupuncture and the needles having a visceral and sudden effect on their body. Sometimes it was described as a jolt of electricity, sometimes it was described as a sudden withdraw of tension. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

I'm writing this from Israel. Once again, Israel has totally knocked my socks off, but in an entirely different way. When I was here before I was primarily struck by all the religious sites. This time, I'm struck more with the people. Israelis generally have the reputation of being loud and pushy people. Yes, that's true.

This summer, I've been slowly cleaning up my diet. It started a few months ago when my friend, Sara, and I started eating at Pure Food and Wine about once a week (we plan on eating there once a week, but it probably averages out to every other week). For those of you who don't know, Pure makes solely raw, vegan food. No meat, no dairy, no wheat, no soy, no rice, no cooking anything above a particular temperature. I always love it when I tell people about it and they respond with "What's left?". Uh...fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc.

David is now traveling every weekend until February. Since I've been on a weight-loss kick, I've decided to take his absence to try a month of weekend crash diets. Every weekend, I'll pick a new theme. I should say that some of these are not crash diets but legitimate lifestyle choices. However, they are choices that I never thought I'd make, so I'm trying them out for a weekend since you can stick just about any diet for a weekend.

My friend, Renee, has been talking about raw food restaurants here in New York. She turned me on to one in particular, Pure Food and Wine. There's a little blurb on their website describing raw food.

A friend of mine has a big event coming up in April and wants to look his best. We often see each other at the gym in the morning, so we decided to work out together to keep us motivated. It's worked out great. However, I'm sore all the time these days. I think I just went a whole week of going to the gym every day. I've had different muscle groups sore every day of the week. I usually go light on a few muscle groups - like back or legs. Having someone else there makes sure that I hit everything equally hard.

I just looked at my blog page. My last entry was November 19th? Yikes!

Over the past year or so, I've been making a fair number of changes to my diet: eating healthier, trying to eat a greater variety of foods, not baking extravagant desserts, and eating less red meat and more fish. Although I felt better, I didn't lose any weight.