I'm more than just a chia pet.

The chia seeds were the last straw. We had gone on vacation to visit our family out west. When we arrived, our gracious hosts were eager to make us comfortable and asked what we usually ate for breakfast. Before I could say "just rice krispies and toast," my wife declared "chia seeds and soy milk pudding". To her delight and my horror, our host produced the largest bag of chia seeds I'd ever seen from their recent trip to Bulk Barn and began to extol their virtues. All I could think was, 'oh god. I'm going to have to eat those things every single day now.'

This episode is but one of the daily debates my wife and I have on what are practical and reasonable measures to be healthy, environmentally conscious, global citizens in the modern era. She is a vegetarian, organic granola-crunching, tree-hugging surgeon. I am a steak-loving, video-game adoring physicist who just wants to lead a normal life.

Why blog? Two reasons: (1) I can't be the only man on the internet who has pledged to spend his life with someone who is a health nut and I hope that by recording my suffering story here, others will find a shared community; (2) even though it occasionally drives me crazy when I find my regular plastic toothbrush replaced with one made out of compostable bamboo, my wife's drive and commitment to her ideals and our give-and-take in how we go about achieving them serve only to highlight just why I fell in love with her in the first place and reminds me to cherish how our marriage continues to grow.

The goal will be to post a minimum of twice a month. I will pick something my wife has done recently to 'improve' our diet or lifestyle and she'll write about why and how she's gone about affecting that change. I'll then weigh in on whether or not the change is reasonable, practical, or tasty. If you've endured similar changes in your life, please add to the comments section and share! It would be great to hear how your experiences compare to ours.

In the meantime, I'm going to put these chia seeds to good use and grow myself a chia pet. That way, they can improve the oxygen content of my office rather than the nutritional content of my diet.