For about the last five years, I've spent January making amends for holiday excesses. This means I vow to eat better, as many Americans do; I've occasionally tried herbal "whole-body cleanses"; and I always swear off booze for the month. The first two weeks feel great; after that, though, I start missing that glass of wine I often drink while cooking dinner, or the pint of beer shared with friends. Why do I have to get so extreme about it?

Plenty of people go about their lives without restrictions like this, without thinking twice about what they eat or drink, and they're perfectly healthy. On the other hand, I've known people with no health, weight, or substance-abuse issues who establish strict regulations for themselves — some as practical and easy to abide by as "I'll only eat dessert on the weekend," others more arbitrary and life-complicating, like "I'll only drink every other day." What if your boss wants to take you out for a celebratory cocktail, but you had wine with dinner last night? Are you really going to refuse?

My personal prohibitions are largely exercises in discipline and my attempt to counteract indulgence. Obviously, nothing earth-shattering will happen if I break down and have a beer or a cupcake. But why bother establishing difficult rules I quickly want to break? Isn't that like trading in an old indulgence for a brand-new model of anxiety?

Nutrition experts provide lengthy lists of do's and don'ts for healthy eating. On any given day, do you consume your recommended five cups of fruit and vegetables? Three cups of whole grains? According to Tara Parker-Pope of The New York Times, "When it comes to achieving these goals, many of us feel we are falling far short. ... It is virtually impossible to follow the rules." Making an effort to eat your veggies is certainly good for you, but all the hand-wringing it causes certainly can't be.

Some health professionals are coming around to the notion that we shouldn't panic about our lifestyle habits. In their new book, Live a Little! Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health, Drs. Susan Love and Alice Domar recommend that we chill out. The book addresses six aspects of our lives — including exercise, eating and stress — and the associated dictums we all try, and often fail, to live by. Love and Domar want us to know that if we're making an effort, we're probably treading on perfectly acceptable middle ground and are healthier than we think. "Everything is a U-shaped curve," Love told Parker-Pope. "There may be times in your life when you've gotten too much of this or too little of that, but being in the middle is better, and most of us are probably there already." Recommendations for modes of staying healthy are changing to include chocolate, caffeine and some other of our favorite things — in moderation, of course.

The idea of balance got me thinking about yoga, but not just for obvious reasons. "When Chocolate and Chakras Collide," a recent article in The New York Times, discusses the feud between yoga purists and instructors who follow an hour of poses with pasta, red wine and chocolate. "Yoga + Chocolate" and "Yoga + Wine" co-founder David Romanelli says, "People are starting to push back against the traditional ... serious approach." For him, "any profound pleasure of the senses — a live Bruce Springsteen track, an In-N-Out burger, the scent of lavender gathered in the French Alps — can bring on the 'yoga high' that is a gateway to divine bliss."

I couldn't help but think of the Buddhist teaching of the Middle Way. "Two extremes ought not to be practiced," the Buddha said. "There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low ... unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes ... [is] the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment."

Most of us manage to strike a reasonable balance: We walk the straight and narrow when it comes to some things and cut corners when it comes to others. Which of your rules bend, and which never break? While you're considering it, I'm going to the gym. But I might just have a cupcake or a beer when I get back.

Laurel Gladden is a freelance writer and editor living in Santa Fe. Contact her at the.ethical.epicure@gmail.com.