On developing a (totally reasonable) fear of high fructose corn syrup

In my youth I discovered I had some skill at losing weight. I'm good at it. What I'm not good at is,

 A. Not being obsessive about it (adding calories on post it's is cra cra)
 B. Not knowing what is too much for my body to handle
 C. Balancing diet and fitness together. I go all one way or another.

 I mean, case in point, while running a marathon I tore through the cartilage in my hip, had bone rubbing on bone, and proceeded to finish and gallivant around on a painful hip for several months before the pain was literally unbearable.  Smart? No. Sign of a deeply stubborn and competitive person? Yes. 

 Anyway, after months a extremely limited mobility and high stress months at work wherein eating my feelings to stop actual break down crying jags about some of the hideous people I deal with was the daily norm I packed on some booty. My pants are snug.  And not good snug. And my pants are too expensive to admit I need to roll to the next size. And don't even get me going about my boobs. Chris may actually be afraid of them at this point.

 Because I refuse to move to the next size of pants/bras etc I have one alternative and at this point I'm still on doctors order to not run-I must focus for now on my diet. I hate dieting. I love my carbs and I love my treats. But I love my being a size 4 and having energy more.  I decided with this diet I needed to be smart and careful. Rather than diving in head first I would make small tweaks like packing my lunch to plan to have healthy accessible and make all my dinners from scratch to try to cut out some of the processed junk. And obviously I would cut out tex mex, BBQ, and alcohol. And I would research what makes some things healthier than others.

Then google rained all over my eating parade.

 Holy sh*t guys.  Finding the work cafeteria's nutritional information was a day ruiner. 1200 calorie main courses. For lunch. And aspartame the main sweetener in most diet foods is really really really bad for you. And high fructose corn syrup? It can only be digested by your liver-and since its in everything processed and your liver can't process it all you are eating your future thighs.  Knowledge may be power, but it's a bit overwhelming to see just how bad the average American diet is. And changing habits? Hard. And digging thought the wall of yogurts at the grocery store to find one without high fructose corn syrup? Deeply demoralizing. And Impossible. Sigh. I'm just lucky that I do love exercise and that once I get the green light on my hip it will get easier, but in the meantime having the blinders lifted and changing ingrained habits is hard. And makes for one cranky Jenna dealing with withdrawal symptoms (cause, oh yeah, giving up diet coke leads to drug like withdrawal symptoms.) eeeek!