It's been more than 5 months since I've posted. I've missed you, Internet, but I've not been in an awesome place.
I've backslid on my eating, drinking, and exercise habits, I've lost my sense of motivation, and generally I'm feeling … blah …
Don't get me wrong - I'm not feeling "bad", I'm not in pain or feeling generally sick, or depressed, or anything like that. I'm just not feeling excited, or motivated, or generally hopeful. Turning 50 was a real bummer for me (First world problems, right?) Getting sucked back into the undertow of exhaustion & bad eating has been depressing. The unending deluge of angry political mudslinging has been mentally exhausting. Even my job has been incrementally stepping towards banality. Thinking about cars & buying watches has been a fun distraction, but it doesn't create any real sense of purpose or drive. I find myself feeling increasingly and irrationally angry at relatively inconsequential things. I yell at traffic. Almost every day I'll put off life's to-do list & unplug in front of the TV with comfort food & diet soda, and wake up the next day a little deeper in the hole I need to dig myself out of. The beginning of Fight Club is starting to make way too much sense to me…
So, how do I break out of this malaise? Recognizing it isn't too tough, but working up the intestinal fortitude & energy to actually do it seems nearly insurmountable. Finding reasons that it'll fail, or be too hard is an all too easy habit to fall into, and it rapidly becomes our default mindset. Friends & family will tell us to "just be happy", as if being fat with poor self-esteem & low energy is something one can just shrug off at will. (Why is it always a skinny, happy person telling ME to be happy, like it's so self-evident that I must be brain damaged to need them to tell me something so obvious?)
Maybe it IS brain damage?
No, it's not like I hit my head, but in a way it might be worse. After all, YEARS of telling yourself you can't do something is WAY more likely to hold you back than any actual physical shortcomings. Creating & then reinforcing a mental pathway to malaise is incredibly easy to do – but once that mental pathway becomes HABIT … creating a new mental pathway is, quite literally, difficult & painful. Reverting back to the comfortable mental route is like settling into one's favorite chair.
The thing is – I know exactly what to do. There are just two problems. It's hard, and it sucks! The first, we all know: This shit is seriously HARD. A multi-billion dollar industry doesn't surround this because it's EASY. Secondly? We're fighting our DNA. Don't tell me it's "just discipline", or I don't have the "willpower". Every moment of every day we have to stand resolute against every fiber of our DNA, and it's damn exhausting. (If it's easy for you, please thank your DNA & shut up) The truth is, we are absolutely wired in our DNA to eat more & move less. 10,000 years ago, this drive caused us to survive. In the 21st century though, it's killing us.
Two years ago, I beat the odds. I managed, for a short time (about 18 months) to shift my paradigm. I started the Whole 30, and changed my entire damn life! I started sleeping better, I lost weight effortlessly, I had enough energy that I WANTED to exercise, and I generally felt GREAT, with an awesome mental outlook on life.
So, what happened?
Well … "life" happened. It was pretty easy when it was just me, on my own. However, when my Fiancé & I bought a house together, moved in & combined our lives (also adding her two kiddos into the mix), suddenly the algebra changed. It was harder for me to find the time to shop & food prep, and I was constantly surrounded by kid food. I still made generally good choices, but "carb creep" stalled my loss, and the plateau drained motivation & made the off-plan choices seem more reasonable somehow. The constant to-do list of a freshly combined household made it tough to find time for activity. I dropped my old gym, as it was now too far away, but the local gym just never resonated with me, and I lost my habit of Aqua Fit several times a week. Little by little I gained back 90lbs over the course of a year. Little by little my attitude lost altitude, and I created my own negative feedback loop.
So, how do I spin it back up?
It's too easy to just say "Just eat better & start going to the new gym". Sure. (And I'll also start saving for retirement & begin volunteering at the local soup kitchen in my spare time.) Ugh. Platitudes like "just eat less & move more" don't work – they never did (thus 30% of the population caught in this obesity epidemic), and they belittle the problem.
I know I'm in a negative head-space right now, and it's too easy for me to pick out all the reasons that make it hard, inconvenient, and likely to fail. So, bear with me while I break it down:
· I'm staring at a bag of Doritos on the kitchen counter every day. No big deal, right? (Just ignore it, fat-ass!) However, we've learned in the last decade or so that the same mental pathways activate no matter what the addiction is – alcoholism, drug use – and yes, even food. We'd be outraged if someone left booze on the kitchen counter of an alcoholic, and we need to use similar common sense with our food strategies. So, our kitchen organization needs to be redone at every level: the cabinets, the pantry, the fridge, and the freezers ALL need the chaos reigned in. I could do it myself, but I can't irritate my wife like that, I need her buy-in & support. I will broach the endeavor this weekend, but it's likely to be a tough conversation, as we have genetically dramatic different ideas of organization.
· I have to exercise – not to burn calories, but to get the hormonal response. The local gym just doesn't groove with me. It'd be the easiest thing, but it just hasn't clicked. Maybe I just need to force it for awhile? Can you FORCE a habit?
· Food sourcing / food prep – This was key to my success two years ago. However, I'm not living alone anymore – I can't just figure out my dinner everyday & leave my wife out in the cold. How to take care of myself, without forcing her into a lifestyle she didn't sign up for? Maybe I'm overthinking it? My weekday breakfast & lunches are independent, so our only overlap is dinner. Dinner can easily be done together, mostly we just choose different sides. Weekends are a-la-carte, anyway.
· The daily schedule – I need to schedule an easily repeatable routine to get 10k steps & appropriate meals every day.
o I need to get up & walk the dogs every morning while my wife showers & gets ready for work. This means I need to go to bed earlier, during the rare evening time when she & I get to actually hang out together. This is tough.
o Prepping my breakfast is easy, no real issues there, I just need to invest the pre-work. Requires groceries (tougher), and Sunday prep-time.
o Lunch is ok – most days at the office I can make a good salad bar choice, that was one of my keys to success two years ago. Working from home is more of a challenge, perhaps I need to cut that down a bit?
o My real challenge is afternoon / evening: my wife doesn't get home until late, and she likes to eat even later (8:30-ish). This causes two issues for me: I'm hungry between 4pm & 6pm, so I'll eat something. Then when my wife gets home, we eat again, so later when I go to sleep; I'm uncomfortable on an overly full belly.
§ So – how do I go from my 11am lunch to an 8:30pm dinner with no "4th meal" snack in the late afternoon?
§ I'll need a 3 point plan here:
· Eat lunch later (1pm instead of 11:30)
· 4pm snack needs to be small in size, but include FAT, to be satiating
· Dinner should be similar to 4pm meal
o Evening dog walk – I'm bad about this, as I usually feel exhausted, but walking to dogs each night would be good for them / good for me. Perhaps I should try walking them in the time between my after school snack & when my wife gets home – being "busy" will keep me from focusing on food. (This might be a real win!)
· Lastly, I need to be much more mindful of how I feed my soul. My facebook feed has been an awful torrent of political sewage since November, and during Lent I discovered an improved personal outlook by not posting or re-posting things I found personally egregious. But it's more than that, isn't it? The constant deluge of gorgeous Instagram pictures will give anyone lifestyle insecurity, a dark FOMO, and likely cause you to feel your life doesn't measure up. Everything we read, the books, the magazines, the blogs - it all adds up. Add to that the music we listen to, the people (their attitudes, actually) we talk with, the nature (or lack) we see everyday - all of these things either feed our soul, or drain it. All of this input can be incredibly positive, or it can lead to further discontent, darkness, & malaise.
So, let's re-cap. I think I bitched my way into a recovery plan here! Let's try it for the month of May (gives time to prep), and re-evaluate in a month.
1. Before May 1st - Re-org the kitchen, hide trigger foods, create "on-plan zones"
2. All of May - Force myself to attend the new gym, 3 times a week, for 30 days
3. Weekly – get groceries, food-prep breakfasts & snacks
4. Daily – Get up, walk dogs before shower
5. Daily - Eat lunch later, at 1pm
6. Daily - 4pm snack should be small but FAT
7. Daily - Walk dogs between snack & dinner
8. Daily - Go to bed earlier (10pm latest)
Week Four at the new office, and I discovered to my absolute delight, Smoque has added a new location, just a few blocks away, at Chicago's Revival Food Hall.
