Rant #2

[feldman]

The Zen of human body maintenance is something it took me long time to figure out, and I still struggle with it. But even when I'm off the exercise wagon, when I drift for months at a time without progress toward my physical goals, it's the Zen that keeps me from backsliding.

My body today is the accumulated manifestation of all the good and bad choices I've made up until now. When I was at my heaviest (190 and change on a 5' frame, size 16 pants with the button securely lodged between fat rolls, just so we're all clear here), it had taken me years to get there. It has also taken me years to walk half the distance away from that place, habit by habit, pound by pound, sometimes like clawing myself out of a grave.

There is no plan to it. There is a mindset. Each day I am presented with a series of choices, and if I make more good than bad choices, I will eventually get where I'm headed. The higher proportion of good choices, the faster I go.

Just as these good choices can't erase the evidence of bad choices overnight, making a bad choice does not invalidate the good choices I've made in any given day, week, month, year or lifetime. So it's not a matter of keeping to a plan or blowing it. It's a matter of piling up healthy choices to balance out the unhealthy ones. They don't cancel each other out, you don't earn or spend 'points' or 'demerits'; they roughly accumulate on each side and gradually shape your body accordingly.

Each day you have a bunch of opportunities, and you're not going to choose the healthy option each time. The goal here is twofold; make more good choices than bad, and cherry-pick your bad choices for the best effect.

When I first started out, it was because my parents had both become diabetic in the space of two years. My mom has always been pleasantly fat (round and firm, mobile and strong but definitely fat); while my dad spent most of his adulthood slightly chunky. They're both able to control their diabetes through diet and pills, but the fact that my genes could go diabetic with mere chunkiness under my belt was the kick in the ass I needed. I was more than chunky.

I read the American Diabetes Association's book (website here) and made that my guide regarding what was a healthy choice and what was not. I recommend it as a great starting point for anyone; sound science, practical advice.

I cherry-pick my indulgences for the most bang per buck. In the beginning, I went over a year without one bottle or glass of pop. Now? I drink about 2-3 bottles per week. Because while drinking it every day is a bad choice (empty sugar calories, if I'm thirsty tea is more satisfying, I try not to become dependent on caffeine due to withdrawal headaches), avoiding it entirely takes too much willpower; there are other bad choices I'd like to avoid more. This bad choice is less destructive and more enjoyable than the others.

Because you need to make bad choices.

It's counterintuitive, but the bad choices help reinforce the good ones. They reassure the primal part of your brain that it will receive satisfaction, that it doesn't have to grab the wheel from you because in due course you will also go where it wants to go (just not today or not as often, or not until Wednesday when we'll get White Castle before class).

You need to work with your body, because in a contest the body will always win. This is what makes it such a personal process, an individual negotiating with the primal parts of their brain. Sometimes this is like dressing a sticky two year old.

You don't like veggies? Don't eat them. Or just focus on the ones you *can* enjoy. Take a friggin' multivitamin and don't worry about it. Focus on fresh food prepared well. This will entail some cooking, and being more vigilant about pre-prepared things. It's the non-veal lifestyle, there's a bit more work and thought involved.

Far more importantly enjoy your food. Eat in good company when you can, try not to eat in the car or at your desk, pay attention to your food, give yourself time to savor it. We're built to desire pleasurable eating, because this signals the body that there's enough food and safety to go around. Pleasurable eating soothes the primal part of the brain, and when it's soothed it's more likely to go along with your overall plan of not eating enough to fuel your day, which is the only way to burn your stores of calories.

Eating a donut slowly while looking out the window as the squirrels play is a healthier choice than furtively eating a donut while working. I have no science to back this up, but it works for me. Indulgences are an itch, and if you scratch it thoroughly while doing nothing else it will go away a lot sooner than if you just rub keep rubbing it through your pant leg while trying to ignore it.

Build bad choices into your mindset, give them a small place of their own and you'll learn how to live with them and still get what you want. Life is varied and you need to be flexible; no rigid plan will withstand the daily onslaught. But this zen-type mindset about choices and moderation and all that hoodoo-seeming shit has weathered seven years with me, and even though it's taken me those years to work to the halfway point (and it may take years more to get where I'm going), I've only rarely backslid and even then only a little (a few pounds, never a size).

At any time I knew that all I needed to do to get back on track, or to stay on track, was to simply make a conscious choice a few more times each day. There is no constant vigilance, just a more conscious awareness.

Damn, it's so touchy-feely I could cry, but I think we tend to get so worked up in "following a plan" or a set of rules or a quick fix without any backtracking that we lose sight of the fact that life isn't like that. Then when the first or second thing comes along to upset the system we throw the whole thing out as a failure, or worse, just another failure.

Failure is part of who we are. Get used to it and start practicing the recovery from failure (like we do in all other aspects of life--we look for another job, we start to date again, we start another project). Eventually you realize that failure is not the lack of adherence to some external arbitrary code; failure is when you stop trying, when you use the previous lack of success to define yourself and to excuse any further effort.

This is the hard part of the zen-thing. It means being aware to some extent, every day, that it's always within your power to move forward, to stand still, or to actively move backward. There's no value-judgment, it's just the way it works.

This is what I've learned halfway to my goal.

Comments

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

And if you eat a large french fry or skip a day or a week of exercise, that's ok.

Because it's the greater context of everything you do for your body and your health, and you *need* those indulgences. Nothing will work in the long term unless it takes into account those primal desires in a practical manner.

Can I link to this from my LJ?

Sure 8 ) Just link to the previous rant as well, since they're really two sides of the same thinking process. You can't really separate behaviour (rant #2) from environment (rant #1).