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

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

*passes brain to Feldman*

Take care of this for me, will ya?

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

This is all so, incredibly true. I'd quote the whole thing back to you as the "best part." But I think you really capture the important point with this:

making a bad choice does not invalidate the good choices I've made

Amen. It's not about dieting, it's about how you behave over a lifetime. That's the danger with people going on diets, is that they know a 'diet' means a short-term change, when it's the sum of all your actions for the rest of your life. And if you eat a large french fry or skip a day or a week of exercise, that's ok.

Can I link to this from my LJ?

[cofax7]

*loves Feldman's spicy brains*

And, they're low-carb! *g*

[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).

[haphazardmethod.livejournal.com]

Yesterday was another bad day for me diet-wise. I'm losing patience with the whole thing. Thanks for this post -- it gives me hope.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

This is why I'm writing this shit down, you know? It took me most of my twenties to figure it out through trial and error, so why let others go through that if I can share what I've found and maybe save someone the effort and (sometimes destructive) errors I've made.

Also? When you bend your legs, keep your weight back on your heels and don't let your knees go past your toes. If only I'd known that one beforehand.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

Dude, if you are what you eat, feldman's spicy brains are high in carbs and quite salty. I love salt.

[gmt75.livejournal.com]

I've spent my entire life fighting a battle with food, exercise and body image. It is only now (after 30 years) that I have reached a very fragile balance. I will be adding both your rants to my memories because it's just so easy to fall off or go to extremes. Thanks for putting your thoughts into words.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

Exactly! That's exactly what I'm yammering on about up there is the fact that there *will* be bad bad truly awful days where you know you shouldn't do (whatever) but you do it anyway, and you hate yourself even as you're doing it but you can't seem to care enough not to do it.

I think, sometimes, you just need to do it is all. You need to reassure yourself that the bad option is still there, and sometimes that means taking that option. It's the second and third steps, of letting that action have a life beyond itself, of perceiving it as a failure with ramifications and not just a thing that happened yesterday, of thinking there's some kind of balance sheet that needs to be made up by being extra good--that's where it becomes a set-up for failure.

It's just a thing, you know? Maybe you needed it. I'm thinking that even if you've had a few bad days together there were probably some good choices in there too.

I'm still figuring this out myself.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

My battle has been with exercise, growing up a sickly indoors reading type of kid. The food part of the equation was a more recent development, and more easily solved than adding fitness.

When I started, I could do about 3 minutes on the exercise bike. That's 180 seconds. Considering that all the literature I could find told me that I had to get at least 20 minutes 3 times a week for any benefit, and even more for weight loss, I've had to write my own rules from the very beginning. Three minutes was good in my book; then four; then six, and onward. The benefit was tangible in that I was getting better, that the feeling of dying was ebbing away. It was a solid base for me to not believe everything I read about this subject no matter how scientific.

Listening to my body has been a hard skill to learn, and I've gone to extremes myself as I sussed out its needs and its potential.

[kazbaby]

I have read a lot, and I mean a LOT, of self-help/dieting books over the years because I've had a hard time with my weight since just after I hit puberty, and this has to be one of the more helpful and self-motivating things that I've seen.

I mean there are so many self-serving stories out there, but you can't tell if they're true because they are done for money to get people to follow their way of thinking. I have a hard time believing they did those things to achieve the supposed goals they set out. It's kind of hard to put your faith in something of that nature.

What you said is not preachy, not demoralizing the choices we've made in the past, and that's pretty cool.

Dude, I have no idea if I just made any sense. I just wanted to let you know I enjoyed reading this.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

You are a very wise woman.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

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.

Exactly. It shouldn't be an either-or thing. Each step is just that, a step. Indulging in fries: a step. Going for a walk: a step (OK, lots of steps, bad analogy, sorry). It's important to realize that one "slip" isn't failure. It doesn't mean you're right back at the start of the path. It just means you ate a French fry (or smoked one cigarette, or missed one session at the gym). Big deal.

I commend to your attention the transtheoretical model of change, also known as "stages of change":

http://www.med.usf.edu/~kmbrown/Stages_of_Change_Overview.htm

One reason why I tend to try and cheerlead a lot when people announce "OK, this is what I want, and this is how I'm going to accomplish it" -- whether that's quitting smoking or getting 8 hours sleep a night or whatever -- is because (in this model) that means they have already made so much progress along the path.

I would also add that part of the Zen of body maintenance (lovely phrase!), for me, is setting yourself and your surroundings up for success. That's part of making those conscious choices, of course, and also part of making the choices you want to make easier. If you're worried about the bad choices, use them to learn from. Ask "what is it in my environment that made this choice more attractive than that one?" And if it's fixable, fix it.

(I seem to be spamming your journal today. I also think this may have got mixed up with my Zen of tidiness, and crankygrrl will tell you just how well that's going. Oh well.)

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

I'm just figuring this shit out as I go along, you know? I'm happy if it offers someone a different perspective and saves them from some of the trail-and-error I've gone through myself.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

I mean there are so many self-serving stories out there, but you can't tell if they're true because they are done for money to get people to follow their way of thinking.

Part of why I only yammer occasionally about this subject is that I don't want to add to the sheer tonnage of crap about it. Also, it's a personal thing; environmental and genetic factors aside, people gain weight for all kinds of reasons and working through that is part of the process of getting healthier. I have very few issues with food or eating, so most of what I talk about is exercise and eating to fuel that. Other folks have different work to do, but as a society I think there are some common pitfalls (sedentary lifestyle, cheap and nutritionless food everywhere, the trap of value-judgement).

What you said is not preachy, not demoralizing the choices we've made in the past, and that's pretty cool.

Because fat is not about morality; you're not suddenly a better person because you now weigh less, and you're not a bad person if you have extra fat--even though, yes, fat is partly due to the choices you've made. It only means that, for whatever reason, for a while you lost track of that particular aspect of life among all the other parts of life there are. Like being a daughter, a friend, a good person, a reliable coworker, an artist, etc. So what? Now you can make some different choices and work toward another place.

The fat signifies nothing except that at one point you ate more food than you burned, and you can change that equation at any time. The deeper whys and wherefores are personal and that can be a struggle, but crafting a set of good habits is a daily lifelong thing and it's something you work out *with* your body over the long term. Because you like being in it and doing stuff with it.

And now I've rambled back, but I;m glad you liked the rant 8 )

[kazbaby]

What you do isn't rambling. hehe *pets your lovely brain*

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm still impressed, because as a naturally thin person, I haven't had to go through what a lot of other people put themselves through in terms of food issues, and yet all of this still resonates so strongly with me in terms of stuff like my various recurrent health problems, and their relationship to my choices: what to eat, whether/how to exercise, even sexual matters.

Whoa. Big run-on sentence. (:

heh, came in through cret's, glad I did ;)

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

just thought I'd suggest that beyond having a good head on your shoulders, that I appreciate the way you are able to make words happen.

AFD
'yes, and BMI? Heh, the doc says my LEAN mass is greater than my BMI allows for the whole thing... Establishing yet again that statistics are what has been, but not the causality of what will be.'

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

*applause and appreciation* wonderful, and thank you for posting it.

i like to think that 'we don't even get to be perfect at not being perfect.'
*g*

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I just want to say "Amen!" and "Word!" I could have written this myself, I think (although probably not quite as well :)). I've lost 25-30 pounds in the past year doing exactly this, and, while it's taken willpower, it hasn't been painful, and it hasn't been a process that's taken over my life. And I always correct people when I turn down a cookie and they want to describe me as "being on a diet." I'm not on a diet. I've just made a lifestyle change. I've resolved to make better choices about the food I eat. That's all. It's utterly and completely common sense, and yet somehow it's a really difficult thing to arrive at, because everything around us, all the advertising and bullshit, tells us that the way to lose weight is to go on a diet and take it all off fast! I think that appeals to the desire for the quick-fix solution in every one of us: we'd all like to be able to just push a magic button and fix all our problems. But there are really obvious reasons why fad diets just don't really work as long-term solutions. (They also seem to be really unpleasant. Half the people I know are on Atkins, and that just doesn't seem healthy or pleasant to me. Sure, I like a nice steak as much as the next person, but to obsess about eating bread while you're sucking down massive quantities of fat? *shakes head* No thanks.) Anyway, yeah, the point is, I'm glad you wrote this, because this is the stuff that nobody tells you. I had to figure it out for myself.

And I've also found that the occasional hamburger or candy bar that I allow myself really does taste better now, which is something I really didn't expect. I don't feel guilty for eating them, either. The way I see it, my body is like a little kid who's always shouting for toys. You can't buy it everything it wants, because it wants a ridiculous amount of stuff, most of which it doesn't really need. But there's nothing wrong with buying the kid a toy once in a while. It keeps him happy. I tell you, the only time I really feel guilty about eating bad-for-me food is if I eat it, not because I want it, but just because it's there. This often has a lot to do with social pressures... Like, my boss has taken to bringing in cookies all the time, thinking she's doing us a favor, and if they're sitting there all day, untouched, I feel like I ought to eat some, so I do. (The whole social dynamics of what it means when people offer you food and what kind of social statement you're making if you turn it down are a huge issues, I think, and IMHO contribute a lot to our bad eating habits. Or at least to mine.)

And, um, I think I'm gonna cut this off before this comments gets as long as the whole post. :)

[pualaridesagain.livejournal.com]

You are my hero. You summed up so eloquently what I too am going through.