Starting Fresh

     
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

                                                                                            ~ John Lennon

It's the beginning of a new year, and people have been reviewing the last 12 months, formulating new goals, and setting new year's resolutions. There's something undeniably appealing about a fresh start.

I'm not arguing against any of these practices, but I am mindful of the fact that January 1st gets a lot of hype and high expectation even though, frankly, many resolutions don't have a great track record.

Nonetheless, I try to be optimistic about January 1st and usually ring in the new year with high hopes, so I was disappointed to find myself feeling ill only a couple of hours into 2012. Fortunately, it must have been some minor 24-hr bug, because I'm already feeling much better, but my big plans for the first day of the year and how I was going to get off to a great start completely tanked. I wasn't well enough to exercise, clean, organize, or do much of anything. Thankfully, by January 2nd I was not as weak as I had been the day before, but I still wasn't nearly well enough to jump in to any resolutions with both feet. 

I mention this little saga not to evoke sympathy (okay--mostly not) but because it was a great example of how the famous John Lennon quote above applies even on special occasions.

There's no denying that life doesn't always go according to plan, and I have to confess that I'm not nearly as excited about cautiously easing into my game plan this week as I was about enthusiastically jumping in on day one, but maybe it will be a good thing in the long run. There's a downside to assigning almost magical powers to any one particular day on the calendar when it comes to planning: if anything goes wrong, the whole plan may collapse like a house of cards.

In spite of all the hoopla about the new year, January 1st is in many ways a day just like any other.  If you get sick that day, you don't have to wait until another January 1st rolls around to re-start your plans, whatever they may be. By the same token, if you didn't get in gear and set goals yet for the new year, that doesn't mean you are too late.

At the end of the day, there's no real magic to starting anything on January 1st (or on Monday or after your vacation, or when the weather improves or you have more money...). 

You can make a fresh start any day. 

And there's no time like the present.

TUESDAY TIP: Celebrate the Small Victories

It hit me a few minutes after midnight.

Halloween was over, and I had eaten NO candy all day. 

None.

I'm pretty sure that was a first for me--at least since I've been old enough to eat candy.

No, I didn't find a cure for cancer. I didn't run a marathon or climb a mountain. I didn't even lose a pound.

Nonetheless, it was a small victory.

Small victories mark the path to bigger ones. No one loses 50 pounds in a day or becomes a bestselling author or concert pianist overnight. If you got a new job today, it's not because you had one good day, it's because you did a lot of things on a lot of days to make that achievement possible. Some of those things may have been little, but eventually they added up to a new job.

There is a subversive psychological phenomenon I've noticed when I start to celebrate a small victory--even privately. Almost as soon as it dawns on me that something good has happened, I feel the urge to downplay it. Have you had that experience? I think it's pretty common.

Maybe it comes from not wanting to show off or appear arrogant, but too often when you acknowledge an accomplishment--something positive you've done--a critical voice will pop up and attempt to invalidate that simple affirmation.

In my case, I had just realized that I made it through Halloween with no candy when I found myself thinking, "But I should have walked today, and I didn't."

It didn't stop there, either. Within 30 seconds I had a whole mental list of things I should have done, putting me back in my place and reminding me what an insignificant little drop in the bucket my "achievement" was.

Here's my theory: I suspect that critical voice prevails in so many of our internal conversations mainly because it gets so much more practice than our positive, celebratory voice. It's always easier to tear down something than it is to build, so exercise your positivity muscles by encouraging personal growth--however incremental--and celebrating every victory you can - small, medium, large, or microscopic.

Look for things to celebrate, creating them, if necessary:

• I just did two leg lifts before getting the milk out of the fridge.
• I looked both ways before I crossed the street.
• I didn't let that rude person push my buttons.
• I did 2 minutes of stretches at my desk after that stressful meeting.
• I noticed that I was satisfied while there was still food left on my plate, so I stopped eating.
• I did some slow calm deep breathing before I went back to my phone calls this afternoon.
• When I caught myself trying to eat my way out of a shame spiral, I stopped and put the cookies away.
• I drank 8 glasses of water today.
• I picked up some healthy snacks at the store this afternoon.
• I logged my food intake this morning.

Challenge yourself to come up with at least 3 each day. If your critical voice responds with discouragement or dismissiveness, counter with more encouragement.

Before long, you'll have even bigger victories to celebrate.


How about you?  Is there a tip you could share with the rest of us, today? It doesn't have to be exciting or original, just something that has helped you and might help others. Please leave your tips in the comments below. And be sure to celebrate the fact that you shared it as one of your small victories today!

From Convenience to Compliance

This principle is pretty obvious, yet I don't always take advantage of it:

Convenience tends to encourage compliance.

I had not even finished typing that sentence before I had a SHOULD ATTACK.

I SHOULD be committed no matter what.

I SHOULD do what is right, rather than what is convenient.

Fine.

But, contrary to what prevalent societal messages might imply, there is no virtue in doing something the hard way when it isn't necessary. Why not make doing the right thing convenient?

You know why all that junk is displayed in the checkout lane--things you might not walk across the store to buy but will occasionally toss into your cart while you are waiting? Sure you do. So does the store. The more convenient it is for you, the more likely you are to buy it.

Consider these questions about your health and fitness lifestyle:

1) What kinds of foods are the easiest to grab in your home at this moment?

2) If you decided that you wanted to exercise right now (or immediately before or after work), what would you have to do first? Find your walking shoes? Move furniture around and find a video or a mat or your pedometer or some weights? Drive across town to a gym?

3) How about your support system? When you need help related to eating or exercise, what do you do? Do you have support and/or resources already identified which you can access quickly and easily, when the need arises?

Here's my guess. If the answers were that 1) you usually have healthy snacks readily available and no candy or baked goods lying around under your nose 2) you already have a nearby place to exercise with a workout routine you've established and know exactly where your exercise shoes, clothes, and equipment are, and 3) you have a good support system in place, then I'll bet you are doing well with your fitness goals.

Most of us know, at least generally, what kinds of choices will move us in the direction of health and wellness, but it's easy to let them slide. The key is making it as easy as possible to keep the promises you make to yourself, like eating better and moving more.

I've done fairly well with my own weight loss goals, and I'm physically stronger than I was 6 months ago, mostly from exercising regularly at a local gym, but there's definitely still room for improvement. It's time for me to take a look at my day-to-day routine and find new ways to encourage consistently healthy choices and discourage choices that set me back or slow me down.

How about you? What are some things you've done to make it easier to stay on track? Are there additional changes you can put in place to facilitate doing the right thing? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Breaking a Few Crayons

I once had an elementary school art teacher who made us break all of our new crayons in half and take the protective paper off. As a proud owner of my very first 64 pack of Crayolas with a built-in sharpener, I was not enamored with this instruction.

To this day, I believe that particular teaching moment, which launched the school year and all of our upcoming art classes together, could have been handled much more gracefully. But at least as an adult I better understand the point my teacher was attempting to make.

Trying to keep things "just so" can severely inhibit creativity and exploration. My art teacher didn't want us being overly careful not to press too hard when coloring or distracted by the specific names of all the colors. She wanted us to actively experiment, making our art boldly rather than timidly and using the sides of our crayons as well as the points. She knew that--in the long run--breaking our crayons would actually be freeing. She may also have been mindful of the students who didn't have brand new boxes of crayons to use and who might have felt diminished by comparison. Brokenness can be an equalizer.

The broken crayon concept carries over into other areas of life. If you've ever driven a brand new car or invested in a new paint job on an old vehicle, you know how cautiously you drive and park at first, wanting to keep it shiny and pristine for as long as possible. Eventually, though, you will encounter a mud puddle or a shopping cart.

A fresh manicure also requires extra caution. (Ever paint your nails too close to bed time and end up with sheet marks?)

I'm certainly not arguing against taking appropriate care in what we do, but the fear of messing up is not a very satisfying motivator. Besides, let's face it. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty or be willing to sweat a little bit.

I've been using a free website called SparkPeople.com in my recent weight loss efforts. There are lots of resources on the site: recipes, food and exercise trackers, health-related articles, exercise information, social networking, motivational tools, and more. You can use as few or as many as you like.

One of the clever little things you can do there is to collect "SparkPoints" by using the various tools on the site to make progress toward your goals. You earn points from reading health articles, drinking 8 cups of water in a day, taking a Spark poll or quiz, exercising, trying a new Spark recipe, creating a blog post, reading a Spark email, or a host of other helps. The site also tracks your "SparkStreaks" which record how long you have stuck with particular goals that you have set up, such as logging into the site every day, drinking enough water, journaling 3 days a week, or walking 5 days a week.

I have to admit that SparkPoints are the very kind of thing I often roll my eyes at, but, once I tried it, I found that tracking these points was actually kind of fun and did offer some welcome motivation, so I decided to stick with it.

I had logged on to SparkPeople.com to track my points every single day since I signed up to participate in early July of this year. Some days there wasn't much to record, and I was only on the site for a minute or two. Other days I took the time to read a few articles or watch a 5 minute exercise video. But at the very least, I logged on every day...

Until last Sunday.

I thought about logging on to SparkPeople a couple of different times. I even reminded my husband to be sure to track his SparkPoints. But I got distracted with something and remembered at 10 minutes past midnight that I had not tracked any points that day. By then, it was too late. I had broken my streak.

I am embarrassed to admit how disappointing I initially found this realization to be. Mind you, these points and streaks have no monetary value but are simply an invented incentive to stick with your program and progress through various levels. Still, I was pretty bummed.

It felt almost like discovering the first ding in my car door in the Kroger parking lot or breaking the first Crayola in my 64 pack. It was no longer perfect.

Yes, here we go again. Yet another appearance from my insidious little friend, perfectionism and her all-or-nothing thinking.

And here's the really silly part: Having now broken the spell of this magical "streak," I've been mucking around in oh-why-bother-ville ever since... as though accidentally not logging on to a website one day suddenly gave me license to overeat and procrastinate about exercise again!

Since Sunday night, I've decided that breaking that little streak was probably a good thing. I was getting just a wee bit obsessive about my SparkPoints, to the degree that they may have been more of a distraction than an aid. I'm back to using the site again, but without as much attention to points or streaks and with more focus on making use of information which can directly assist me in achieving my healthy living goals.

I've said before that I believe the way we think about eating and moving is at least as important as the actual food we eat and exercise we do, because thinking has a profound effect on doing.

Hitting this little snag helped me notice another area where my thinking needed some attention. Having now considered what happened when I ran off the rails momentarily, it's time to get back on board. I had a wonderful healthy salad at lunch today, and I'm headed back to the gym tonight.

How about you? Are there any "crayons" you need to break so they won't hold you back?

Keeping Promises

I'm challenging myself to write a fairly brief blog post this time.

It's related to the whole perfectionism/procrastination thing.

Even though I often think of things I'd like to blog about, I tend to put off writing until I've had time to expand on those thoughts for a while.

Then (being an inexperienced blogger) I don't always narrow down my topic enough; I want to be thorough; I lose sight of the fact that I can always write more on the same topic later; and almost before I know it I've written an EPISTLE.

So, what does all this have to do with health or fitness?

I have similar tendencies with eating and exercise.

I will put off exercise until I can do "my whole routine" or "a longer walk," but once I finally make it to the gym, I frequently stay later than I had planned.

I may skip breakfast (yes, I know better!) but once I start eating, I may find it hard to stop, even when I know I've had enough.

I've noticed that we recovering perfectionists sometimes have difficulty with the concept of *enough.*

I'll probably write more about "enoughness" one day.

But, not today...

Because I've written enough for the moment, and I'm learning to do a better job of keeping promises to myself.

What promise to yourself will you keep today?

(I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.)

Time for Tuesday Tips!

It's Tuesday again! Please take a moment to share a healthy living tip in the comments below.

It doesn't have to be original or exciting, just something you've found helpful.

Here's my tip for this week:

Spoil your appetite!

Did your mom ever tell you not to eat something right before dinner because it would, "spoil your appetite"?

Put this principle to good use by having a healthy snack shortly before any meal at which you might be tempted to overeat. Or begin your meal with a low-cal salad. Then take your time and eat slowly throughout your meal, chewing each bite thoroughly and putting your eating utensils down between bites.

Remember that it takes about 20 minutes after ingesting food for your brain to begin to register feelings of satiety or "fullness." So give your brain time to catch up with your belly.

Similarly, it's a good idea to have something healthy to eat before going to a party--especially if you suspect that wise choices may be limited once you get there.

Drinking plenty of water also helps you feel satisfied with less food and (other) drink.

Now it's your turn...

Just leave your Tuesday Tip in the comments below.  No idea is too small!

The 'C & R Brothers

Perfectionism sometimes rears its ugly head for me in all-or-nothing thinking.

I get an idea in my mind, a goal I want to achieve--maybe making a big splash at an upcoming reunion by showing up 30 pounds lighter.

So far, so good. A vision is a wonderful thing.

My idea is big enough to require considerable time and effort to pull off. I think it's do-able, but not easily. It will require multiple steps to achieve.

I want the whole picture, though--the full effect. If I "only" lose 10 or 15 pounds, I'll still weigh more than I did the last time most of them saw me.

I know that to lose 30 pounds in the 4 months until the reunion will be a challenge. I'll really have to pull out all the stops and make this a top priority.

Then I begin to consider all the other things I also need to attend to in the next few months...

Enter my old friend Procrastination with his sidekick, Rationalization.

'Cras and Rash, we'll call them.

'Cras points out that I can't possibly make the lifestyle shift required without purging my kitchen of all unhealthy junk and restocking it with only fresh, whole foods and maybe even installing a state-of-the art water filtration system. In other words, a major project before I can even begin. Ugh.

Rash reminds me that it is Thursday, and NO ONE starts a diet on a Thursday. Besides, it would be wasteful to just throw out all the unhealthy food currently in the kitchen, so I have until Monday to eat it all (by which time I will have more than 30 pounds to lose).

'Cras also explains that since I let my gym membership lapse years ago, it's become more expensive to join, so I'll have to wait for them to run a special before I try to sign up again.

Before I can think through any viable alternatives, Rash tells me that what little I can do in the way of exercise at home in the meantime isn't going to be enough to make a dent in the amount of weight I have to lose, so there's no need to even consider it.

I'm sure you already know that the ending to this tale does NOT include a grand entrance at the reunion in a size 6. More likely, I'll be sitting at home that night in sweats instead, eating donuts and berating myself again for my lack of willpower.

When it comes to visits from the 'C & R brothers, it doesn't matter whether you want to lose 30 pounds or 300. They are equal-opportunity uninvited guests. But you don't have to let procrastination and rationalization in just because they have knocked on your door with their all-or-nothing sales pitch. There is plenty of middle ground to be explored instead.

Yes, sometimes long-held dreams or a bold vision will inspire sweeping changes that catapult us to achieve lofty goals in record time. It's wonderful when we have those dramatic WOW experiences, but it's not the only way important things get done.

If a show-stopping 180-degree turn-around doesn't look promising for any reason, we aren't out of options. We needn't give up or wait for another grand inspiration, which may or may not arrive.

The conventional wisdom is that we have to double down, get tough with ourselves, step up our game, make it all happen. But there are times when a kinder, gentler approach is more appropriate. The results may not be as dramatic, but neither is there a high crash-and-burn potential when we make adjustments gradually. 

We can choose to proceed imperfectly, knowing that we aren't necessarily positioned for an impressive showing but also recognizing that something is almost always better than nothing. 

If you can't fit 30 minutes of exercise into your day, start with 10...

Or 5...

Even ONE.

If you aren't ready to commit to all aspects of a healthy eating plan, start by drinking more water and reducing your food intake only slightly. Begin to make a few healthy substitutions.

Even if you can't slip into that little black dress in time for the reunion, you can be healthier than you are now, and that's enough to matter.


How we think is every bit as important as how we eat or how we move.

The act of simply taking whatever small steps we reasonably can at the moment is such an obvious concept, but when we are caught in a downward spiral of poor choices and self-loathing we convince ourselves that the idea of doing so little is worthless in the face of the task ahead.

Or maybe life is actually going pretty well, so we are not groping around in some emotional black hole, but perfectionism still convinces us that it's not worth doing anything until we can do it "right."

The last time I lost a significant amount of weight, I did so in a determined and disciplined way. After a long period of procrastination I finally bit the bullet, joined Weight Watchers, and followed the plan religiously. I could tell you how many "points" were in almost anything. I could also tell you the date I joined, the date I reached my goal and shifted to "maintenance," and the date I became a "Lifetime Member." Although mine was not one of those incredible weight loss stories you sometimes see on television or in magazines, my friends and family knew I was on a mission, and it was indeed life-changing for me, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

This time it's far sloppier, but no less important.

I knew I had let some of my good habits slide and needed to get back on track, but frankly I had other things on my mind and wasn't entirely in the mood to deal with it. I reluctantly got started on the food part of things before I felt ready to exercise, and I'm still experimenting with various approaches to eating, uncertain about whether or not I want to count Weight Watchers points again. Even now that I'm in full gear with both healthier eating and regular exercise, the excess weight is coming off more slowly than before.

At one point, I began to ask myself, "Why bother?"

Why am I putting myself through all this effort for such incremental results?

My answers...

• Slowly feeling better and better beats the hell out of slowly feeling worse and worse. 
• Doing something imperfectly is still better than doing nothing at all. 
• Being well enough to live the kind of life I want to live is important to me, even if slow progress is all I can manage right now. 
• And I suspect that these less dramatic changes may actually be more realistic for me to maintain, long-term, than strict adherence to a more formal weight-loss program.

Once 'Cras & Rash have been ushered out, what initially seemed impossible becomes easier and easier. Now that I've finally gotten started on my imperfect path, it isn't the dreary undertaking I had convinced myself it would be, and my slow progress has actually begun to speed up. 

When you hit a bump in the road--and you will--that's okay. It doesn't erase every good thing you've done. Nor does it mean you can't move forward again. Just take the next little step.