Fat to Fit, Part V - Lessons Learned

I've written about my decision to get healthy, what I did to make it happen, the tools I’ve used, and the obstacles encountered (see links below.)  Here's what I've learned.

1.   Decide to Get Healthy Despite Your Feelings

The decision to get healthy has to be independent of how you happen to feel.  Why?  Desire is never sufficient by itself.  No matter how strong at any given moment, desire is just a feeling and, like all feelings, it will pass.  You will not always feel like being healthy and you will often feel like acting unhealthy.  So, if you depend on your feelings to keep you on the right track, you are setting yourself up for failure the next time you feel like over eating or not exercising.  Getting healthy requires a decision to get healthy no matter what, including and especially no matter what you happen to feel.  That decision includes a commitment to do whatever it takes whether you happen to feel like it or not at any given moment. 

2.   Act on What You Know, Not on What You Feel

Developing this habit is essential.  If we act on what we feel or want, we will do what we have always done and get what we have always gotten.  Why?  Because feelings reinforce the status quo.  If the habit is unhealthy and you try and change it, you will feel uncomfortable.  The function of the feeling is to elicit the expected behavior.  When I first started to exercise and eat healthier, it felt all wrong and I had to act not on what I felt or wanted – basically to eat everything and remain sedentary – but what I knew and needed – to be healthy I had to eat right and exercise.  This is a choice that must be made repeatedly, despite sometimes great discomfort, until it becomes the new normal.  Since old habits die hard, or not at all, the new normal must be vigilantly maintained through being mindful of the choices made in each moment.  How is this done?  It’s simple but not easy.  It involves the following steps:

Acknowledge Your Feelings without Judgment.  

      I feel like eating that candy bar, I feel like staying in bed rather than go to the gym.  The feelings are there – but they’re not me.

Acknowledge What You Know.  

      If I eat the candy, I will not be satisfied for longer than five minutes, I will want more, and the cravings will start.  If I stay in bed, I cannot strengthen the habit of exercise and will feel bad later.  If I exercise, I will feel good physically and mentally – afterwards.

Given What You Know, Identify Your Need in This Specific Situation.  

      It’s clear.  My need is to stick to my plan and eat nothing or eat something healthy.  My need is to go to the gym as planned.

Identify What You Can Do to Meet That Need.  

      Lots of things.  Do a breathing meditation and understand the desire behind the feeling.  Drink a large glass of cold water.  Put my left foot on the floor, then my right, then get up and get going; don’t second guess, just move.

Take Deliberate, Purposeful Action.  

      Take action now to meet my needs whether I feel like it or not. It’s the doing of the thing that gets it done.

  

It’s simple.  It isn’t easy.  It takes discipline, basically doing what you don’t feel like doing when you don’t feel like doing it.  Repetition develops the habit of acting on what you know and need not what you feel or want.  It is the single best gift you can give yourself.  This foundation skill makes it possible to do everything else.

3.   Embrace Your Discomfort

When we first try to change anything, it’s uncomfortable.  When I first started to get healthy and exercise, I felt awkward, stupid, hopeless, old, overwhelmed, and generally uncomfortable as hell.  This discomfort can be avoided only by not changing, by doing the same old things over and over again (and expecting different results each time.)  I learned to not just tolerate my discomfort but to embrace it.  Change your attitude towards discomfort.  Discomfort is not your enemy, it’s your ally.  It’s telling you this is the road to health.  This is the road to change.  Do this, not that!  I learned to seek out and do the uncomfortable thing, e.g., using the gym’s universal equipment at incredibly low, almost embarrassing weights at first, or eating a salad rather than whatever comfort food I wanted, or not taking the first bite because I knew it would lead to a binge.  I began to view my discomfort as a good thing, not a bad thing, because it was signaling me that I was actually changing rather than just hoping to change.  Feel good about your discomfort. 

4.  Feeling Follows Action

The biggest obstacle to change is the belief that you must feel better before you can act better.  Most people tell themselves they would lose weight, get healthy, exercise, etc. if they only felt like it or felt like it more of the time.  Here is a simple truth: if you wait to feel better before you act better, you will neither feel better nor act better.  If you wait to feel like changing before you change, you will never change. Why?  Because feelings reinforce the status quo (see 2 above.)  Because feeling follows action, not the other way around.  Having exercised regularly for 15 months, I now feel like exercising.  In fact, I feel lousy when I can’t exercise!  Having practiced eating healthy for 16 months, I now feel like eating healthy most of the time.  My feelings now reinforce the “new normal.”  Feeling follows action.

5.   Practice, Practice, Practice

The perfect really is the enemy of the good.  I don’t do any of this perfectly.  I just do it.  I screw up, make mistakes, sometimes make lousy choices, etc.  I keep at it.  I keep trying.  I keep on keeping on as we used to say in the 60’s.  I don’t allow the failure to be perfect prevent me from being good enough.  Every day I make the effort to exercise and eat healthy, including and especially the days after I fail at that effort.  The result is that eating right and exercising are now habits, now the “new normal.”  I keep practicing.  I keep vigilant because I am mindful that the old habits are there, lurking in the recesses of my brain (quite literally,) patiently awaiting activation. There’s an old joke about an out of town violinist asking a New Yorker how to get to Carnegie Hall. The New Yorker looks at him and simply says: “Practice.  Practice.  Practice.” That applies to pretty much everything, including getting healthy.  Just remember, practice makes permanent, not perfect.

6. Treat Problems As Building Blocks, Not Stumbling Blocks

The Scottish poet Robert Burns famously said “The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.” Each of us finds – or makes – our own problems in trying to get healthy. That’s really not important.  What is important is how we respond to them. If I use a problem as a stumbling block, I sit on it and go nowhere, except maybe backwards. If I use it as a building block, I stand on it and look beyond to a path forward.  Adjust my exercise routine (the body adapts quickly and we get less calorie-burn bang for the same exercise buck) to more aerobics and less weight training or maybe different weight training and different aerobics.  Adjust my food plan, perhaps more protein, and fewer carbs.  Adjust my stress management to more frequent brief meditation exercises.  In this way, problems become opportunities, not obstacles. They become less intimidating, less discouraging.  They become opportunities for growth rather than regression.  It is all in the attitude you take and the choices you make.

7. Use All The Tools and Don’t Try to Do It Alone.

My tools have been web based and technological.  You will need to find what works for you.  Don’t hesitate to experiment and discard until you find what does.  Above all, find a support community, virtual and/or real life.  The kind of fundamental, difficult, long term changes involved in getting healthy are best and most easily done in community with others trying to do the same.  LoseIt.com is what I use and it’s been vital to my efforts.  Enlist the support, where possible, of your spouse, partner, family, and friends.  Make a public commitment to getting healthy and hold yourself accountable to both yourself and others for doing so.  All of these things enhance the likelihood of success. Trying to do it alone increases the probability of failure.

8. One Bite.  One Meal.  One Step.  One Day at a Time.

Here’s another simple truth.  I cannot get healthy forever.  I can only be healthy in the present, in this very moment.  While it is my intent to stay as healthy as I can for the rest of my life, I cannot make that happen.  I can only live healthy today.  Understanding this simple truth is, paradoxically, life changing.  Understanding this, I no longer have to concern myself with whether I will make the right choices next week, next month, next year, or even tomorrow.  (Worrying about the future or whether we’ll be able to do something long term discourages us from doing something now.)  Since I can’t make those choices today, I am not responsible for them.  Since I’m not responsible for them, I don’t need to worry about them or even be the slightest bit concerned about them.  I need only concern myself with the choices I make today and, in reality, right this very moment. That is empowering and liberating.  I can control what I do right this moment and I have the power to make the right choice.  I need not concern myself with any future – or past – choice. I belong in the here and now, not the there or then.

Staying in this very moment empowers me. It’s also a lot more manageable than trying to be healthy forever! I don’t know if I can do that. I do know that I am capable of making a healthy choice right now. Staying in the now also is a way of being mindful about the choices I do have. If I am in the present, I pay attention to this bite, this meal, this step, this day. If I am alert and aware, as a friend of mine used to say, I am less likely to take the mindless bite that leads to a binge, more likely to enjoy my meal as it is, less likely to want another helping, and more likely to move my body because I am aware of how good it feels.

9.  Persistence.  Persistence.  Persistence.

      Winston Churchill was once asked to address a group of school boys. The legend is that he was feeling a bit under the weather as he was known to be quite fond of whiskey and simply was not up to his usual oratory in these situations. His speech was brief and the message was simple: “Never. Never. Never. Never give up.”  I don’t know whether the story is completely accurate but the exhortation is certainly sound. The journey to health - or any other major change - is filled with difficulties, setbacks, and discouragement. So what! The difficulty is resolved, the setbacks are overcome, and the discouragement fades. All that matters is to keep going. That’s what I’ve had to do. That’s what I will continue to do. So, if you haven't yet started, get going. If you’re on your way, stay in the moment and do the next healthy thing. See you at the goal line.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these postings and perhaps benefitted from them. Any feedback, positive or otherwise, is appreciated.

Fat to Fit, Part I - Decision
Fat to Fit, Part II - Commitment
Fat to Fit, Part III - Tools
Fat to Fit, Part IV - Obstacles