bearing blog

Well, this is a timely article: How to stick to your resolutions.

I was talking to Mark this evening about trying to nail down the general principles of behavioral change -- not the list of "handy weight loss tips," but the general principles that I've followed to choose my new, permanent habits and to make them stick.  

All right, I'm fessing up:  I've been tossing around the idea of putting these disconnected eating-and-exercise blog posts into a longer and more organized form.  What I'm not yet sure about is focus:  gluttony?  personal change in general?  willpower defeating?  straight-up weight loss?

Anyway, I was amused tonight to encounter this article from the NYT's John Tierney, "Be It Resolved," which is very much like the sort of thing I was envisioning writing.

IT’S still early in 2012, so let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume you have made a New Year’s resolution and have not yet broken it. Based on studies of past resolutions, here are some uplifting predictions:

1) Whatever you hope for this year — to lose weight, to exercise more, to spend less money — you’re much more likely to make improvements than someone who hasn’t made a formal resolution.

2) If you can make it through the rest of January, you have a good chance of lasting a lot longer.

3) With a few relatively painless strategies and new digital tools, you can significantly boost your odds of success.

Now for a not-so-uplifting prediction: Most people are not going to keep their resolutions all year long. They’ll start out with the best of intentions but the worst of strategies, expecting that they’ll somehow find the willpower to resist temptation after temptation. By the end of January, a third will have broken their resolutions, and by July more than half will have lapsed.

They’ll fail because they’ll eventually run out of willpower, which social scientists no longer regard as simply a metaphor. They’ve recently reported that willpower is a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as you exert self-control.

Well, that explains a lot.  Dieting is hard because low blood sugar depletes your willpower!  

But this is the paragraph in the article that really resonated with me (emphasis mine):

One of their newest studies, published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, tracked people’s reactions to temptations throughout the day. The study, led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago, showed that the people with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.

This.  This.  A thousand times this.  Using willpower sucks, so you have to exert it in advance.  So much of what worked for me is about this very principle.

The article goes on to give a somewhat outlandish anecdote and then from it derives some strategies that ring very true to me:

• Set one clear goal at a time
• Precommit (like Odysseus lashing himself  to the mast, remove your options to break your resolution)
• Be accountable to someone else, and plan to pay a real penalty if you don't reach your goal
• Keep track of how you are doing
• Don't overreact to a lapse by saying "what the hell" and figuring the day's already ruined
• Tell yourself you can have some later (rather than swearing off pleasures for good)
• Reward yourself, or find reward in your actions, often.

I will have to spend some time thinking about this -- but maybe the first step is to read the book about willpower that is referenced in the article.

The third post in what seems to be a series about "acceptance."

In the first post, I explained why it's nonsense to ask whether one should or shouldn't "accept one's body."  (And I offered examples of some better questions to ask in the second post.)

To "accept" a thing is, essentially, to receive it willingly.  One's body is not a thing that can be accepted or rejected, because one has always had it; one cannot receive it.

There are, however, things that it is possible to accept.  For instance,  I wrote, it's possible to "accept" a discomfort (meaning to endure it willingly), or to "accept" a proposition (meaning to believe and assent to it willingly). 

So here are some propositions I urge my readers to accept, instead of wondering whether they should "accept" their own selves:

    (1) Permanent personal change would require you to accept discomfort.

    (2)  Today, there is a limit to how much discomfort you can accept and for how long.

    (3)  With practice, you can increase that limit.

    (4)   That is:  Accepting discomfort really can change you.   For the better.  Immediately.

Readers:  Do you accept these propositions?

Clean eating and a short pre-review of the new Taubes book.

I'm feeling a little less despondent this morning than I was when I wrote the last post, probably because two full days of clean eating has eliminated my weight spike.   And thank you to commenter LeeAnn for reassuring me that I probably can continue watching portions for my health, and even if that tends to exacerbate my vanity problem, I probably don't have to stop, and can look for other ways to alleviate the vanity thing.

 From 116.6 the other day, I'm now back below 112.  Yes, I am aware that a lot of that weight is probably water.  Still, I think it was worthwhile reacting quickly.

For one thing, I had lost track of portion size.  During the first nine months or so of the baby's ex utero life, I needed to eat a lot more than I do now, and so I had pretty much been eating freely -- seconds and thirds, whole sandwiches instead of halves, et cetera.   I have gotten out of the habit of starting with a small amount and then waiting to see if I needed more. 

Are you curious what "two days of clean eating" looks like for me?   I planned on avoiding white flour as much as I could and keeping the calorie load under 1400 calories (reasonable for me -- I'm quite small framed, and the baby has not been nursing heavily).  I am currently staying as a houseguest, so I have limited control over what's available, but with self-control I can keep from getting derailed.  Here's what I did for two days:

First day:

• Breakfast:  1 hardboiled egg.  15 fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around half a cup of chili with beans, two tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese, and a generous handful of fresh spinach, plus some chopped tomato and onion.  10 fresh cherries.
• Snack:  5 pecan halves, an ounce of cheddar cheese, and ten more blueberries.
• Dinner (from the local pizza chain):  A big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese and one tablespoon Italian dressing.  One-eighth of a large thin-crust pizza (bacon and veg).
• Unplanned eating:  About a half ounce of hard pretzel near bedtime.

I felt hungry between meals right away, which I took as a good sign.  Second day:

• Breakfast:  One hardboiled egg.  Fifteen fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around 100 calories' worth of Italian sausage, 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons of mozzarella cheese, and a handful of fresh spinach.  Another big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese (left over from the night before) and one tablespoon Italian dressing.
• Snack:  Five pecan halves and one small apple.  Coffee.
• Dinner:  About two cups cooked canned green beans.  One half cup canned baked beans in a sugary sauce.  One quarter-pound hamburger patty with a teaspoon of ketchup.
• Unplanned eating:  About a quarter-ounce of hard pretzels.  One bite of sugar cookie.

Being a houseguest here, I'm free to make my own breakfasts and lunches from whatever's around, and dinner is whatever's being served.  The tortillas happen to be the most whole-grain bread in the house, so I stuck with them for lunch; on burger night, I quietly skipped the bun, and that didn't seem to cause a problem.    I enjoyed small portions of the sweet baked beans and the carryout pizza.  I measured the salad dressing and found the mixed-salad calories by looking them up on the restaurant website.

Some travel is coming up in which I'll have even less control over the types of food available, but I always have control over how much I eat of it.  So I'm feeling a lot better.

On a related note, I recently picked up Gary Taubes' new book, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.  You may remember that Taubes wrote the huge tome Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed in some detail here.  I will post a full review of the new Taubes book later, but the short review is this: 

 It's a shorter, more accessible version of Good Calories, Bad Calories.  So if you have been intimidated by that huge book, by all means, read the newer, sleeker version, and if you wish your doctor or spouse would read GCBC, consider lending them the new, less-frightening book instead.  It also contains dietary recommendations, basically for a paleo diet.  I have some comments about these recommendations, but I will save it for my full review.

Sore.

Monday night I dropped the kids off at the YMCA play area and headed up to the indoor track with a page of scrawled workout notes from my running clinic last Saturday.  The instructor had provided us with four weeks' worth of drills.  "It'll probably drive you crazy to take this time off getting almost no mileage while you're focusing on those drills," she had told the class.  "I know I hated writing a big fat ZERO in my mileage notebook while I was working on my form.  But winter's really the best time for this kind of work, and you're going to come back even faster."

All the superwomen had nodded their heads.  Me, I was thinking:  Cool, four whole weeks with an excuse to skip "running!"  Actually probably more than four because I'm such a slow learner!

So, anyway, there I was at the indoor track around the top of the basketball gym -- 18 laps to the mile -- with the little alcove for stretching right next to the entrance.  Fortunately there weren't too many people around, because I expected to either (a) look like a weirdo or (b) annoy other runners.

I started out by warming up with a gentle run around the track, but instead of my usual heel-striking lope I tried to run the way I'd learned in class.  It feels pretty weird -- an exaggerated high-stepping feeling at the knee, and I couldn't get over the sensation that I was running down a steep hill and might fall.  Also, I couldn't go very fast.  

The drills were similar to the ones we had learned in the class, and involved very little actual running.  They are meant to make three corrections to running form:

1. most importantly, to stop you landing on your heels and rolling forward onto the toe for push-off, and instead to get your foot striking the ground "mid-foot," which sounds like it ought to mean flat-footed (the middle of your foot is somewhere on the arch, right?) but really means more like on the ball of the foot.
2. to get you straight-backed and leaning slightly forward instead of backward, vertical, or bent at the hips.
3. to raise the running cadence -- the number of times your right foot hits the ground per minute -- above 90 or even higher.

About landing on your mid-foot -- this is why I felt so weird during my warm-up jog.   I think I can give you a quick demonstration of what this feels like, if you don't know.  Stand up (shoes are not necessary here), face a direction with a few feet of space in front of you, and jog gently in place for a moment or two.  You'll find that your foot naturally strikes the ground midfoot-first, not heel-first, though it's good if your heel comes down and sort of "kisses" the ground before you pick it up again.  OK, once you've got that, gently lean your body forward ever-so-slightly -- and what happens is that you move -- when your body corrects to keep you from tipping over, your running in place turns into running forward -- but on your midfoot, not with a heel strike.  That's the kind of running I'm trying to do, only continuous.  And I'm not used to it.  I'm used to hitting the floor with a heel that's heavily cushioned by my running shoes.

So there were hopping-on-your-toes drills, and standing leg raises, and lean-against-the-wall leg raises. (This video gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of stuff I was doing.)

Near the end there were just a couple of cadence drills.  The instructor had recommended buying a runner's metronome for these so you could try to put your foot on the floor in time to the "dink...dink...dink...dink..." sound.   I judged that the other patrons at the Y would not be pleased to have me bring such a thing into the building.  What I had found instead was a set of free .mp3 files of metronomes set at various tempos.  So with these loaded on my iPod I was able to run around the track keeping fairly close to the tempos suggested by the instructor.

I was seriously winded by the end of all this, despite going very, very slowly.  Also, my left foot seemed to be able to "do it" better than my right, though I am not sure -- that could have been from the banked corners of the running track.  I don't remember ever feeling that the arch of my foot got tired before!

The drills only took about 25 minutes total (and that was with a lot of hemming and hawing and checking my notes and also counting the warmups), and the instructor had basically ordered us not to try to do any additional running beyond the drills.  So I went back to the locker room, quickly changed into my suit, and had a ten-minute swim.  What a relief to be doing something I knew how to do already.  

So, two days later, my calves are still sore.  It is not an injury-type soreness, just a "my muscles aren't used to this" soreness -- I can tell it was a good workout.  

But you know what is really best about this?  I usually find running very, very boring.  Every time I run, I wish I was swimming instead.   I try to watch the treadmill-mounted TVs and forget about what I'm doing until my 40 minutes are up.  The only thing that changes from run to run is maybe how fast I go or how high I set the incline.  But with these drills to work on, something interesting is going on, and suddenly I am looking forward to my next time at the gym.  

Learning something new will do that.  Cool.

Comfort zone, smashed.

 A while ago I subscribed to a local women's running list, but I never got around to going to any of the weekly workouts held at a high school outdoor track.  So the week before Thanksgiving when an announcement went out for a four-hour running clinic to work on form and prevent injury, I thought, "That sounds kind of fun."  I decided it would be a good Christmas present to myself.  So I dropped a check in the mail.

Today Mark took all the kids to swimming lessons and I headed out in the other car to a gym on the west side of town.  I was wearing some of Mark's clothes as well as my own -- it had snowed last night, we were supposed to run outdoors for taking video, and I didn't have much stuff to run in the snow.   

Seven other women and one man arrived for the clinic. They looked suspiciously ... buff.   "Let's all introduce ourselves and say what our goals for today are."

Well.

Three marathoners hoping to improve their endurance.  Three longtime triathletes hoping to use their bodies more efficiently in the running segment.   One woman still sore from an Ironman a couple of weeks ago.  And one kickboxer, wearing a well-used Israeli Defense Forces tee shirt, who said she hated running but was going to try a marathon this year just for the heck of it and didn't want to hurt herself more than necessary.

We got about halfway through the introductions when I suddenly felt an urge to hyperventilate and my mind was filled with one thought:  OMG I paid $65 to take a gym class with these people.

I'm Erin.   I'm a beginner.  I just want to learn to run the right way so I don't become one of those people who just 'goes out and runs' and gets hurt."

(Mark scoffed at me later for the "beginner."  "You've run three 5Ks!" he pointed out.  "Yes, but I don't know what I'm doing.  And you should have seen these women." )

(I just cannot wear a ponytail like that.)

Calm down, I told myself.  You are here to learn.

We went outside and ran for the camera, then came back in to review the footage.   "We're looking for a slight lean forward in the body, foot striking the pavement midfoot and not at the heel, a short time in contact with the ground, and no long legs out front or in back," the instructor told us.  I felt a little better when she started pointing out everything that the other people were doing wrong.  And then it was my turn and ....

....whoooooah.    Take everybody's mistakes and put them together and you have me.  I was like five inches shorter than the next person in the class, and I STILL had a longer leg out in front and in back than any of them. 

Then she had us do a bunch of drills, most of them designed to correct the errors in heel strike and body lean.  Some of them were not too hard:  hop around the room landing properly on the midfoot, for example, or snap one leg up (stamping and pawing like a horse, I thought) so the knee came forward but the heel kicked up at the butt.   

But then there was one where we were supposed to jog back and forth across the gym, only every fourth time we picked up a foot we were supposed to kick it high back -- kick ourselves in the butt -- and I was sunk.  You may think I am pretty good with numbers, but I tell you I cannot count and do anything physical at the same time.  I tripped and skipped around a few times until the instructor finally told me that the point wasn't to get the rhythm right, it was to kick the foot up once in a while.  Randomly would be fine.  I was better after that.

Until the jump ropes came out.  Oh man.  I had to remind myself that the other students didn't pay their fees for the purpose of watching me screw up.  They were too busy paying attention to their own feet.  Actually, I wasn't the only person who had trouble with the jumping rope.  It takes a surprising amount of coordination to run and skip rope at the same time.  At least, I think so; hard to tell, since I can't even properly jump rope in place.  To run and skip rope at the same time, you have to turn the rope once per step; no matter how hard I try, even in place, I jump twice and turn once. 

"The point of the jump rope is to shorten your strides," the instructor told us.  "If your stride is too long, you'll trip over the rope."  Well, I didn't have any trouble tripping over the rope with a stride of zero, so clearly I have a ways to go.

Then we did some fun (but socially exhausting) drills in pairs.    One person stood in front of the other and leaned forward, her hips pressing into a giant rubber band held by the person behind her.  Then the front person started running in place, against the resistance band, while the person in back braced herself and held her back.  Then with a "Three--two--one--go!" the rear partner let go of the rubber band, launching the runner forward into a full run across the room.  That was very fun.  I found myself wanting to try this with Mark sometime.  A similar drill had a partner standing in front, bracing the in-place runner with hands on her shoulders, then stepping aside to let her take off.  You would think you'd get tripped on, but actually there is enough time to get out of the way.  I still was worried I would not do it right, but I guess it went okay.  (Except for that one time I went "Three--two--go!"  I told you I couldn't count and do anything at the same time.)

At the end we all went out in the street again to take more video and then compare to see our improvement.  Everyone had shortened their stride at least a little bit -- even me.  And I had corrected my backward lean and was even leaning forward ever so slightly.  I left with four weeks of "homework" drills (it'll actually take me eight weeks, as I can only run twice a week) and a feeling of real accomplishment, plus a lot to tell Mark back at home.

I'm still utterly exhausted -- some of it undoubtedly from moving around in ways I am not used to moving, but I think most of it is from the strain of going back to "gym class."  Watching myself run on video is uniquely horrifying.  Being around these "real runners" -- well, it has been a long time since I had this feeling at the Y, but I had such a palpable sensation of I do not belong here.  I know better now though.  I do belong here.  It was not an "advanced" running class, it was an ordinary running class, and I am someone who needs to learn.  And I was there to learn.  And I did learn.  So there.

Perfectionist.

Marybeth has some thoughts about perfectionism.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about how when a moving company moves you, they send 2 or 3 guys and they pack up everything you own in a day...  ONE DAY!.....  That's because they see it, they grab it, they pack it....   There is no sense of "I have 16 books from this 18 book set.  I should go look for the other 2 books so they can all be packed together."

I think that I have done the same thing with eating....  There have been times that I get so focused on what would be the perfect thing to eat, that I might nibble enough calories to qualify as a meal while I am searching for/preparing that 'perfect' thing....   All of a sudden, that doesn't seem so perfect, does it?  I am fortunate enough to say that I have not done that in some time, but that was a big thing with me....  

 

Exercise has been like that for me, too.  I waited the longest time to do ANYTHING because the time wasn't perfect and the routine is most definitely not perfect - I mean really - 10 minutes is hardly what I consider a great workout.....  Maybe it's 'Just Right' for my current physical condition, but it certainly does not FEEL perfect.....  

 

So, I think I have rambled enough here, but the main thing I want to say is do NOT be a perfectionist....  If you wait for perfection, you'll NEVER get it/do it/have it.....  You can certainly work towards perfection, but as we are all inherently flawed and imperfect, waiting for yourself to be perfect is setting yourself up for a failure....

 

Today I wanted to get the kids to a birthday party, twenty minutes away, at 1 pm.  I also wanted to swim, to pick up new books at the library, and to feed everyone lunch at home.

 

I keep forgetting to allow that extra 15 minutes in my schedule for the baby to nurse one last time.  So when I pulled out of my garage it was 11:06.

 

I told myself:  I will swim for exactly 30 minutes, not the 47 minutes it takes me to swim 1600 yards.  That worked okay.  I think I managed -- let's see -- 1050 yards.

 

I told myself:  I will take a really fast shower and not waste any time in the locker room.  That didn't work exactly, because I saw a bemused-looking older lady in the locker room, asked if she needed help finding anything, and wound up having a nice conversation about starting up an exercise program.  I'm glad I did.  I learned that her name was Rose, that she was 60 pounds into a hoped-for 100-pound weight loss, and that she recently joined the Y because she was tired of being home alone after having lost her fiance a few months ago.  I hope I helped her feel welcome.

 

I told myself:  I will tell the kids they can each pick out a movie, but they only have as much time as it takes me to return my books and pick up my holds.  That worked great.  Except I forgot to check if the movies were good choices or not.  We shall see when I get home and open up the bag.

 

I told myself:  I will just run through the drive through at Taco Bell.  Except the line was long, so we went inside.  That worked okay, though. Everyone had one thing.  Mine was a salad.  I could have made it something smaller.  I will probably have a mainly-vegetable dinner, and that will feel better inside.

 

I told myself:  I will only be 15 minutes late.

 

And I was.

 

Not perfect, but (since it was that same 15 minutes I forgot to schedule to nurse the baby), at least I closed all the balances.  And my engineering brain can be happy with that.

Looking them in the eye.

So a couple of days ago I posted that I am going to work on a single new habit: looking my children in the eye when I talk to them or when they talk to me.

 Which is a sort of embarrassing resolution to announce. It's one thing to say "I'm going to quit eating between meals" because, hey, we all know everyone does that. Or to say "I'm going to start doing a load of laundry every day instead of letting it pile up till the weekend." Because there's nothing wrong with having a laundry day on Saturday, you know?

 But I realized after I hit "post" that I had basically just announced to the world, "I don't look my own children in the eye when I talk to them." 

Yup, I habitually give orders, receive kisses, explain schoolwork, and distribute discipline with my eyes fixed on some other thing, namely whatever I'm busy with at the moment. I just can't keep my attention fixed on my little people. The whole time they are talking to me I am thinking about stuff I have to do, or maybe what I was doing before they interrupted me.

I'm like diners in one of those restaurants with a TV up on the wall in every corner. They try to keep up their end of the conversation, but they can't help letting their eyes drift up to the screen they can see over their date's shoulder. I'm like that, but my eyes keep drifting back, not to a TV, but to a cutting board, a notebook, a list, a pile of sweepings, a computer screen, a diaper.

The first day wasn't hard at all. In fact I was a little bit giddy with the new freedom of only having ONE very specific improvement to focus on. And for once it wasn't "I mustn't spend so much time on the computer." So I actually enjoyed spending, well, a LOT of time on the computer that day.

 All I was trying to do was this: When a child came up and spoke to me, I turned all the way away from the computer or whatever else I happened to be doing, looked the child in the eye, gave her my full attention, listened and spoke to her like she was a human being. Then I waited until she was done and went away again before I turned back to my work.

 No, it wasn't too bad, although I found that a couple of times I had to only pretend that I was listening to the children, because my whole brain was consumed with "don't turn and look at the screen, don't turn and look at the screen, don't turn and look at the screen."

The second day, today, was a little tougher because when late afternoon rolled around, I had been out of the house all day, I was tired and overstimulated, and I desperately wanted to "veg." Which at least for me is code for "ignore every other human being around me, unless by chance they are bringing me cups of hot caffeinated beverages."

So I let the kids play computer games and hid with the nursling in my room for a while, hoping the others would not come looking for me. I figured that if I could make it unlikely that they would interrupt me, then I wouldn't have to worry about paying attention to them, and I would still be keeping my resolution. That worked pretty well.

Eventually, however, I had to feed them dinner, and that was pretty rough, habit-wise. When we eat and my husband isn't around, like at lunchtime, or this particular evening for dinner, I tend to dish up dinner in the kitchen and then carry my bowl over to the computer to read blogs while I eat. I am a big believer in the family dinner hour, but for some reason I don't walk the walk when my husband isn't around. (mental note: later, strengthen habit of family dinner hour to include business-trip evenings; it is not called "husband dinner hour" after all.)

 I ate my salad in front of the computer, but then I went back for a bowl of chili and when I got to the kitchen the children started telling me all about the latest nature movie they had watched. We hit the zoo this morning with Minnesota Mom and her kids, hence my overstimulation, and I guess while I was hiding in my room they had been inspired to go watch some of the BBC nature programs.

So I found myself standing in the kitchen holding a bowl of chili and trying hard to appear that I was paying full attention to my 9yo's explanation of why some bird eggs are white with brown speckles and other bird eggs are black with white speckles. And then I had to pretend to pay attention to my 6yo's monologue on the habits of bower birds. And all the time I was painfully, ashamedly aware of how much I wanted to eat my chili in front of the computer screen instead of marveling at bower birds, or egg speckles, or even nine-year-old and six-year-old bird enthusiasts.

About halfway through it occurred to me that I might be able to fake my attention more convincingly if, instead of pretending to the boys that I was paying attention to them, I pretended to myself that I was listening to a narration for schoolwork. That I had assigned the boys to go watch the nature movie and then come back and tell me everything they knew about egg speckles and bower birds. That actually worked pretty well. My teacher brain turned on and started looking for questions I could ask them to test their comprehension, and that made me have to pay actual attention to what they were saying.

 I learned that the surface of the eggs get speckled after the shell forms in the body of the bird. I learned that the bower bird does not actually live in the bower.

All in all, I am glad I am trying this. It is surprisingly challenging, and I am more firmly convinced now that the problem with ignoring my kids is not the computer, or any other one thing that I happen to be doing, so much as it is a problem with my attention to whatever it is I happen to be doing. I get really focused. I have to un-focus myself unless I have created a special time and place where I can be focused. And I think this exercise in permitting interruptions is going to help me learn how.

It's like trying to unlearn everything I absorbed from countless productivity tips over the years, though!

Garbage yardage?

After Leo turned six weeks old and I got into the pool for my first postnatal swim, I floundered.  It felt so good to be back in the water again after close to four months off.  It felt so awful to have lost so much ground, to know I'd have to work hard to "get back to where I was."  Those first few times I couldn't bear to think about any sort of a workout plan.  I got into the water, I crossed and re-crossed the pool, and when my time was up I climbed out. 

There's a term I have encountered in reading about swim training:  "garbage yardage."   The derision is aimed at, well, aimlessness.  It is pleasant to get in the pool and swim at a comfortable pace for forty minutes or an hour, not trying to go particularly fast, not working hard, just racking up the yards.  Undoubtedly it is better than not swimming at all, good for my heart and for my muscles and for my mentality.  It's not a waste of time. 

But it won't make me faster.

And it's kind of boring, too.

I felt more grounded as soon as I had a goal.  My longish-term goal is now to swim a mile in fifty minutes.  My shortish-term goal, since I'm stuck with shorter workouts for the time being, is to swim a half-mile in twenty-five minutes.  So I'm working on speed, not sprint speed but steady pace.  I have a stopwatch.  I have a plan:  so many intervals, so many seconds per interval, this much of a warmup, this much of a cool-down.  Each time I cross the pool I have some mini-goal in mind, mostly a part of the form:  This lap I will concentrate on controlling the roll of my body.  Next lap I will slice my hands into the water at the right angle every time.  The lap after that, I will be sure to kick forcefully all the way across the pool. 

This is not garbage yardage.  This yardage has a point.

Every physical activity has its form of garbage yardage.  I don't mean that aimless yardage is truly "garbage," as if it doesn't help at all.  It's relaxing, and it's better than sitting on the couch.  Relatively speaking, though, improvement requires a challenge.  How much it takes to challenge you depends on what you're used to.  Strolling around the neighborhood is fun and good for you, but is not a challenge... unless you are so unused to walking that it leaves you breathless.  For me, now, running 30 minutes at four miles an hour would be garbage yardage.  Fine for a day when I feel sore or headachy.   Much better than nothing.  But if my workouts were all like that I wouldn't improve.

The size of the challenge does not matter.  It can be quite tiny.  Just a little bit longer.   Just a little bit faster.  Just a little bit harder.  It can be the tiniest measurable increment:  I'm going to run at five-point-nine instead of five-point-eight.  I'm going to add that teeny little free weight, the one that looks like a CD, on to the stack of weights I lifted last week.  I'm going to finish one more lap.

So if the tiniest self-challenge counts, then even your very first day of deliberate body motion, no matter what it is, is worth something.  Get out and move.  Challenge yourself (1) to begin and (2)  to make a challenge for next time. So there will be a next time.

That is how it starts.

Mantras.

There are a few mantras I find myself muttering from time to time, mantras that remind me to stay on track.  I'm not sure whether tossing them out to the Internet would be helpful to anybody else, though.  I didn't find them in a book or even sit down and compose them; they bubbled up out of my
subconscious, and some other part of me -- my conscious? -- repeated them.  Over and over and over again.

Here we go.

(1) "I don't do that anymore."

This is what I say to myself when I am driving home, alone, and it occurs to me  that I could go through a drive through and get a cheeseburger or something, and I could eat it, in the car, and nobody would know but me.  I also find myself repeating it to myself when I wander past a vending machine and pause, regarding the bags of Chee-tos and pretzels.  Basically, any time that I have a little bit of free time available and it occurs to me that one thing I could do with that free time is buy some food and eat it:  I hear myself say, "Remember?  I don't do that anymore."

I'm sort of  amazed at the power of this statement.  I pronounce it neutrally.  There's no judgment or shame directed at my former self; it's just a true statement.  And yet it is a remarkable statement, because it is self-fulfilling.  The simple act of repeating it and intending it to be true helps make it more true, every time I say it.  I can't remember a first time, but you know -- it could have been true the first time I said it, even if my last binge had been only that morning.  It can become true at any moment, for anyone.  Think about it.

And I can feel its power growing:  The more I repeat it, the deeper a  groove it wears in my subconscious, the more distance I put between myself and the old me. 

(2) "I've already had my treat; I don't get another one."

I use this most days, I think.  It's a sort of bookmark:  reminding me that moderation means stopping, that treats are rare by definition.  I can have a square of chocolate after lunch if I want, sure.  But if I find myself reaching for a second or third, I often find my hand pausing as this sentence comes to mind.  I've already had my treat; I don't get another one.

Too, It helps dispel that awful temptation that says, "You've already had a bunch; what's one more?"   Because with one stroke, I've declared it all one thing -- all of  the "bunch" I've already eaten -- whether it's two cookies or a whole bag or some of all the different kinds of leftovers I had in the fridge -- all that added up to one thing, "my treat," what I've already had. And the next bite, however small, woulde be "another."  What I don't get .  You see, the line can be drawn anywhere. 

 Sometimes I have to remind myself that I've already had an "extra" even if it wasn't very treat-like.  My kids had soup and saltines for lunch; you know my weakness for saltines.  I polished off the crackers left in the sleeve after the kids had had their fill, while I was waiting for my own lunch to heat up.  After I finished lunch, when I wandered into the kitchen thinking about a square of chocolate, I
remembered the handful of crackers, and said to myself:  I've already had my treat; I don't get another.  I turned around and headed out again.

I think it's important to note, again, that there isn't an element of judgment or shame here.  I'm not punishing myself for the sin of eating crackers.  I'm just  trying to practice reality-based eating: 
I already chose a treat and now I live with -- live on -- the treat I had.

(3) "A piece of cheese is like a truffle."

Now this little food-specific gem, I know where it came from -- Hannah suggested it to me.  I liked it so much that I adopted it, and I repeat it to myself almost every time I have a snack or a meal in which the protein source is mostly cheese.  Which is almost daily, in fact.

Cheese, of course, is more nutritious than chocolate truffles, but it's about as dense, rich and satisfying -- more satisfying, really, since there's much more protein and hardly any sugar.  Those calories aren't empty.

The reason I repeat it, though, is that I spent many years eating enormous amounts of cheese at one sitting, for a snack, on crackers with mustard.  It was one of my favorite snacks.  And yet I probably didn't even really taste it.  Should have just eaten the mustard off the spoon, I guess. 

I repeat this mantra to keep myself honest and to remind myself that it isn't okay either to eat cheese without enjoying it or to binge on huge amounts of cheese.  Since I eat it often, the effort adds up.

A "serving" of cheese is, of course, one to two ounces.  That's where the  truffle comes in.  The imaginary truffle is about the same size as the cheese I ought to be eating.  And the image of a single chocolate truffle is a reminder to slow down; to let the cheese come to room temperature for full flavor; to take tiny bites; to enjoy it.  And to leave it off of dishes where its contribution won't be noticed:  a cheesesteak is  worthy to me, a hamburger really isn't.  What with the mustard and all.

(4) "One egg is enough eggs for breakfast."

As a former consumer of countless three-egg omelettes, I can attest that this mantra is necessary. Does it sound more like a rule than a mantra?  But I adhere to it almost obsessively, and I really do repeat it to myself.  I am positive that I don't need to be eating two or more eggs at breakfast, ever.  If I ever catch myself starting to cook two eggs for myself in the morning, I'll know I'm in danger of returning to my old habits.  Not.  Going.  To.  Happen. 

I repeat the one-egg mantra to myself whenever I make eggs for breakfast, whenever I order eggs in a restaurant.  Yeah, I know, I could still overeat even if I stick to only one egg.  I could get the Sunny Side Up Special with four links of sausage, Belgian waffle drowning in syrup, ketchup-laced hash browns, and one egg.  And yet...  I am never really tempted to order such a thing, unless I am dividing the breakfast up between me and two of my children.   What I *am* tempted to do is eat the second half of that Eggs Benedict.  This mantra keeps me from doing it.  One egg is enough eggs for breakfast.

(5) "A twelve-hour fast feels better than a seven-hour fast."

What I tell myself when I'm deciding whether to have a snack before bed.  It's true for me, too -- I really do feel better in the morning if I have fasted since dinner.  Sometimes I wake up ravenously hungry, and then the most mundane of breakfasts is fantastically delicious; buttered toast, heaven on earth.  Other times I wake up only feeling light and quick and sunny. 

 I don't feel bad per se, if I've had a bedtime snack, but it just isn't as good a feeling as having fasted since dinner.  Heavier and slower.  It reminds me a little bit of a hangover -- there's no headache or dizziness, but instead there's a sense of something unpleasant sort of lingering in the system.

I don't always avoid bedtime snack.  My husband and kids always have one, and sometimes I join them.   But I always pause and repeat this to myself, to remember that it's a choice with a consequence.

That's not all, thanks to another important word in that mantra. In part because of it, I have come to think of the period between dinner and the next day's breakfast not just as a time when I don't usually have food, but as a literal daily fast -- a positive decision I have made to give my body something it needs, i.e., a rest from eating and some of the work of digestion.  There's a reason we call it "breakfast" in English, after all.

These five mantras are specific to me and might not help anyone else.  Do you have any truths or mottoes you regularly remind yourself of to keep yourself on track?

The remains of impulse.

I was obese for my entire life, up till age 33.  That year, for no apparent reason, I had an epiphany:  a new desire. 

The twin desires for a better body and better health, I'd always had those.  As long as I remember I alternated between wanting thinness badly enough to work hard at trying to lose weight, and trying to resign myself to the "fact" that I likely never would do so permanently. 

Something new came along in that thirty-fourth year.  I can't say for sure why.  But what popped into my head that year -- it was in May -- was a new-born desire, not to look different but to live differently.  I have described it before:  All of a sudden, I got tired of eating so damn much.

It was as simple as that.  But it was also much more than that. 

I had a desire to behave differently.  But I still had two problems to solve.

First, I didn't know what I should be doing instead.  All I knew was that I wanted to get away from "eating so damn much."  I wanted to eat less.  I didn't know how much less I wanted to eat, or how often I wanted to eat, or even exactly what I wanted to be eating.

Second, and this is the key point I want to stress, I still felt the impulse to eat, as frequently and as strongly as ever.  I desired to eat less.  I was disgusted by how much I had been eating.  And yet none of my impulses had weakened:  I still felt an urge to nibble on my kids' leftovers. I still wanted to extend the pleasure of a tasty meal into second helpings and thirds.   I still longed on lonely evenings for the comfort of eating an entire pizza while staring at the computer screen.  I still thought about going through a drive-through all by myself for a secret cheeseburger.   None of that was any different.   

The only thing different was a sudden, gut-level knowledge that I didn't want to do those things anymore.  Or at least I didn't want to feel the urge to have those things any more.  Or ... I wanted the power to resist the urges.  That is what was new.  A counterbalance.  I had never really wanted that before.  Before, I had wanted to be thinner, but I hadn't really wanted to give up the secret cheeseburgers, the comfort of the pizza, the extra helpings.  Eating too much food had always meant experiencing more of the pleasure of tasting and swallowing.  I had never stopped, really, until it hurt to have more. 

You have to understand, if you are where I was, and if you are hoping that someday the impulses will just disappear, or that you can kill them... that they may never disappear, and yet even though they persist, it is possible to learn to ignore them.  You see, I still have them.  I still think about secret cheeseburgers.  I still remember the prolonged pleasure of six slices of pizza.  I still pause to study the contents of vending machines.  I still get an urge to pile on the seconds after my plate is empty, every time.  The impulses are not gone, they are not less frequent.  If they seem weaker now (even though occasionally I do give in -- I am not perfect, after all), I believe it is only because I am stronger now, after close to two years of resistance training.  In the beginning they were just as strong as ever.

I didn't gain willpower overnight.  But I did, it seems, gain a will.  And the will to live differently was enough to drive me to find a way around the obstacles, the impulses.  It was suddenly so obvious to me that to follow these urges would still feel good, but would be the opposite of what I desired -- those paths would not just take me the opposite direction from what I desired, they would BE the opposite of what I desired.  I wanted to feel the steeper trail beneath my feet, not just the smooth downward grade.  I wanted more than the view from the top.  Though the effort would hurt, I wanted to climb. 

That desire is something that seems to have come out of nowhere, a pure gift; the closest thing I have ever come to understanding what grace is.  I believe there is more yet I can learn from it.  I believe I know what I am to do with it next. 

Will I?

**** Update.  Erin asked in the comments for a recommendation for a kitchen scale.  The key features for one to keep on the counter are, for me, (1) looks good, (2) wipes clean, (3) battery powered so it doesn't take up an outlet, (4) tare button, (5) not very large.  I use this one in black, for $24.