Life Style Choices

When I’m bored I tend to eat. When I am bored with all the meal ideas I can think of, I tend to just substitute junk-food, for a simple lack of a better idea. I work shift work, so I eat at non-conventional times. It is hard on my body and my health to eat like this. And I am starkly reminded that I am not 18 years old and can’t treat my body the way I do. I need vitamins, a balanced diet and 8 hours of sleep. Ah getting older is so much fun isn’t it?

I know diets don’t work in the long run. We all know they don’t. As soon as you stop your diet all your hard-earned weight-loss goes out the window. The only reliable way I tend to lose weight is stress, and real stress or simulated stress is not a weight-loss plan. So I decided to attack my problem another way...

I am an environmentalist, so it is important to me that we harm the planet less, that we make an effort to live sustainably and that we live consciously. I even bring my empty cigarette packs home from a visit with my parents so I can recycle them. Yes I pack garbage to bring home. I know you’re thinking that. And it’s true. But my point is that a few months ago I challenged myself (and you) to make more sustainable choices in our lives and for me it began with 14 flights of stairs in my apartment building. Now keeping in mind I am well aware that as a smoker, who is no longer 18 years old, going UP 14 flights of stairs is tantamount to a suicide attempt. So I go down. At work it is only one flight, so that is easy. After a particularly honest appointment my family doctor, who is pleased that I am a pedestrian who walks to work, to the store etc. but in an effort to help me do better, offered the following advice/suggestion/command... “Walk faster”. So now I walk faster.

It began as an environmental challenge and turned into a lifestyle change and more healthy choices overall in my life. If I could make changes that help the environment, albeit not perfect changes, but reasonably achievable ones, I could do that with other aspects of my life. It is all about expectations. I wasn’t going to go on a spinach salad diet, that is not a reasonably achievable change. But I could eat a salad or some air-popped popcorn at midnight when I get home from work and I’m hungry instead of cookies or potato chips. It isn’t perfect but it is better. I have learned throughout this experiment that doing better both with my environmental choices as well as my eating choices that I don’t have to go from BAD to PERFECT... just better. If, as an environmentalist, it is important to me that we harm the planet less, that we make an effort to live sustainably and that we live consciously, I can take those same beliefs and say that I should harm my body less, that I should make an effort to live a more healthy life-style and I should make conscious choices about my health.

My goal isn’t to force myself to make perfect choices, just better choices, within reason, and those which are attainable... And as a result I have lost almost 35 pounds. I feel like I have stumbled onto some kind of secret. But let’s be honest, I haven’t really... this is something we have known all along. Small changes aren’t hard to make, they don’t feel insurmountable, and they don’t feel like a huge hardship. Expecting yourself to be perfect is unreasonable, expecting yourself to do better... well, that’s not so hard. And when you see results, you honestly say to yourself: “that was actually pretty easy.”  So in much the same way I challenged you and myself to make better environmental and sustainable choices in our lives, I now challenge you to make better lifestyle choices... and a shiny nickel to whoever can prove me wrong!

Peace out
Dar