Health
Flipping Switches
I remember exactly how I felt. It was the fall of 2018 and two years into our new life out west, I was at my (then) highest weight ever. Alison and I decided to make a change, and as the calendar flipped to 2019, we eased into an entirely new lifestyle.
It wasn’t just that we wanted better guidelines for what to eat and how to fuel ourselves, as two exhausted young parents of three little kids, it was that we needed to take control. My headaches were derailing our life, and it was time to make the change.
Together, we slowly eased into it, with a one-week transition. It wasn’t perfect, there were times we fell off the wagon, but we were committed. I walked almost every day, and by Halloween, we had hit our goal. And it held for nearly four years.
The last two years have been a one-two punch of stressors bigger than we’ve faced before, and we lost ground. All of it. Through it all though, I never lost sight. I never gave up on my identity as a walker, or the sure belief that if I did the work, I’d reach my goal. Where I am is a temporary condition, a mile marker on the journey back.
Now settled, we’re back in the game, and it’s incredible how fast everything changes when you flip the switch. Health is a treasured gift that must be protected because once lost it is incredibly difficult to get it back. I have a full life, and to be prepared to tackle the daily obligations, I have to be at my best. I’m getting there because I never lost hope.
What’s true for physical wellness is true for spiritual wellness. We never give up on becoming the people we were made to be. When things get hard, when we fall down, we remember whose we are, flip the switch, and get back into the game.
Potential Energy
The most enduring success that any of us can enjoy is often the result of extensive efforts over time. Years of quiet, diligent work results in “overnight success.” Although those around us can see the finished product, almost everyone misses the tiny wins that led to victory.
Sustaining any good habits over time, in pursuit of a personal goal, is never frictionless. Life ebbs and flows, with easy days and hard days. On the hard days, it’s easy to quit, especially if progress isn’t apparent. When we reach plateaus, we lose the instant feedback loop, and backsliding becomes a viable choice.
In those plateaus, it can be helpful to think of our good habits as potential energy. As I continue to store up daily reps of good choices, I build towards a brighter future. At some point, my body chemistry will be primed and ready to start losing weight again. Would I rather be firing on all cylinders or have to start cold? At some point, my spiritual life will reach spring again. Would I rather meet the change as a springboard to greater virtue, or have to start all over building a habit of prayer?
We can’t always see the change happening, especially within ourselves. The only thing that we can perceive is our daily actions, and the trajectory that they send us on. We can either be primed and ready for the next phase of growth, or start behind the 8-ball. Storing up potential energy now prepares us for the explosion of personal growth that’s right around the corner.
Restart
From time to time, we get derailed by life and need a reset. Although we may daydream about grandiose plans that will restore us to our former glory, years of broken plans and commitments reveal a simple truth.
The best way to succeed in any plan, program, or life change agenda is to start small, and start today.
Homeostasis
It’s in our nature to seek to control those things around us. We want to control our time, our schedule, our health, and our destiny. The opposing truth to this desire for control is the reality of impermanence. Things, elements, and life are constantly changing.
We’re a quarter of the way through 2023, and perhaps you, like me, are starting to pause and reflect on our lack of progress on maintaining physical health. A year of work has distracted me from my once solid routine of morning walks. Work has been a wonderful thing, but by losing focus, I’ve lost progress.
There’s a powerful force in our biology called homeostasis. Our bodies can be willful and fight back even our modest efforts to maintain our health. We use physical exercise to improve efficiencies and increase health, while our bodies struggle to pull us back to idleness.
Homeostasis is the resistance we experience to our good work. Why do we not do the things that we ought to do? Why do I hit snooze for 45 minutes extra sleep when I know a morning workout will set my day up for success? Why do I scroll YouTube when reading a book is far more relaxing? It’s the resistance that homeostasis brings that causes me to tend towards idleness.
This natural tension is as old as humanity itself. We even find it in the Bible and in the writings of the early Church fathers. Sin is easy, sainthood is not. If we don’t give into the myth of sudden, radical conversion, but instead accept the daily work as St. Francis did, we can train our bodies. We can orient our minutes and days to the good work of health, peace, work, and prayer. Homeostasis will sink even the best laid plans if we let it; choose to do the work.
Work or Workout
I’ve thought a lot about scheduling over the past few months. Some of it was the normal end of year reflection, and some of it was the realization that I haven’t been walking like I had planned.
Life is about balancing competing priorities, and over the past 12 months, work and sleep have too often beat out workouts. I enjoy working out, and listening to podcasts during my walks is a great use of my time. But the pressures and deadlines have knocked me off course, and I need a reminder of why I should get back out there.
The truth is, I work better when I’ve exercised. Sleeping in gets me an extra 60 or 90 minutes of sleep, but those precious minutes don’t make nearly as big of an impact as waking up on time does.
Sleeping in pushes my workout into my work hours, derails my morning quiet time, and gets me off to a bad start. Occasionally, it’s necessary, but it usually does more harm than good.
I do best when I stick to the plan; it’s a plan that I crafted for a reason. I can get a full night of rest, workout, and get all of my work done in the same day. It just takes a recognition that everything has a time and a place, and if I want a full successful day, I need to commit to the plan.
Regret
Jolting moments happen in a man’s life that inevitably lead to a health kick. An engagement and the birth of a child are two of the big ones. The main difficultly is translating that momentum and turning a kick into a lifestyle. We have enough time each day to include an exercise regimen on our schedule, but doing it consistently over time proves to be the real challenge.
There are plenty of outside factors that can derail a healthy lifestyle. Injury, sickness, schedule, and even careers put up major roadblocks, but we truly must live a healthy lifestyle if we want to be ready to play and explore with our kids.
I’m coming out of a rut, many months devoid of meaningful progress. It’s a cycle that I’ve experienced for at least nine years, and one that I’m trying to break. I prefer not to have good years and bad years, I want great years. I want years when I have the energy and clarity of mind to take care of my kids, my household, and still have enough gas in the tank to play.
At this moment, I appreciate that positive changes now will need less effort in the future. The longer that I maintain a healthy weight, the more productive years that I’ll have to share with Alison and my kids. It’s a daily investment of time and energy to reap almost guaranteed dividends.
None of this is new, even on this blog. It’s just a reminder that hard work today will benefit me tomorrow.
Two Weeks
I was on a roll back in late January. I refocused on my physical health sooner in the calendar year than normal and had a nice streak built up. Then came the deep freeze. What began as a pause turned into a full-blown rout. After weeks of inactivity and poor eating, I was feeling the pain.
There’s so much to learn about yourself and your physical health. Guidelines and rules of thumb abound, but physical health is one of the most personal things in our world. My body is unique and so while I may follow personalized health advice, I will have a different experience than anyone else.
One truism that I’ve learned in years of observing my physical health is that when I’m feeling my worst, I’m 14 days away from starting to recapture that physical health. Two weeks of a solid sleep cycle and walking four miles before sunrise and I start to get my energy back.
The problem with that reality is that the first two weeks of any routine are always the hardest. As you build a streak, that momentum pushes you forward. It’s easier to have a cheat day on day 3 than on day 73.
The other truism about our health is that, like our world, it has a quality of impermanence. Your health is a moving target, always improving or declining. There is no stasis when it comes to wellbeing.
And so, I present this reminder in a long string of reminders about physical health that have appeared on this blog over the past eight years. Physical health is the building block of life, and it’s something that you have to get up and fight for every single day.
I Know What to Do
I know what I need to do. I know what habits and activities leave me feeling rejuvenated, and which leave me feeling sluggish. Waking up on time and taking those precious pre-dawn hours for myself always leaves me ready to serve my family. Drinking water and fueling my body with the right foods prepares me to tackle the challenges of the day. If I know what I need to do, why don’t I do it?
After more than a decade of trial and error, I finally have a combination of treatments that soothes my migraines and gets me back to life. So, when I wake up feeling the pain, why do I delay my treatment? I don’t have to feel bad all day long. I can be back to myself within two hours, if I make the right choice.
A fruitful spiritual life comes in seasons. There are times of abundance, and times of dryness. I know the steps to move me beyond feeling drained, I just need to shake up the habit.
Every time I face boredom or laziness, I know the solution. I know the steps to take to improve my physical health, and I know the steps to take to improve my spiritual health. I just need to be brave enough to take the first step, which is always the hardest.
Beyond Routine
For a few weeks now, I’ve felt like I was adrift. While considering my daily routine and struggling to get back on the horse, I came to a deeper insight. A daily routine without purpose is monotonous. If I’m going through my daily repeating task list with no aim or goal, I should feel bored and lost. If the tasks that I’m accomplishing day in and day out aren’t oriented towards some larger goal, then how can I expect fulfillment?
Using that lens, I took a closer look at my schedule and daily task list. On it, I saw lots of cleaning. Every Monday I do the laundry and clean the entire house. Each day I clean the kitchen and sweep the floors. Cleaning is my responsibility in my family and I relish a clean house. In order to fulfill my responsibility and have a clean house, I have to work at it every day.
I enjoy writing and publishing on this blog. I need to take time each week to plan, write, edit, prepare, and publish.
I want to live a healthy life. I need to maintain a healthy sleep cycle and exercise for an hour each day. I need to avoid sugar and drink water each day.
I want to be a constant learner, so I need to take time each day to read.
I want to be a great father, so I need to take care of my children and play with them.
As I take a look at these goals, I start to see the contours of my day. I want to get an early start, so I need to get to bed on time. Waking up early with nothing to do is annoying. Waking up with purpose, and understanding how that enables me to get all that I want to get done, gives tremendous meaning.
Routine is more than just a cycle. Routine is your goals, broken down into daily steps, and assigned a specific time to work on them. Woven together, these days bring meaningful progress over time.
It’s easy to feel stuck or adrift when everything is routine. When you start to look at the bigger picture, your goals and the direction that your life is going in starts to come into focus.
Do What Works
Last year, I had the most incredible breakthrough in my life. I achieved health and fitness goals that I set for myself a decade ago. The hardest thing in managing our health is maintaining it. We can do all of the hard work, only to watch it all disappear with sloppiness.
I know exactly what I did to hit those goals. I know the daily habits that I formed and followed. I know the sequence of events that led me to success. So when I now find myself needing to get back to that point of health, I don’t need to struggle with developing a whole new program. I don’t need to tinker with the habits or routines. I just need to do the work.
When you find something that works, just do that and forget about the rest.