Health
Food Diaries Are A Pain
The tactic in weight management that I’ve found to be the most effective and also the most cumbersome is keeping a food diary. The concept is simple: record and monitor your intake. The data you record will help you to better understand the needs of your body, what foods should be cut out of your diet, and ultimately help you balance your calorie count in order to achieve your weight goal. While the concept is simple, the execution is not.
Keeping a food diary is tedious. We eat all of the time, and oftentimes there’s no nutritional information available. Even if it is available, you might have to do some digging to find it. There’s also the sticker shock of going out to eat and realizing that the meager sandwich you just ate was 85% of your daily calorie goal. Bummer.
I prefer to do everything digitally, so finding a food diary app was a problem for me. Thankfully many have a scanning feature that allow you to scan a barcode on the food packaging and the app will do the rest. The limitation of this feature is whether or not the food you just ate is in the system. Digital food diaries can take away the friction of recording intake, but there are still real challenges.
Perhaps the most difficult part of keeping a food diary is that they make us admit reality. Yes, I really ate those cookies. Yes, I really ate two lunches. Yes, I had too much to eat at dinner. Reality is uncomfortable, but that was likely the reason you started keeping a food diary in the first place.
Using a food diary is the single most effective tool in achieving weight loss. Take your time to select the method or app that’s right for you, and be disciplined enough to record your intake consistently. Make eating decisions based on your intake and, over time, harvest the benefits of success.
Getting Back on the Horse
We underestimate the power of momentum. Momentum, as it builds, evolves into an unstoppable force. Decision making becomes easier when you step aside and let the momentum of the situation continue to push you forward. Getting it started, or reversing negative momentum, well that’s a whole other story.
The heat of summer completely killed my exercise momentum. Throughout the dead of winter, Benedict and I suited up and did our 4 mile daily walk all bundled up. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t terrible. The oppressive heat and humidity of this summer kept us inside most days and when we did get out there on the trail, I came back with a completely soaked shirt. Disgusting.
Weather is certainly a big obstacle when it comes to exercising outdoors, but so is illness. Being sick typically lasts more than just a day or two. The effects and fatigue can take up to a week to resolve after the symptoms subside. You just don’t feel up to your game and again, you’re kept on the bench.
This is how most negative trends start. A bad day of weather, an illness, a trip. Negative momentum builds, and builds, and builds until it’s moving too fast against you.
There’s no easy around it; you have to push back. Hard. You build momentum by getting out there and getting it done. Reverse any negative trend by doing the exact opposite with extreme prejudice.
If you’re suffering from negative momentum, do the opposite today, do it tomorrow, and keep doing it until you’re back on top.
Listen to Your Body
I hate to admit it, but I’m losing ground to my migraines. Since they started in 2006, we’ve had an on again, off again relationship. At times, they have more control over my life than I do. At other times, they are virtually nonexistent. I’ve been doing all of the right things: solid sleep schedule, good eating, regular exercise, and plenty of water. Yet, from time to time, I get out of orbit. I’ve been in denial about my need for corrective treatment until two things happened. I started keeping a diary, as I should’ve the whole time, and frankly, the diary doesn’t lie. Second, I became irritated that my daily choices had to conform to a rigorous daily regimen of preventative habits. Most days, it’s fine, but what about when I’m on vacation and I want to sleep in or stay up late?
I think that my most recent experience with migraines mirrors our spiritual wellbeing. There are certain things that we should do each day in order to maintain our spiritual balance. While sin is attractive and may even be exciting, we all know the desolation that waits for us on the other side. We know the joy and happiness that comes with a life well lived and the peace that can only be found when we’re living the way we ought to. So, to keep our defenses up against temptation, we pray at various points during the day, we go to Mass on Sunday, and we occasionally go to Confession.
When we slack off on our prayer life, or when we haven’t gone to confession in a while, sin starts piling up on us. We get busy and move prayer down the priority list. Or we get complacent or feel invincible and stop actively working against our principal sin. It’s in those times that we fall into sin. Correcting these failures requires more effort to get back into our prayer routine. That friction may even discourage us and keep us out of orbit for even longer. It’s a cycle that we continue to face every day.
The same is true for our physical health. We know we should eat right, drink water, and exercise. When we’re in the routine, there’s little friction and it’s easier to persevere. Yet, when we fall out of the habit and skip a few days, it easily becomes a week, or a few months. Getting back into the routine requires tremendous effort that often fizzles out by week two. Your body needs good food to energize it, it needs water to cleanse, it needs exercise to maintain healthy levels of activity, and it needs prayer to relieve stress and connect with the spiritual dimension of our personhood. When we neglect any one area, our body sends us alerts, and if we ignore enough of them, we end up somewhere we don’t want to be.
Living a happy and healthy life yields tremendous benefits, but it can only be achieved when healthy choices are backed up with discipline. Only when we’re willing to do the work will we reap the rewards. Listen to your body, meet its needs, and enjoy the fruits of your work.
Walking for Health
Earlier this year, as the temperatures began to rise and Spring poked its head out, Benedict and I started seeing more and more residents along our street spending time outside. Some were just sitting on their porches, others were doing yard work, and still others were playing with their kids. More than a few came up and talked to us, for the first time, and noted how much they enjoyed seeing us out and about, even in the bitter cold winter months. As it turns out, Benedict and I are well known in our neighborhood.
My preferred form of exercise used to be running. I liked challenging myself and trying to beat personal bests. About 3 years ago I converted to walking for health after developing IT band syndrome. What I learned about the benefits of walking surprised me. Walking regularly can have the same positive benefits on heart health as running. Even more exciting, regular walking (10,000+ steps per day) leads to weight loss. As it turns out, excellent exercise doesn’t have to be unpleasant.
The average American walks around 3-4,000 steps per day. Generally speaking, 10,000 steps per day or more would describe an active adult. I use a Fitbit to track my steps (and compete against friends and family) and it helps me not only measure my daily progress, but it encourages me to keep moving. When I’m actively working towards an exercise goal, I won’t sleep until I hit my daily step goal.
While walking does take more time than other forms of exercising, it can be just as interesting. You can explore your neighborhood and community by using varied routes. Keep things interesting by having routes that span different distances so that on days when you don’t need as many steps, you can shorten your workout. On other days when you’ve got all the time in the world, you can get in a few more steps.
Walking can be fun. I’ve already mentioned the competition feature with Fitbit, but even a comparison for yourself between last week and this week can be fun. Use this time to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Take your wife or your kids with you. Look at the architecture of different homes and plan to build your dream home. Stop in at yard sales and keep your eyes pealed for good deals on used cars. Exercise doesn’t have to be boring or tedious. In fact, it can be an adventure.
Walking for health is perhaps the best way to exercise. It’s a one size fits all approach that allows for you to get healthier without overdoing it.
The Beauty Around You
This week will mark the eighth anniversary of this blog. We live in a hurried and distracted culture, one in which we assume that longevity means success. I don’t think that’s true in general, and it’s certainly not true with this blog.
In many ways, this blog is the journal of my adult life. I started it months before my first child was born. Now, I’m at home with four little ones and running our homeschool operation. As I write this post, I look out the window and see three of my children playing cooperatively, and happily, in the backyard. The lessons that I’ve learned, and in many cases relearned, are woven in posts throughout the years.
Catholic Husband is a rough draft. Imperfections can be found in each post, whether they be grammatical errors or the transparency of my mistakes. Taking the time to write about my life and experiences gives me an opportunity to process events and understand the deeper lessons. The blog has grown with me, and will continue to do so.
Spring is upon us, with flowering trees heralding the change in season. As I start to look two years down the road at the 10 year milestone, I want to continue to improve. I want to continue learning life’s lessons as they come, day by day. I also want to firm up and modernize this blog. The nature of life is impermanence, but it’s within my control to ensure that this blog stays on the web. I will be going through the more than 800 posts and correcting grammatical mistakes. I’ll also be taking steps to bring this blog into conformity with modern web standards, ensuring that it can continue to be accessible fare into the future.
While I’m still young, the reality of adulthood slowly creeps into my conscience. When Alison and I are at Mass, and we’re simultaneously praying and wrangling four kids, I often marvel at what we’re able to accomplish. We started this project together, and together we’re raising our family. It’s my sincere hope that by continuing this blog, I will keep growing in my vocation to love, lead, and serve my family.
If You Don’t Understand, Do Nothing
I’m very involved in the healthcare decisions of my family. I always ask lots of clarifying questions and want to make sure that I fully understand the recommendations, treatments, and procedures that anyone in my household will undergo. Thankfully, I have Alison as a great resource to answer any question I may have after an appointment. Yet, even though she is a qualified physician, I want to make sure that I understand everything.
Recently, Benedict was due to get some shots, and before his appointment, Alison and I discussed and agreed which shots he’d get. While we don’t object to vaccinations, we do object to vaccinations derived from aborted fetuses and opt to use ethical alternatives, when available. At the appointment, the doctor suggested he was due for an additional shot that Alison and I hadn’t discussed. I didn’t understand the shot, and so, I chose to defer all of the shots to an appointment later in the month. The delay would give Alison and I time to discuss and agree on a course of action. We sat down, reviewed his records and the vaccination guidelines, cross checked with our list of ethical alternatives, and determined that the shot was ethical and that it was acceptable for Benedict to get it. Was it a minor detail? Yes. Was he going to get the vaccination regardless of the origin? Yes. Yet, I didn’t understand the recommendation at the appointment, so I chose to do nothing until I could ensure that we were carrying out our wishes.
I share this story to illustrate this point. In healthcare, indeed in all aspects of your life, only make decisions when you fully understand them. If you don’t understand, do nothing, get more information, and then make a decision.
Assumptions can be deadly in medicine. When you go with someone to their appointment, you act as their patient advocate. While this title may seem trite, it’s up to you to ensure that everyone in the room is completely clear on what was discussed and what medications and procedures will be carried out. This is especially important when the patient is sick, because their judgement could be impaired.
We tend to have an off-balance relationship with our medical care team. Since we’re ignorant about our particular illness and they deal with it daily, we tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. Never be afraid to ask questions. While some providers may get annoyed, medical research proves beyond a doubt that patients who are active in their treatment have better outcomes. You’re in control of your health and medical decisions which means that while your care team makes recommendations, you’re the one who ultimately says yes or no. Ask all of your questions, and when appropriate, get outside advice.
We do a lot of posturing unnecessarily in life. For whatever reason, we want to impress these total strangers by pretending like we’re intelligent enough to receive, comprehend, and then act on all information given to us. Be wise enough to know what you don’t know, and only make decisions when you’re ready to make them. You’ll be glad you did.
Fighting Weight
Confession: I’ve let myself go. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve gained 15 lbs. Now, that’s not how that’s supposed to work. The weather is nicer, I should be more active. Yet, here I am. I’ve been lazy about my intake and even lazier about my output. For a while now, I’ve surrendered on my weight. I consider my condition to be temporary, but if I don’t get my head in the game, it’ll become permanent! The truth is, I’m having a hard time getting motivated.
I’ve written many times before about our health being a spectrum and always moving towards health or away from it. I’ve been so discouraged about my weight and, considering that I was less than 10 lbs from my goal weight just five short months ago, I’m even more discouraged now. I know that this is going to take some radical action to get myself back on the horse.
We all find ourselves moving in the wrong direction from time to time. Whether it be with our weight or our spiritual life, sometimes life just happens. When it does, like it’s doing right now, I just need to take my own advice and never surrender.
A good place for me to start is by getting back to basics. I don’t have a good food plan and I haven’t been using my food diary like I should. My day needs to start with a weigh-in, I need to hit my water goal, and I need to stop skipping meals, snacking, and binge eating. I don’t often get that hungry and most days I could make it until mid-afternoon before feeling hungry. Yet, despite not “feeling” hungry, I need to eat. I need to plan a breakfast, and then I need to eat that breakfast.
Night prep is another area where I’ve been slipping. I used to have a whole evening routine that included some cleaning and preparing my attire for the next day. I need to get back to taking 30 minutes in the evening to get my next day set up. I need to lay out my exercise clothes so that when dawn comes and my writing is done, I can put on my workout clothes, eat breakfast with Benedict, and hit the trails.
The most important thing for me to do right now is to not surrender. We all get to this point when we can either start fighting back or we can just surrender and drift downstream. Don’t surrender on your weight. Don’t surrender on your health. Don’t surrender! Make a plan and stick with it!
Respect Your Limits
We all have limiting factors in our lives. It may be a health issue, fear, past hurts, or even bad relationships. These limits place constraints on our lives in one way or another. My main limiting factor is migraine headaches. There are jobs that I can’t take, stores that I can’t shop in, and even schedules that I cannot keep because of them. Most recently, I went to an amusement park with my family and realized that rollercoasters can be a trigger for me. In order to have a solid quality of life, it’s important to respect those limits.
The body is vast and complex and as such, there is no perfect machine. Many of us will face major medical issues while others will remain relatively heathy. If we want to maintain a high quality of life, it’s important to respect the limits that our bodies have for us. For example, my migraines are best controlled when I maintain a stable sleep pattern. When I fail to do so, I lose 3-5 days of productivity to the pain and lethargy that migraines bring. So, while I may want to stay up late one night or two, I know that if I do, I’m going to lose. I accept that fact, and stick to my sleep schedule.
It’s important to not aggravate medical conditions. No matter how hard we try or how smart we are, we’ll always lose. I will never beat migraines and trying to do so could cause the attacks to be prolonged. So instead of trying to beat them, I work in harmony with them. I avoid certain stores, I stay on my sleep schedule, and then, because I’m migraine-free, I’m able to do anything that I want.
That’s really the main point. When you respect your limits, you’re able to enjoy what you can do. I may not be able to do x, y, and z, but I can do everything else. We tend to focus on the negative and not the positive. Our limits are probably quite mild compared to some people, and that’s something to be grateful for. I may not be able to join the military, but I can run my own business. I may not be able to stay up late, but I can get a better quality of sleep than most. I may not be able to ride roller coasters, but I can walk around at an amusement park and go on rides with Benedict.
Know your limits, respect your limits, and acknowledge that your limits really aren’t all that limiting.
Staring Down Medical Problems
In life, there may be nothing more disruptive than a major medical problem. Whether it’s one that you’re facing, or one that someone in your family is dealing with, medical problems consume the thoughts and time of those afflicted with them. This dilemma is one that is common in the human experience; despite our best efforts, we will get sick.
When I was a senior in high school, I was delivered a knock out blow from migraines. Nearly every day I had to be removed from class and sent home to recover. The situation got to a point where, near the end of the school year, I was asked to stay home. It was disruptive to the learning environment and, frankly, embarrassing to be taken out of class with such frequency. The attacks were only the beginning. My experience with the physicians that I sought treatment from proved just as difficult. Migraines are relatively misunderstood and I didn’t fit into the typical patient profile. Many of the neurologists that cared for me had little experience with migraine patients outside of middle aged women, so they either prescribed treatments as if I was a middle aged woman or they just didn’t believe me. It took four years to find the right neurologist and only then was I finally able to get my life back.
When you or someone that you love is forced to stare down a major medical problem, it’s important to have courage in the face of uncertainty. While our physical health does dictate many of our daily decisions, there’s almost always things that we can do to improve our situation. A health crisis will face each of us at some point in our lives. This fact alone should be enough to motivate us to make good decisions today to help mitigate the factors that contribute to poor health later.
We put too much faith in modern medicine. It’s true that medicine can do amazing things to help correct imbalances in our body. However, it isn’t an exact science. With each body being completely unique, albeit with similar structures, pinpointing and treating causes of illness and disease can be difficult. There’s a lot that we know but there’s even more that we still don’t understand. Alison is brilliant and knows an unbelievable amount about the body, how the systems work, and what type of afflictions can impact each organ and tissue. Even she will admit that there’s a lot of unknown and that the best defense is a good diet and exercise. That means that although we will face major medical problems, we have the power to fight back by making good choices daily. Your doctor can’t force you to make good decisions, those are choices that you need to make on your own.
When the time does come, despite your good efforts, when you’re diagnosed with some condition, face the diagnosis with patience and humor. Don’t give up the fight and resign yourself to despair. Understand the process, ask lots of questions, and use humor to help you through the difficult days. Life is valuable and precious not because of the utility that one gives to society, but in and of itself. Not every medical problem is fatal, but every problem is impactful. Life may not be the way that it used to be, but you’re just as useful, valuable, and precious as you were before the diagnosis.
Medical problems present us each with two choices: resign the fight and slip into a sedentary lifestyle or take charge of your health and fight back by making good choices every day. When you face this dilemma, I hope that you’ll fight.
Fight the Creeping Bulge
Winter is hard on me. During the spring, summer, and fall, I’m a regular exerciser. Benedict and I can be seen on our 4 mile circuit almost every day. When winter sets in, we’re infrequent, if ever. I don’t want to go out in the cold or the snow or on the salty road. Benedict, I’m sure, doesn’t appreciate the cold wind on his face. It’s usually during the middle of winter that I notice the creeping bulge.
If I’m not careful (and I haven’t been this year), my weight will start to catch me from behind. All of my hard work is slowly but surely erased. By the time spring comes around, I’ve got a good deal of ground to cover to get back to where I was at the end of fall. The creeping bulge is very telling. Health is either improving or declining; it’s rarely in neutral.
Getting healthy requires a lot of hard work. It requires us to tell ourselves “no” often. It’s not just that exercise can be uncomfortable. Regular exercise is often impeded by weather, the time that it requires, or even travel. How many times have you taken your workout gear on the road with you and never made it to the hotel gym? On top of all of that, health is a two-part equation. Not only do you need to increase your exercise, you have to limit your intake. That means resisting some of the most delicious treats cuisine has to offer. It can also make parties and visiting family difficult.
Once you’ve put in the effort and done the work, the next challenge is to not let it go to waste. As with the creeping bulge of winter, it can be easy in any time or season to slip. This is where we need to examine our approach. Are we following a fad diet or making lifestyle changes? Improving health should never be seen as a short term objective. A long term attitude, approach, and plan will always outperform any short term gains.
We will all face the creep at one time or another. The best way to beat it is to stop it in its tracks. An early warning system, like a scheduled weekly weigh-in, can be the best tool for detecting impending danger. Patterns will emerge and let you know it’s time for corrective action. Action is the second piece to the puzzle. Seeing the warnings and responding appropriately will help you reverse any negative trend. Those actions might be increased discipline in working out or perhaps better menu planning and grocery shopping.
We’re all in this fight. Our health is our greatest asset and once it’s gone, it’s gone. Have the courage to fight the creeping bulge.