A little while ago The Eagles song “Hotel California” came on while I was running (I have a very random playlist). I don’t think I’ve really listened to that song in a long time – it’s one of those that you’ve just heard so many times that you don’t think much about it anymore but when I run sometimes I really get lost in the music and listening to the lyrics and it occurred to me that the line “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave” is a pretty good analogy for our health; you can “check out” of paying attention to your health and wellness anytime you like, but you can never get away from the realities of it. You only have one body and regardless of how you treat it, you still have to live there.
This is why any reasonable people who work in fitness that I’ve ever heard speak, have spoken to, or read anything from will tell you that you have to stop with quick fixes and accept that taking care of yourself – physically and mentally – is a lifelong process. Do you want to yo-yo diet for the rest of your life? Do you want to count points/calories/carbs/macros every day until you die? OR do you want to have a healthy relationship with food and your body and make small manageable changes that allow you to live without guilt and shame?
Our health is not the all or nothing thing that people have become afraid of but we look at health and nutrition in these small units – a day, a week or a month – and think that those are what dictates our health and our weight but really all the little choices we make consistently over the long term are the ones that really matter. If you have one can of pop you are not forever poisoned. If you have one doughnut you are not doomed to carry that “extra” 5 lbs you want to lose forever. If you eat non-organic vegetables you are not cancelling out the vitamins and minerals you get from them. The more we look at health as all or nothing the more detrimental we are to any possible progress we can make. There is never “no point” in making a healthier choice even when other choices we’ve made have been less so.
We should never feel like choosing a salad for dinner is a waste of time because we had McDonalds for breakfast and pizza for lunch. It’s not like the nutrients in the salad are invalid on days you eat fast food but will somehow work miracles the next day.
The key really isn’t about whether or not we ever make unhealthy choices, it’s how we bounce back. The more we are able to stop a “less good” choice or two from becoming a runaway train of “well I already had a donut, it doesn’t matter if I eat 12” the better we are in the long run and the more we can just enjoy and appreciate the “less good” choices when we make them – because lets be real, we’re going to choose these things sometimes.
When I was actively sick all the time I just accepted that that was how I felt. That was normal and unavoidable and I just dissociated myself as much as I could from it. I didn’t acknowledge that when I ate cheese and crackers with kielbasa for dinner that I felt worse. I didn’t register that when I drank too much and therefore didn’t sleep and would be up eating cold chicken wings at 5 am, that I was impacted by alcohol – I didn’t throw up and four or five Advils took care of the headache, so I was fine. I didn’t connect that it was the days I laid around and did absolutely nothing but rearrange myself on the couch and eat whatever food I could find that required the least amount of preparation that I felt the most tired and crummy. I wouldn’t admit that my back hurt more when I moved less…that commuting an hour and then sitting for 8-10 hours and commuting back home again had me in so much pain by Friday evening that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
I had checked out. I wasn’t listening to my body; it was giving me all the information I needed but I didn’t want to hear it because none of what it was telling me was the answer I wanted to hear.
But checked out or not, I was still dealing with the consequences. I still couldn’t leave. Not admitting that I was the problem wasn’t actually doing anything for me…except to allow me to stay in my own way…as the song also says, “we are all just prisoners here, of our own device.” I was choosing my reality, by not acknowledging my reality.
When I originally planned this week’s post, before hearing the song, the working title was “Unfinished Business”, because without a doubt the idea of this health journey never being done has been the toughest for me to wrap my head around and I think that’s why we check out. We get bored. Things get stagnant. We stop seeing big exciting things to measure our accomplishments by. It starts to feel frustrating sometimes…you put a lot of work into being healthy (though not as much as people would have you believe remember) and if you aren’t seeing big payoffs all the time then it is very easy to check-out.
Right now I’m within my goal range for my weight (you sit in a 3-5 lb range, not a set number). I am within my healthy range for body fat too; I could (and would like to) lose some more body fat but since I know that I’m not mentally in that game right now I know better than to set myself up to fail trying to focus on that currently, and I’m fine with it. My current priorities are not on heavy lifting so I’m not adding extra weight training over and above what I already do for the time being (that’s coming in a couple months). My plan was to focus on running this summer. I am signed up for my first full marathon in October and I diligently planned out my training and upped my recovery protocols to help ensure I could handle the workload. Well, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, because within two weeks I could barely walk from pain in my one calf. This has been on and off since January, but this time it was much worse and felt like something was tearing in my leg. So I stopped running. I consulted the doctor, the chiropractor, the physiotherapist, the massage therapist, I went to a podiatrist for the first time, got acupuncture, went to an osteopath and am waiting on an ultrasound…it’s better than it was, but still not great and here I am, two and a half months into training and I have run about seven kilometers in the last two months.
This is when I want to check out. When I start to feel like “what the eff is the point?!” If I do everything I’m supposed to, and still can’t do the things I want to do, then why do I work so hard at this. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve still had my share of pity party days since June, but I also know now, that giving up, quitting, is not going to make it better. I absolutely could check out right now, but I can never leave and I won’t actually feel better if I do.
Maybe I’ll never “run” a marathon. Maybe for whatever reason I’m just prone to injuries that will prevent that from being possible for me. Maybe I can run plenty, but I might not be genetically made up for that sort of distance. Maybe power walking is a better endurance type sport for me. Or maybe rowing. Or maybe swimming. I mean I’m terrified of riding a bicycle right now, but maybe if I could get past that, I would love it. I don’t know…I’m not giving up on running just yet though, I still want to be the person who does what they say they’re going to do, and I said I’m running a marathon, so I believe that I will get there and will do everything that is within my power to do it. If I do everything I can and still hit that point where I have to throw in the towel on the marathon idea, at least I’ll know I didn’t just lay the blame somewhere else without owning my part in it.
This year though? Well this year I’m walking it. All 42.2 kilometers. I don’t care if it takes all day, one way or another I’m getting it done…I just won’t be running much, or any, of it.
And then I’ll set my sights on next year, because that is all I can do. Stay checked in. Keep listening to my body. Do the work I can do to ensure I’m strong and healthy enough. Recognize that I do better with a target so keep giving myself one. I want that good struggle in my life…that sense of overcoming something. Giving up may seem easier, but it won’t feel good in the long-run.
We’re all in our own Hotel California, and whether it “could be Heaven or it could be Hell” all depends on whether we want to stay checked in and do the work, or check out and pretend the foundation cracking isn’t our problem. Fix the foundation, it’s worth it.
Pingback: How To Get Better – Grin and Barrett