Choose Health: Fail for Success Series, 1
SHADOW BOXING
Fighting Myself for Myself: Failing Within Boundaries
I am in the middle of several back-to-back travel experiences that make it difficult to keep a health routine. And, I am in the busy season in a new job that I am still learning. This is a recipe for failing grandly.
I have a history of failing grandly in times like this. The details were different, but the feeling was the same. To stay successful, I have had to let some things go and keep my eye on the big things for long-term success. And, I have fallen off my usual game – within boundaries of short-term failures that make long-term successes possible.
I Wanted to Change the Trajectory of My Life
Finding My Golden Center
People often ask why I made the decision to lose weight. At the golden center of it was my health and wellness. For years, I knew what I should be doing, but I didn’t know how to do it and sustain it. Because this is such a hard process, people need to find a why, a golden center for making the change.
My golden center comes into focus most profoundly between 10:00 pm and 6:00 am, when I no longer live in fear about what my choices were doing to me, when I feel freedom from a lifelong conflict around food. I knew nutrition and health facts as well as anyone, if not better than most. But, I could not find a way to act on what I knew.
Eat When Hungry: My Journey into Shadows, Episode 2
Mindset is everything and nothing.
Mindset and the mental processes around my personal changes are shadows of my transformation.
Mindset plays a starring role in every change I have made. Yet, mindset alone would never be enough to succeed in losing half my weight.
Foreshadows of My Shadows: I Felt “Fat” First
My Hunger Drive and Childhood: Feeling the Force of Addictive Foods
Weight has been a lifelong struggle for me, starting in my childhood. Third grade is my first memory of obesity — even if obesity was not yet part of my reality. This was the year that foreshadowed my future struggle with weight.
Because of the way food in the standard American diet makes me feel, I felt obese before I was obese.
In childhood, this feeling was closely connected with eating potato chips, candy, and pizza without being unable to stop. In truth, I could list hundreds of foods that have caused me problems.
Defy My Own expectations: Travel Edition
Choosing Health When Traveling
Making healthy choices when I travel has always been difficult. I have failed so many times that I still expect to fail. So, this trip is about defying my own expectations.
This week, I travel for work. I have distinct struggles before, during, and after a trip. I was doing okay until I heard I was going to be traveling into Hurricane Hilary.
I am not sure what about Hurricane Hilary prompted me to run for the cashews and bananas, but she did! And, so I failed. But, I failed according to plan.
My Vacation Break-Up with Mangoes and Pecans
Inviting Failure Foods into My Life
As I said in my Facebook and Instagram post, dried mangoes and pecans caused too much drama this week. I need to cut these ties for awhile.
To be fair, this drama is caused by my own design. Of course, I have a success plan. But, an important part of my success plan is that I also have a failure plan.
Part of how I succeed is that I always have failure foods at home. These are my off-ramp foods—foods good enough to go off-track with but mild enough to make getting back on-track possible.
Keeping failure foods on-hand is counter-intuitive and may go against the advice of experts. But, this journey is an individual one, and this is my journey.
I live in a house full of food triggers that I no longer eat. And, if I did eat them, I would have skyrocketing failure — a degree of failure with which I have a lifetime of experiences. This is a way of life I no longer want.
My failure foods have kept me in check so far. Without salt, oil, and sugar in my life, I live an all-or-nothing life.
Failure foods help me avoid the all-or-nothing mindset that comes with this all-or-nothing life. This is important for my success.
The Equation of My Soup — Packing it with Plant-based Power
I recently wrote a short post for Instagram / Facebook where I referenced making a large pot of soup to freeze into individual containers. And, in this post, I mentioned that I had used more than 25 different kinds of plants in it, and I was asked for the recipe.
I do not follow recipes. There are benefits and drawbacks to my approach. But, recipes cause me stress, and adapting what I have on hand suits me. Instead, I use concepts to guide my cooking. And, I have gotten better at using the concepts over time. So, what I will focus on here is detailing the concepts.
Overall, I find plant-based cooking to be a forgiving form of cooking. And, keep in mind that I am several years into this lifestyle. So, if you are just getting going, you may want to consider taking a concept and experimenting with it in small steps rather than trying to do too much at once.
A significant part of my journey has been a deep dive into understanding my hunger drive and how I feel my best. Eating a soup like this is not something I would have done early into my transition – for a variety of reasons.
But, seeing what others do has helped me find my way, and seeing what I do may help you find your way as well.
Big Rocks and LIttle Rocks: Navigating Terrain Shifts
Since I last wrote, a lot has changed in my life – as I anticipated it would. The changes are good, and I am grateful for that.
I have now started my new job, which has come with a lot of apprehensive excitement. A steep learning curve usurped my capacities for routine and for writing.
But, I am finding my way back, learning how to live my new life, facing myself over and over again in a whole new world.
I am starting to sleep just a little better as I am adjusting to everything. Sleep helps everything.
I am now pausing, taking stock in what it means to navigate my health and wellness through a major turning point in my life.