Locker Defense and New Year's Resolutionists

This morning was the first time this year I had to defend my locker space at the gym, but I was prepared.  It happened a few weeks ago for about 6 out of ten days.  I came back from the pool intending to stash my wet swim bag and water bottle in the top locker to find that someone had put a lock on it.

THE HORROR!

Initially, I thought, "Surely this will not happen again.  Who would want to stand in the same square footage as another person coming straight from the showers?"  Alas, I was mistaken.  Someone apparently did really want to stand on the same 1x1 foot square of ground as my very freshly showered self.  It happened again, and then again, and again.  I was significantly perplexed and disturbed as all of the other lockers in the section were empty and had no locks, and yet this person chose to select the locker that was directly above mine - the one I've been using for nine years almost every weekday. 

**Side note**
People who wake up at 4:50 a.m. to jump into a cold pool to swim for an hour to start the day and use the same locker for nine years in a row aren't usually people who are generally characterized as those who are laid back and go with the flow.

Obviously, I considered buying another lock and locking the top and bottom locker, but then I decided that probably wasn't necessary, and I could just spread out a bunch of random weird things in there that nobody else in their right mind would want to touch instead and solve the problem just the same.  Since that day, I've tossed in an empty bag, shampoo, a towel to save the spot while I was swimming and today it paid off.

Today, I returned from swimming and the brass lock adorned the neighboring top locker.  SAFE!  WINNING!

(Although, still perplexed.  Why do you insist on being this close to me?  All of the other lockers are available.  Personal. Space. Please.  Thank you.)

Although moderately disturbing, this is not something that is new to the landscape of January at the gym.  It is a magical thing that happens.  In the last few weeks of December at the gym, the parking lot in the morning looks like a barren wasteland.  You could do your entire workout plus cartwheels up and down the parking lot without any concern of being run over or killed.  You could mimic the entire movie of The Sound of Music (complete with all dancing scenes) without bumping into a car. 

And then it happens.  The magical fairy dust of the calendar flips and the first working Monday in January bestows all gyms everywhere with plethoras of swarming humans in the exact places you have been for approximately the last 3,287 days.  You turn the corner into the parking lot at exactly 5:19 a.m. (and 20 seconds) and make the same left and right turns as you have done for forever (so much so that you can do it in your sleep - and half the time you actually are still asleep), and then gasp in abject horror when you see that a non-authorized vehicle has taken your spot.  Your spot - one row back and two places over from the lightpost - is being violated by a random car that you've never seen before.  You close your eyes and breathe, reminding yourself it is too early to commit crimes.  You see all of your friend's cars and they are all out of sorts also, scooched around like this is some kind of sick survival game.

But you are a survivor and you know what you must do - you must summon enough tenacity to bravely face what is ahead of you: the Return of the Resolutionists.

You sling your backpack off to one shoulder to beep yourself into the gym, saying hello to the front desk person who knows you by name.  The man who walks toward you with his towel on his left shoulder on his way up the stairs to walk the track at exactly the same time every morning nods in your direction and you nod back.  You glance at the elliptical machines and every single one of them is whirring as if we're trying to power the entire midwest from the output, and make your sharp left turn toward the locker rooms.  You swing the door open and take the thirteen steps to your locker.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD.

There is a lock there.  There are a bunch of strangers spread out everywhere and you're trying to smile in a friendly way, but you have to squeeze past them, and you're really just trying not to cry from having to think about what to do next because you are not programmed to do so this early in the morning. 

You pull your coat and clothes off, grab your towel, swim bag, water, and conditioner, and lock up.  You stand in the same place you do every single morning at 5:27, holding up the wall and saying good morning to your fellow teammates.  They all are standing in the same place as they always do and arrive in the same order that they do every day.  There are more people here today, though, and they are punctuating the open spaces that are there every other day of the year.  The aquatics manager appears at the end of the hallway and all of us move in a Pavlovian manner to bend down and grab our swim bags.  She arrives with the holy grail at 5:29 and 40 seconds - the key to let us in. 

You enter the natatorium and grab a kickboard and hop up onto the bulkhead to walk to your lane.  And then the worst thing in the whole world happens - someone else that you don't know is standing in front of lane 4.  Half of your soul dies immediately on the spot.  You consider leaving, but remember that perseverance only comes through difficulty.

All swimmers know that we swim in assigned lanes.  You have a primary lane and a secondary lane.  You would never swim in anything but those.  You would never swim with people you don't swim with because you know exactly how the people you swim with swim. You know when they will turn, where they will push off the wall and how far over you need to be to not have a head on collision, and who is most likely to take out the back of your hand with a paddle on a long set, or swipe your butt on backstroke, and who you will 100% of the time one-arm duck under on a returning fly so you don't die.  You know exactly what to do if they might lap you - you've choreographed it every day for years (Is it a wall pause with a foot grab or will you split until they pass?  Will they pass you on the left or will you flip turn and go under them?  And it will change if one of you is swimming stroke, so you know that, too.).  You know who will split and who will circle.  You know the pecking order and how to adjust for pulling and IM and a sprint set.  You know the hundreds of nuances of swim etiquette and who leaves 3 seconds early instead of 5. 

As a result of the invader, everyone is bumped around and the Not Very Laid Back people are pretending we can be flexible, but now we don't even know how to swim anymore and are considering giving up on life in general or starting a war in the middle of lane 5. Two of the very vocal people are making statements aloud that you only barely thought of in your head. 

Somehow - thankfully - we survive the day.  And the week.  Barely.  But not without deep trauma.

Soon enough, equilibrium will return.  Until it happens again next year.

Peace, love, and chlorine,
Ms. Daisy

Weight Loss on the Winning Team

Well, lovies, we've made it.  2017 has been cleared off of our plates and we're here with a fresh start, a new calendar waiting for you, blank, and ready.  The first day of 2018 greets us with the promise of new hope, dreams, and aspirations.  Will you focus on self-improvement, sanctification, connection, your health, being intentional and present, dropping addictions, loving more, enjoying your littles, learning something new, or a combination of all of those? 

Or perhaps you resolve to not make resolutions.  You've failed in the past and you aren't about that useless nonsense of flipping a calendar and waving a magic wand, hoping that you will magically change into someone new. You know yourself well enough to know that change comes slowly, and not because it is tradition when the Gregorian calendar tells us so. 

Whatever camp you find yourself in on this day, perhaps you are like many of my clients and friends who find themselves not quite exactly where they'd like to be physically after the head-on collision they've had with the holidays.  It all starts so subtly.  An extra bag of candy from the grocery store at Halloween because they've got a 2 for 1 sale slides quickly into the eating frenzy and near bake-off of Thanksgiving, which careens us smack into Christmas and Hanukkah, at which point we have given up on the voice of moderation because "it's the holidays" and we'll deal with that later, but now is the time for enjoyment!

Ah yes.  Enjoyment.  January 1 comes and that luster of "enjoyment" looks like you staring at yourself in your mismatched plaid pajama pants, gazing disgustedly at your puffy face, your unshaven bits (PSA: Hey guys!  It's time to shave those beards!  No, seriously - the homeless look is now officially out of vogue - unless you're a millennial, then whatever, man, go back to your microbrewery in the basement.  We won't bother you while you so creatively express yourself.), and a pile of glorious lumps you have somehow managed to acquire over the last few months.  You look aghast, wondering if it is the lighting or if, please God no, let me not really and actually be this hideously ugly.

Okay, that's it.  I'm not going to say it to my friends or on facebook, but bruuuh, I have got to do something.   And so it begins.  You start to reel it in just a little because you know you cannot go on like this. 

But what will work?  What will bring the success that you crave?  (Hint: It's not taking my locker at the gym.) 

Will it be to swear off cookies for the rest of your life?  Will it be to sweat it out on the ellipitical for three hours a day everyday for the unforeseeable future (a.k.a. until Valentine's Day when they have candy hearts and boxed chocolates for sale)?  Will it be to make chard sandwiches for breakfast to punish (I mean, reward) yourself?

If you even have an inkling about the nature of our complicated brains, you will know that these things can only work for a short time.  They are not sustainable (especially the chard sandwiches - right, Court?).  We are desperate little creatures sometimes and we will resort to absurdities to climb out of our panicked states.

I am not all about that cray cray thang.  I believe in making sustainable change slowly, and making it a lifestyle (want more?  Hint: YES, YOU DO.  Check out my book on Amazon: Just One Thing: Simplifying the Mystery of a Healthy Lifestyle.  You can snuggle it on your pillow or frame the cover and hang it on the wall.  Blow it up to poster size and put it next to your mirror with a speaking bubble that says, "YOU CAN DO EEET!"  Or just read it.  Any is fine.). I want you to be able to actually enjoy your life with a cookie, but not be a slave to the sugar god.  I want you to be able to look at something (even though it looks completely delicious) and shrug and be able to say, you know, right now I'm just not feeling it.   Contrast this with the feeling of you holding that third cookie in your hand, biting down, chewing, and thinking, I don't even really want this.  What am I doing right now?!  

What works?  In my health coaching practice, there is one thing that brings a glowing highlight of attention to what is going on in your life, and where you can study yourself to make good and lasting change.  It isn't exercise (although you ought to exercise).  It isn't swearing off foods exactly.

It's a food journal.

What?!  Yes.  A food journal.  Let me propose something to you.  I know it may seem wild, but just hear me out.  I believe that there is a potential that you may have slight cognitive dissonance between what you think you are eating and what you are actually eating, and you won't be able to bridge that gap until you put it in black and white and see for yourself.

My awesome clients have come back to me with amazing revelations.  They see that they are desperately in love with tortilla chips.  (This is actually a recurring theme among many of them. Read: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.)  They see that they are eating about a micro-ounce of protein all day and it suddenly dawns on them why they feel like they got hit by a truck and have energy swings like a cross between a Nanny 911 toddler and your 16 year-old self raging through a tornado of severe PMS.  They see that they are surviving on McDonald's and coffee during the day, cheese and crackers for dinner, and three bowls of ice cream before bed.  They realize that they are drinking a lot more junk than they thought they were (whether that is the poisonous Coke Zero or Tito's vodka or vanilla caramel lattes from Starbucks). 

You can do this old school - pen and paper.  You can get an app.  (And if you do, for the love of all that is good, do not bother tracking your calories.  Counting calories is so Jane Fonda era.  What counts is that you're eating real food.)  You can do it throughout the day.  You can do it at the end of the day.  You know what will work for you.  I also recommend that you write down a few other things in your food journal: how much sleep you got the night before, your overall mood (on a scale of 1-10), if you took any vitamins that day, and your stress level.  Those things will give you a broader picture of  what is going on in your life and how your body is responding to things.

Exercise is great and has many benefits for mental health, brain plasticity (by creating BDNF), preventing Alzheimer's, dementia, and increasing overall good mood, but it will not erase and repair your five donut a day habit.  Food is first.  In my personal guesstimate, I'd say that weight loss is 85% your food and beverage choices and 15% exercise.  Exercise comes to tone up the flabby.  Exercise is how you get that solid six-pack, but you won't even find that six-pack if you buried it under six layers of bagels and Pop Tarts.  Hear me: I do want you to exercise, but I want your exercise to be effective.  It is a lot easier to keep something up when you are actually hitting goals and making change than when you shovel ice cream down your pie hole and put yourself back ten steps.  You're fighting yourself and that is a losing battle, no matter how you look at it.

I want you to win for 2018.  I want you to smash goals.  If you're still breathing, you life isn't over.  Your race isn't finished.  It is not time to give up.  You've got stuff to give.  You were put on this planet to do something, to help others, to give your talents to change the world.  That is a lot easier to do when you have energy, a clear brain, and a body that works optimally.  No, it's not everything.  Your eternal soul will long outlive your shell, but what you do here and now makes a difference for eternity.  Embrace it and go get it.

Peace, love, and let's do this!
Ms. Daisy

p.s. If you'd like to work with me and have someone come along side of you and cheer you on and guide you toward your goals, get in touch with me.  It is an honor to watch people grow and change and become who they have wanted to be.  I'd love to help.  (Send me an email and connect with me: energeticwellnesscoaching@gmail.com)  I do Skype as well as in person programs.

A letter to the Resolutionists

Dear Resolutionists,

Hey, how's it going?  It's been a while since we've seen you around - like maybe 11 months or so.  Are you really going to do this again this year or do you think you can just skip it?

Don't take that the wrong way.  I'm not trying to be mean.  

Here's the thing: you really just don't care about exercising and health and I don't know why you're pretending to do it because you bought a new calendar.  You're using this momentus occasion to flip the switch in your brain from brownie-eating couch potato to what you hope to be a svelte Ironman.  

You got it twisted, bro (or homegirl).  You're doing it because you ate a gluttonous amount of Halloween candy, turkey at Thanksgiving, and everything in sight at the 4(0) Christmas and holiday parties you attended, and now you're looking at the scale with a horrified grimace, wondering how you got there.  You got there because it's your lifestyle.  It's what you like to do.

If you're not going to adopt exercise as part of your lifestyle instead of a Hail Mary to lose the ten pounds you gained in the last 4 months, what's the point?  

Our society loves quick fixes and pills to cover our real problems.  A healthy lifestyle isn't a pill.  It's your whole way of life.  It's your whole brain and your outlook.  Exercising to lose 10 pounds starting January 1 (cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye) is the equivalent of making your own quick fix.  What about you wanting to live a bit longer than the track you're on?  What about eating for health because it makes you feel awesome, energized, and clearheaded?  What about giving your body real nutrition so you can fight sickness, avoid lifestyle diseases, and live healthy and well (and be able to do what you're supposed to do)?  What about exercising and eating so you can do the things on your bucket list?

Nah, whatever.  What am I saying?  It's just another year, just like the one before it and the one before that.  

One day, however, that January calendar will be the last one you buy.  I hope when you get there, you don't look back with the same horrified grimace.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.  Life is more than clothes, and the body more than food.  If you don't have that straight, then your whole life is wasted.  But it sure is a lot easier to do what you're called to do when you have energy and endurance.

So, if you don't want to make it a way of life, maybe you should just sleep in.  The regulars like their parking spots, their lockers and their lanes.  

You mad, bro?  You're a Resolutionist.  Man up.  You get one life.  Do it, don't waste it.

Peace, love, and you don't have to wait until Friday,
Ms. Daisy