It's a vicious cycle. I haven't been sleeping well for the past several weeks. Now, when I say I haven't been sleeping well, there are times I've thought that about myself in the past, and I thought it was pretty bad. But I feel like I'm at a whole 'nother level.
Every day I wake up feeling headachy and sleep deprived. It's screwing with my mental capacity, my appetite, my energy, and I'm certain, my health.
From my list of "shoulds," I should drink more water. But I'm already getting up 5 times in the night to pee.
From my list of "shoulds," I should exercise more. (Hell, these days, I should exercise at all.) I've already gone through those barriers. But regular exercise helps with sleep.
blah blah blah....
Suffice it to say that somehow I just have to find a way to summon the strength and willpower to punch through the lethargy and the fog and start living life as the person I really want to be.
Here's my progress since my last post:
Breakfasts:
In my last post, I said I'd replace my buttered peanut butter toast with oatmeal, scrambled tofu, chia puddings, and the meal replacement shake.
I had oatmeal once. It was okay. I topped it with dried goji berries, hemp hearts, and coconut. But the next morning, I felt extremely resistant, and very determined to have my god damn peanut butter toast and you'd better not get in my way. Another day, I negotiated with myself and had just one slice of toast instead of my usual two. The next morning, I tried to talk myself into that again, and got angry at myself and had two slices just to prove to myself that I can have as much god damned toast as I want.
I swear to God I'm certifiable. (That's probably not politically correct to say anymore, is it?)
So, I'm compromising with myself.
Part of the issue is that I love butter or good margarine on my toast as a base, before the peanut butter. Without it, it's all too dry and less delicious. I've tried low fat margarines, but they make the bread watery. I'm told butter is more healthy than margarine, but I'm trying to be vegan, and dairy fat is connected to breast cancer, which I don't want to go through again.
Soooo.... in a container I blended half margarine and half avocado oil (which is supposed to be one of the "good" oils). I added a dot of salt to make up for the lack of salt in the avocado oil (because I love salt and I can't give up EVERYTHING). I added a pinch of nutritional yeast and a pinch of brewers yeast to make up for cutting the flavor in half as well.
I was surprised - it worked out well. So, although it's still fat (yeah, yeah....), I made it a bit less damaging. Also, because it's thinner, I think I used less.
Now, about the peanut butter. I'm addicted to Jif. It's the worst kind of peanut butter out there. It's basically hydrogenated margarine and sugar blended with peanuts. (On the other hand, I've had cheap off brand peanut butter that tastes even more like hydrogenated margarine and sugar and less like peanuts.)
I have a coworker, bless her heart, she thinks she's wise and helpful. Okay, sometimes she is. But she's twenty years younger and believes she has twenty more years of life experience than I do. Whatever. Anyway, she noticed I was putting Jif on my toast at the office, and suggested that if I go to one of the health stores, I could probably find a healthy natural peanut butter.
I kind of went off on her. I said "Oh, are health stores a thing? Is natural peanut butter a thing? Imagine, I've been on this planet for 61 years and never heard of such a thing! Gee, I've never tried natural peanut butter like 50 times in my life and didn't like it!"
Of course, although she's wrong to offer unsolicited advice about my food choices, she is right about the Jif v. natural peanut butter thing.
And as it happens, I've been thinking about doing what I used to do years ago, which is blend 1 part Jif with 1 part natural peanut butter. It's not as good as straight Jif, but it's closer to natural.
See, this is the thing.
This is not my first rodeo.
A place where I used to work brought in a motivational speaker to encourage us to be more healthy. Her focus was exercise. Her mantra was that getting started was the hardest part. She lost me at that point, and I tuned her out. Getting started is NOT the hardest part. Getting started is the EASY part. Sticking with it is the hardest part.
In the past, when people noticed me making healthy changes to my lifestyle, they'd try to be encouraging and say things like you'll feel so much better, your body will thank you, it's great you decided to start getting healthy.
As if after all these years, I finally, for ONCE, decided to make a change.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. It was my 50th, 100th, 500th attempt. Just because you weren't around for the previous attempts doesn't mean they didn't happen.
And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, the older we get, the more prickly we get about other people having notions about our health.
Back to the peanut butter. I bought a bag of peanuts at the bulk food store with the intention of making my own peanut butter in my Vitamix, because it really is better than the healthy natural crap in a jar. But, oh, you know, I'll be leaving soon to go visit my sister's family, so maybe there's no point in doing that now.
That was last week. Here I am at this week. I leave in 7 days. I ate 100% Jif on my toast this morning, just like I did yesterday.
I have to stop rationalizing that "now is not a good time because...." for everything. It's never a good time. My whole life has been "not a good time to start...."
I'm getting up to pee 5 times a night anyway, so I might as well start drinking more water.
And why can't I just do some exercise, any at all? Go up and down steps, walk around campus on weekdays, dance to a youtube video in my living room? What's stopping me? My mind says "there's no point, you're leaving in a week, you'll lose ground." Healthy people just do what they do until they go on a trip, then they come back and start doing it again. (Some of them do the healthy stuff on their trips, too.)
I forgot to mention - we're going on a river cruise in Europe in May. Lots of walking. I really DO have to get into better shape.
Also, regarding the idea that getting started is the easy part and sticking with it is the hard part, maybe I can just keep getting started, and limit the amount of time between attempts.
I should start a section at the end of each posts called Things I Want To Remember.
Today:
Healthy people just do what they do until they go on a trip or are otherwise interrupted, and then they come back and start doing it again. They don't put off eating well or exercising.
Sticking with it is hard, but getting started is easy. Keep getting started.
I'm going to make some peanut butter now.
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