Reverse engineer my health?

It seems that my best laid plans fall short because I didn't have time for the thing, I forgot the thing, I lost the thing, I didn't know I needed the thing, I didn't anticipate the thing. 

It seems that when I try to determine of course of action, I run into "I can't, because...." And then I resolve that, only to encounter another "can't." Or I can't resolve it because what is required results in another "can't." 

And one might say "These are just excuses." Fair enough, but they're preventing me from doing what I need to do. So, call them excuses. Call them reasons. Call them ass ulcers. Call them whatever the hell you want, because it doesn't matter. They've been barriers, and calling them excuses does fuck all to help me.

So it occurred to me that perhaps I'm starting my thinking at the wrong end. I'm starting at the beginning, and I think through the process until I hit a problem I can't solve. 

Here's an example:

I decide I need to start going to the gym. So I schedule in into my calendar, and on gym day, I make sure I have everything I need - gym clothes, gym shoes, etc. (I have a locker at the gym, but I make sure it's well-provisioned.) 

I think to myself that I need to eat more healthfully, waste less food, and use up what's in my freezer and pantry. I come to the obvious solution - plan my meals. So I do that. On Monday, I follow the plan perfectly. 

On Tuesday, it took longer than anticipated to get my shower and so on, maybe I had to unexpectedly iron an outfit or clean up doggy puke, so I lost some of the time I was going to use to assemble my pre-planned lunch, or do any dinner prep. I decide to find lunch on campus just this once, and dash to work.

Lunchtime comes. Nothing in the food court sounds good. In fact, I don't like most of the places in the food court. But I'm very hungry. So I'll order something from Uber Eats.

The problem with Uber Eats is that it hardly seems worth it to order something small. No driver wants to deliver a piddly little meal. And I don't want to tip 25% just to ensure my little meal gets delivered. SO I order double, telling myself I'll eat half today, half tomorrow for lunch. Yay! Tomorrow's lunch is already handled, isn't that great?

But the food is so good and I'm so hungry that I eat it all anyway.

When I get home, I'm totally wiped. If I did the double lunch thing, I'm not hungry when I get home, which sounds like a good thing, but it's not. Invariably, I'll be much hungrier right before bed. But it's too late to make dinner, so I'll have popcorn or nachos or something. 

If I didn't have the double lunch, I'm ravenous when I get home, much too ravenous to even chop one vegetable or let the oven prehead. I need food right this very moment. So I eat nachos or peanut butter toast.

This is but ONE example of what seems like hundreds of dilemmas and circles and mazes I seem to find myself in. I should stretch, but I can't because I'm not wearing the right clothes, and I don't have time to change because it takes me too long because I'm fat and unwieldy, and my feet are numb, and my stretch mat is all the way on the third floor because there's no good place on the 1st and 2nd floor and besides, one of the dogs gets in my face (literally) when I stretch on the floor. So I could just do standing exercises, right? Several of the exercises for my back necessitate being on the floor. But maybe I could just do the standing ones anyway, that's better than nothing, right? Right! So I do them for 3-4 consecutive days, and then I actually forget. Or I think "bah, I'm tired, it's okay if I skip a day."

I should take the medicines for my neuropathy. But I have to order them online and they cost a lot of money. Besides, it's the holidays right now and the postal service is on strike and the other delivery companies are overloaded, so maybe I'll wait until the new year.

There are so many examples, and I'm really tired right now because it's the end of the day and I'm brain dead.

This morning, I felt really compelled to try to reverse engineer my health. But I was at work, and was very busy. So now I'm home, and I have the time, but I don't have the brain power to think things through.

We had company for dinner last night, and I was so busy I didn't have time to plan my meals or even have a proper breakfast. I didn't have time to even think about lunch until about 1 pm. I was very hungry, and people kept interrupting me. I finally said "let me put an Uber Eats order in so it can be processing while we talk." I ordered an Indian pizza. It was a 10", and not exactly a thin pizza. And it was marvelous!!! I ate the whole thing. 

And now I'm really tired and brain dead, and starting to get hungry again, but I'm too tired to go chop a vegetable or turn any heat source on. 

But before I close down, what is reverse engineering my health????

Instead of starting at the beginning, start at the end, and keep asking myself what I need to have or do to make that happen. First, I envision the person I want to be. What does she look like? How does she spend her time? What is her energy level like? Then I start asking myself what she does to be this. But with every answer, I ask what is needed to make that happen. 

For instance, let's say I decide that she eats a certain way. How? She plans her meals so that the plan works. How? She has a system in place. How? She determines what she is going to have during the week, and schedules time to get the ingredients, do the prep, and cook the food. How? She thinks through what each meal requires, if advance cooking is required, if she'll have time to go to the store to get the necessary ingredients, and she books the time needed. How? Anyway, you get the idea. And now I'm going to go flop for awhile, and I might come back later to work on this, or I might not.