Thursday, 03 November 2011
Progress does not come like a trend line moving gradually upward. It happens like a toddler climbing stairs. Lots of grunts and strains, face turning red, but no upward movement, not even much hope. Then there’s the reaching with the arms and the knee coming up, the other leg pushing, and then wow -- it seems like it happens all at once. But that’s the illusion that comes with the sudden rush. It never happens all at once. Someone once said, “Honor the failure, there’s more of it, and it’s the leading ingredient in success.”
That can’t be true, I thought. If you read the small print on a bag of victory, the first ingredient is failure?
I do know that if you draw “progress,” as a trend line, you get a squiggly line from left to right that looks like time elapsing with no results to show for it, and then the “jump-up.” On the graph it looks like a stair.
It happened for me after the three-week mark of the Peak Fit class, a few days before the halfway point. All of a sudden, my pants were fitting differently. My belt easily slid in a notch. I went back to the drawer I never open and dug to the bottom for some pants I hadn’t worn in years. They fit. My thighs were thinner.
Of course I was shocked, but why? There is something childish about plugging an address into your GPS and then being elated when you arrive there. It’s science. We live in the physical world. What did you expect? You set a goal, you put a verifiable system for achieving it in place, and then you run the plan. But you’re surprised when it works?
Then why does mastery over some things seem mystical?
The places in my day where I catch myself eating when I should not be eating, and what I should not be eating, such as cheese and crackers 40 minutes before I go to bed, are like leaks in the bottom of a boat. Part of the mission is to plug those leaks. In the past, I’ve plugged those leaks with one of a variety of special efforts. A program, a commitment, a diet. I stop eating the wrong things at the wrong times. Then I work out, which is the equivalent of bailing out the bottom of the boat. In time, everything gets lighter and the boat rests higher in the water. It glides more easily.
But then my resolve falters and the plugs weaken. Water begins to seep back into the boat. Then the plugs give way and I’m taking on more water then before I started.
My new hypothesis (and what is more valuable than a new hypothesis?) is that if I maintain my resolve the plugs will become permanent. Like in a special effects movie, they’ll morph seamlessly with rest of the boat. The plugged-like-a-checkerboard bottom of my boat will become one perfectly integrated fiberglass hull. No leaks. No bad habits.
It seems like a long way to go, maintaining that level of resolve over enough time for it all to become new but real. But what I’ve done so far has brought me to a new place already. If I can ride the high of this “Jump-Up,” why can’t I replicate it? First this stair, and then another.
For now, I can only use the language of cautious optimism, careful disclaimers and managed expectations. This is what I have noticed.
I am apparently gaining some measure of self-control.
I don’t eat while I am making dinner, nor when I am cleaning up.
I eat less right before bed.
Previously, if I absent-mindedly put my hands on my hips I would experience a little twinge of… “That doesn’t feel good.” But now, not so much. Instead, it’s a little zap of, “That feels better. Keep going.”
I don’t wake up in the middle of the night with cravings for bad food
My impulses to eat the things that are not good for me are weaker.
I am noticing how much food I am eating. In fact, I am beginning to have consciousness about what I’m eating and how much I am eating while I am eating it. This is as opposed to realizing later, “Wait a minute, why did I do that?”
There are moments when things that are bad for me actually taste bad. I sampled a piece of cake in a coffee shop the other day and it tasted too sweet. I had heard people talk about things tasting too sweet but I always assumed they were showing off, like, “The Princess and the Pea.” “That mattress is much too uncomfortable -- I could never sleep on that.” In the past, I have only associated “sweet” with one word: “good.”
One afternoon I decided, “I’m doing great, tonight I’ll have a beer,” but later, I forgot to have the beer. I came of age with a hundred young men who would have considered that a symptom crying out for examination, and a cure. But these days are different.
