It has been quite a struggle to share some thoughts lately. I am realizing just how important these reflections have been to my overall process, so I am very glad to share this update, despite not having much progress to show for it. Despite recently breaking below 300lbs, I am currently hovering just above that as I’m trying reorient myself to push hard. I hope you’ll enjoy this off-the-cuff monologue of my latest reflections on how I want to make the best of the road ahead.

Recent non-scale victories

Appreciating the person I see in the mirror

Despite being very far from done, I am noticing significant changes in my self-image. Very slowly I began to notice I was reflexively avoiding my reflection less and less lately. This recently culminated in actually smiling back at myself for a brief moment. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this beyond the fact that this is a notable event that I want to capture and appreciate.

Meal-prep

Getting back into meal-prepping has been a bit of a challenge. I’ve vastly underestimated the benefits of having pre-prepared meals when things are difficult. I am very glad to have at least made the next week significantly easier and I am definitely motivated to keep this up moving forward.

Trying to imagine dieting happy

Given that getting to where I want to be is going to require a great deal of time and effort for quite a while, I feel that I need to learn to truly enjoy the process. Up until this point I can admit that the vast majority of the enjoyment I’ve gotten from this process have been just about the numbers in my spreadsheet. The problem with this is that it’s ultimately results-driven rather than process driven. I recognize that so many aspects of building a healthier life can be quite fun. Cooking, going for walks, lifting weights, being around people, and so many of the things I’m doing in this process are fun on their own, so why not in totality? I guess that a big part of the problem is pressure. I want to be driven and motivated by the idea of becoming more capable and taking better care of myself rather than a shame spiral over my limitations.

What I’m trying to reorient in my mind is to reframe my conception of this process as a joyful adventure rather than a grueling gauntlet I need to merely survive. I think a way to do this is to double-down on this as a learning process. I’m beginning to realize that a truly growth-oriented mindset is a lot more than just understanding change is possible. It would seem that patience and compassion are foundational to it. I have been really reflecting on how to disconnect the idea of high standards from harshness and impatience. How do I push myself to reach greater heights out of love rather than fear? One largely-untapped resource of joy available to me in this process has been the absolute bounty of encouragement I regularly receive. I still recognize the all-too-familiar numbness preventing me from truly appreciating the kindness I’ve received up to this point. Being open to really focus on those moments and cherish them for what they are is a clear opportunity to derive more joy from this process.

On a more foundational level, I’m recognizing that I need to figure out how to derive joy from doing the things necessary to live a healthy life. The more I think of it, the more it seems to be less of a mystery and more a process of decoupling the goals and strategies from cruel judgement. It feels so natural to believe “I must do this because I am terrible” rather than “I care enough to work on this problem”. I now believe that the problem isn’t actually a lack of intrinsic motivation, but rather a focus on negative intrinsic motivators over positive ones. Reorienting this seems to be very difficult problem. Internal and external pressures seem to be what fuels the harshness, and addressing those can be very complex. So for the rest of this year I have a real question to answer: how can someone enjoy the process of building health despite the pressures and difficulty? I certainly don’t have much of one now, but I am excited to work on that problem.

Mini-rant: Lifestyle carpentry

An axe I have to grind is that people very often want to tell others to “just do X” to resolve various problems. I had a conversation with Samuel about how telling someone to “just install Linux” isn’t exactly a silver-bullet. I wholeheartedly that much of this is well-intentioned and is actually people trying to help, but in practice it’s rarely what brings change. Everyone has particular circumstances and capacity to take on particular changes. In my mind, I now think of the process of changing lifestyle and mindsets as very similar to the game of carpenty in Puzzle Pirates but Tetris is also a good metaphor. In both games time passes and mistakes compound. Ultimately the objective is to fit a piece within a space that it may or may not perfectly fit inside. With careful planning and diligent work, it is certainly possible to make the best of any particular piece. That is not the same as saying all pieces are equally useful at all times in the game.

For me, I am realizing that my negative habits relating to sleep are ‘costing me’ a significant amount of space that I need to really focus on resolving them to fit better habits. For example it’s very difficult to go on a morning walk when being reliably awake in the morning is a challenge on its own, and has knock on effects on other things. As such I now see the process of changing habits as a ’trade’ where you try to move time and effort from one domain into another. Naturally some trades are profitable than others in particular situations. The real challenge seems to be about recognizing the opportunities in high value trades.