I recently got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I think I’ve probably had a milder form of it for years, but given my propensity to exercise regularly, spend a lot of time outdoors, and eat a relatively healthy diet, I managed to keep it at bay. Until this past year. The morning oatmeal was replaced by fried breakfasts and pancakes. The swimming, yoga, and hiking became much less frequent. All of a sudden pizza and pasta seemed to make it back into my diet, as did dairy and chocolate chip cookies, and bread. Because these carbs gave me an instant sense of gratification. With a cholesterol 60 points higher, my doctor tried to put me on medication, something I refuse to take at all costs after working for more than 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t believe in patching up my problems, but treating the root case.
I’ve fallen off the wagon, I told her, but I’m going to turn things around. I went and bought a bunch of health supplements and vowed no gluten or dairy for at least a month. More vegetables. Berry smoothies for breakfast. More probiotics, more fibre, less saturated fat. No butter, and no pork. More exercise. Less idling. I will cure myself naturally, I decided.
We all set New Year’s resolutions, usually exercise more, drink less alcohol, and eat better. It all seems to centre around the same theme: be healthier. Because deep down we know the healthier we are the better our quality of life will be and the longer we will live.
How many of us actually stick to our resolutions? Why do we actually fall off the wagon? We get lazy and lose motivation. I know I do. I’ll eat healthy tomorrow, or I will exercise tomorrow. It’s so easy to postpone everything until tomorrow, because today it seems like so much effort, and then somehow tomorrow becomes a month or 3 months or 6 months or a year, and before we know it, we are fat, and out of shape, and our blood tests have red highlighted letters all over. My blood chemistry results have always been normal, so seeing all these parameters pop up as abnormal was really a wake up call for me. So I began to ask myself, why am I so de-motivated to take care of myself?
When the weather is nice I find it easy to put on a pair of hiking shoes and head outside, but in the winter, the amount of motivation it takes to get dressed in layers of clothes, and drive somewhere to walk in the freezing temperatures or to go skiing, or drive to town to a yoga class 20 miles and 3000 feet down the mountain, or head to the indoor swimming pool where just the hassle of changing and showering and washing my hair in the communal bathrooms seems hardly worth the trouble. When I get an opportunity to dog sit, I jump on it, because I know it’s the only way I will be forced to walk 10,000 steps in one day.
Everything in winter becomes harder for me. Sometimes when my boyfriend is on shift for 3 days, I won’t shower for 2 days, or even change my clothes, I just walk around in my pyjamas all day. Sometimes I go to bed without brushing my teeth. Making a salad or something healthy to each becomes too much of a gargantuan task, so I just eat small simple meals heavy in protein and starch. I recede to the couch or to the bed and watch t.v. or read articles brief enough to capture my short and equally lazy attention span. It’s complete letting go. After a couple of days of this I usually muster the strength to shower, clean the house, whip up a decent meal. Driving 20 miles to town to go for a swim? No way, that would take an extreme amount of self-motivation and energy that I don’t have.
It seems many of us get hit with seasonal depression around November, so this November I decided to take a road trip out to California and for 2 weeks was visiting all the national parks and hiking almost every day. I thought wow! I did it! I beat the winter blues. But then I came back home and went into hibernation the whole month of December and as quickly as I got in shape in California, I got totally out of shape from hours upon hours of sitting at home. It’s become dead clear that the older I get the quicker out of shape I become.
While it is ok to sometimes be idle and rest and let our body recover from the endless go-go-go we often succumb to in our daily lives, it is important to also keep our bodies in motion. But it is important to also realise what is holding us back from moving. For me, it is the cold and the inaccessibility to the outdoors that I am used to when in milder climates and seasons. I’ve come to realise living at 8400 feet in the Colorado mountains is not for me, at least not for 8 months out of the year. While it is great in the summer-time and in the Fall, the combination of temperatures in the teens, icy roads and hiking trails, and extremely high winds is not something my body wants to tackle.
My New Year’s resolution is to move somewhere warmer, milder, where I can be outside most of the year, be it cycling, walking, paddle boarding, or hiking. The more time I spend outside the happier I am, and the more productive I become inside. My writing projects have fallen by the wayside along with personal self care, because my energy levels are so low. Being active outside has always given me the energy to tackle every other aspect of my life that needs attention.
While New Year’s resolutions are great, they aren’t enough. It’s important to introspect and figure out what is keeping us from achieving those resolutions every other day of the year, and change our lifestyles or environments accordingly, so we can be successful at achieving the things we want to do and become more productive towards our personal goals.
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