Food Is Fuel

Informative AND entertaining reading:

When you refer to food as fuel it does NOT mean that you dismiss all the things that food is and does. It does not mean that you see fuel as the only story about food. Rather, it’s a way of communicating food to people who desire simplification of eating in a way that they can relate to and follow.

Hang on; we’re going to get all science-y on your ass.

http://www.bodyforwife.com/in-defense-of-food-as-fuel/

On Self-Care

I love this phrase: socially exhausted.

I’m not going to call myself an introvert because I find the term has become overly popular lately, with online quizzes that label anyone who doesn’t want to put pants on sometimes or likes to relax quietly after a night out as introverted. If I had to put a name to it, I might call myself “socially exhaustible.” I can function in social situations, even enjoy myself, but getting to know new people or spending time in crowds or groups drains me pretty quickly. I love the people I love and draw strength and joy from them, and I do genuinely like learning more about new friends, but I need some regular and intentional me-time if I want to continue functioning.

If that sounds like you, READ DIS:

https://ontheuplift.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/self-care-for-the-socially-exhausted/

The Coveted Work-Life Balance

Pete Dupuis is in the world of fitness business consulting, a father, and a damn good writer. This post is specific to his experience, but the lessons relate to just about anyone.

Finding balance in my own personal and professional life is not a finite game. Due to the constantly changing circumstances of my life, there will never be a moment where I can say that I’ve found the permanent recipe for work-life balance. Instead, I can only tell you what has worked for me in the past, and you can go ahead and cherry-pick the ideas that bring value to your search for balance.

http://www.petedupuis.com/blog-1/2016/10/19/lessons-learned-while-chasing-the-elusive-work-life-balance

Stop the Struggling

Nia lays out my past life in a nutshell. Maybe yours, too.

The all or nothing approach isn’t just flawed — it’s dangerous. The “all” end can lead to obsession (some may binge eat, develop disordered eating habits, use exercise as punishment, etc.), shame and guilt (from being unable to sustain such a rigid methodology), and of course dissatisfaction from never reaching one’s goals. The “nothing” end is, well, where you don’t do a damn thing; you don’t work out regularly or make consistent smart food choices. Since you’re not “doing the plan perfectly” you decide not to do anything.

I can't say I've got her solution down pat, but I can say I believe it IS the solution, and I'm striving for it.

http://www.niashanks.com/struggling-build-fit-and-healthy-body/

Calorie Counting: Maybe Don't

Depending on who you are, calorie counting may be a No Good Very Bad idea for you.

For me it was temporarily okay, to learn where I was & where I should be, and how to pick the right foods for my workout needs...but I continued to do it for YEARS because I am exactly & precisely reason #3 that you will read in this post.

http://paleoforwomen.com/5-reasons-to-stop-counting-calories-right-now/

If you are also a high-achieving perfectionist, and you feel you need to count calories in order to get your eating in order, then my recommendation is that you put a defined TIMELINE in place before you even begin. Go ahead & log calories for X days or X weeks, using the info to make smart nutrition decisions, and then once you reach that point, STOP.

If you've been doing it right (with the goal of learning how to eat right for your body), then you will have built the habits necessary to continuing eating to your needs, and you'll hopefully have learned how to gauge that based on your body's feedback, NOT simply on what the little calorie-tallying charts tell you.

Here's where I am today:

Every now and then, when I start to feel terrible (low energy, poor sleep, etc), I realize I am probably not eating enough, so I count calories for a few days to see where I am. Invariably, I find that I am about 500 calories south of where I should probably be - so with that info, I STOP COUNTING and start making a conscious effort to add more calories. Soon enough, I feel strong & badass again.

Every now and then, when I start to feel like clothes aren't fitting right and maybe I'm a little fluffier than I want to be...I DO NOT start counting calories. I merely pay better attention to what I'm eating, and I realize that I probably should stop buying chips & pizza for a while, until my usual good habits are back in charge and most of my intake is en pointe. Then I can buy chips & pizza again, and they remain "sometimes foods" until I get out of whack again.

And my friend, listen to this: I am not bouncing back & forth between these options on a weekly basis. The first happens 1-2 times per YEAR. The second, again 1-2 times per YEAR.

This is a life worth living, far more enjoyable than tallying every calorie every day for the rest of your miserable life.

And you can get there, I know you can - if I can do it, ANYONE can do it. I believe in you.

Stop Trying To Have It All

My version of this is a constant struggle for me, and I suspect it's true for most of us.

What’s changed is not our inability to manage our time or “balance our lives” between work and play. What’s changed is that we have more opportunities for work and play than ever before — more interests, more awareness of every potential experience we’re passing up. In short, we have more opportunity cost.

And we’re made aware of this in a terribly connected way each day. Every person who decides to sacrifice their dating life to advance their career is now bombarded constantly by the rambunctious sex lives of their friends and strangers. Every person who sacrifices their career prospects to dedicate more time and energy to their family is now bombarded with the material successes of the most exceptional people around them at all times. Every person who decides to take a thankless but necessary role in society is now constantly drowned in inane stories of the famous and beautiful.

So how do we respond to this new, overly-connected culture? How do we manage our FOMO?

You CAN and SHOULD read it all: https://markmanson.net/you-cant-have-it-all

Turning The Dial

This simple advice is spot-the-fuck-ON as far as nutrition goes.

...start where you are, then dial UP certain things and dial DOWN other things. These dials aren’t based on an arbitrary list of “good” or “bad” foods. Instead they are based on objective characteristics of different foods, and what you want to achieve. 

http://youtrition.net/get-fit-without-restriction/

How To: MED

Two good posts regarding Minimum Effective Dose training, something I struggle with.

If you, too, want to do more more more all the time, please read & absorb the lessons shared here:

https://jmortontraining.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/how-to-minimize-gym-time-and-make-room-for-the-rest-of-life/

http://www.niashanks.com/doing-too-much/

You Cannot Be Quantified

This post is a moderated take on the "quantified self" trend.

We, as a society, are awash in data. In 2013, we as a collective whole had produced 90% of all of the data ever produced in the 2 years prior. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number is not at 99% with a bunch of trailing zeros.

Of course the health and fitness industry is aware of this and producing items to take advantage of the trend, allowing you the humble user to track all sorts of things, from steps per day to blood oxygen levels, and then compare them over days, weeks, and months. This is typically lumped under the banner of “quantified self.” Suddenly, it’s all about what we can measure and objectify.

 http://whole9life.com/2015/02/biohacker-conference/

I myself just got out of it a year or two ago. I was all over calorie tracking, both input & output, and seeking to measure every component of my health. For YEARS.

I have glorious spreadsheets planning and tracking and evaluating workouts, nutrition, sleep, time nature, averages, conditional formatting, you name it. I basically did, manually, what these magical little wearables can give you via the cloud in an instant.

In a word: exhausting.

Initially it was helpful stuff, giving me a whole-life viewpoint of places I needed to improve. I learned that time in nature is a HUGE factor for me. So is social time. So is complete downtime.

But eventually, it turned into seeking perfection, finding failures (which I can now see were "failures"), and unending spiral of frustration, until I simply walked away entirely, to save my sanity.

Now, what about you? If a device on your wrist or an app on your phone encourages you to move more, or rest more, or eat better, whichever nudge you need - then that's great! Use it!

But when it becomes a rabbit hole of obsession, tracking and measuring and evaluating and frustrating...knock it off. Throw it all out and just live. You can't keep increasing your steps and your sleep and perfecting your nutrition forever. You have to level off at a place that is easy, healthy, and sustainable, and simply stay there. And you'll get there by putting the proper habits into place.

These wearables are tools you can use to build healthy habits, but once you have the healthy habits in place, you simply don't need the tools any longer. Pass them along to someone who does.

Keep this perspective, and avoid the rabbit hole, my friend.

Financial Fun

Off my usual topics, but something I am intimately familiar with: the mindset of personal finances.

This isn't a how-to-save post, but a "find your WHY" post:

http://twocents.lifehacker.com/personal-finance-has-everything-and-nothing-to-do-with-1766425829

And it's highly accurate, my own experience tells me. I label my various savings accounts for specifics (vehicle, vacation) that keeps it practical (new tires, no problem, tap the savings account) but also ensures I don't mindlessly blow money on daily Americanos, so that I have ample funds stashed for this summer's mountain vacation.

But for some people, a daily Americano will light up their life, because travel isn't all that important to them, or because they have perfectly-placed friends ensuring free vacation lodgings, or whatever.

On the other hand, I don't need enough funds for a trip to Europe, so instead I will spend a lot of my money on my personal trainer, who is vital to my daily happiness.
 
The point is to know what you're working your ass off FOR, adjust your spending habits accordingly, and ignore what everyone else is doing.

Social Media Rants

Last week I set a habit to keep my phone in another room during Reading Time (if I am on the couch with my book, it's Reading Time). I love getting lost in a good book, but I had found I was grabbing my phone now & then to look at something legit (What does the Salt Lake City library look like? Where in Alaska was John Muir?) and then losing endless buckets of time down the rabbit hole of various social media apps.

By throwing away my phone during that time, which is about an hour each night if life is going well, I have learned how much time I was wasting, and how much I don't miss it. I like seeing details of my friends' lives, but most of the time, that's not what I'm getting. What I'm getting is truly fucking obnoxious bullshit: political and religious rants, not-funny memes, endlessly shared links for no discernible reason, crap I would never choose to see, but is cluttering up my view. And that's AFTER I have his all the obvious weirdos, narcissistic jerks, and relentless ranters.

But mostly, the fitness posts make me want to scream. I follow many fitness peeps on IG, via my employer account, that makes me want to reach through the phone and punch them. There's a dude who constantly posts his crazy yoga poses that are unrealistic for 99.99999% of people to even consider, which frankly makes them completely pointless - but he likely thinks he's being inspiring.

One woman in particular steadily shows vacation pictures and selfies professing perfection, even if they explicitly say shit like "I have such awful bags under my eyes!" (while standing so that we can see the lights of The Big City behind her) or "It's so hard to share a 'before' picture!" (that displays better abs than me at my smallest) or mindless quotes about loving the simple things in life as she stands on a beach in paradise. I am positive she means well, but she has absolutely NO FUCKING CLUE that she comes off horribly narcissistic because she has absolutely NO FUCKING CLUE how far removed her life is from the masses.

I can practically track the change in my mindset when I see these kinds of things. I have a critical eye that sees the bullshit, yet I feel myself asking why HE can bend so easily, why SHE has such wealth, why didn't I get the kinds of genes that mean six-pack abs? LIFE IS SO UNFAIR, YO.

And yet, fuck that, I love my life, when my mind is on straight. The problem is that these sorts of things incessantly warp your view, your thoughts, your beliefs, until you are a changed, miserable-by-comparison person.

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN.

And don't be part of the problem!

This Girls Gone Strong post is a far more moderated take on social media. It asks the right questions to help ensure your life is enhanced by social media, not worsened. It is intelligent and well thought-out, unlike my rant above.

https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/social-media-trap/

Making Your Bed Is Stupid

Recently I watched a video about making your bed, and it was basically touted as the solution to all your woes.

Well, I call bullshit.

I never make my bed, and here's why: it absolutely doesn't fucking matter.

• Other things can give you a sense of accomplishment first thing in the morning. Like, make coffee before you've had coffee, or cook up a big breakfast. BOOM, you rock.
•  Your bed should not be used for anything but sleeping & sex, so why should it look pretty? You only see it when you're about to crawl in or out. You want pretty, look at a flower.
•  When I leave my bed in the morning, my husband is still sleeping in it; I'm pretty sure HE wouldn't think it important for me to make it. 
• Also, we don't even share blankets, because I like to be tucked in like a child, and also I overheat easily. How does one make such a bed? Why WOULD one?

Does all that mean I'm destined to be a failure in life, Admiral?

No, but it might mean I never have bedbugs or stupid allergies from the wee critters who try to live in my sheets.

http://paleoforwomen.com/why-i-never-make-my-bed/

HA! SO THERE, MAN.

Just another reason you must not let people convince you that one simple thing will change your life.

It's not that easy.

MANY simple things will change your life, sure, but there is no silver bullet.

(Unless you're being hunted by a werewolf, I guess. In that case, you surely don't have time to make your bed.)

How To Eat Cake Again

Let Them Eat Cake: My Weight Restoration Story

This is fantastic reading for anyone who is tired of the diet cycle, and wondering if they dare to get off. My experience has been true to this one.

Let me tell you what happens when you finally get skinny: You still can’t eat cake.

You still can’t eat cake. You still can’t wear crop tops. You still can’t skip yoga without feeling guilty. You still can’t order the cheesy pasta. You still can’t enjoy pizza. You still can’t fuck the love of your life without self-judgment. And — did I mention this? — you still can’t eat cake.

You spend all this time and energy being hypervigilant so that one day, you can cross the “UGW” finish line into ease, into relaxation, into normalcy. But that day never comes because no matter how far you run, the course ahead of you grows longer — or, at least, the obstacles along the way change.

 http://www.ravishly.com/2016/02/02/let-them-eat-cake-my-weight-restoration-story

Fitso: FTFY

This is excellent fun!

17 Times Fitspiration Was Wrong, So We Fixed It

Fellow Perfectionists: You Need (to read) Dis

Nia will never steer you wrong: http://www.niashanks.com/perfection-possible/

Gaining & Losing the Same 5 Pounds? WE ALL ARE!

This is super-dee-duper awesome. This amazing woman meticulously recorded her weight several times each day, over a week, along with other notes, to see and understand the swings.

How is it possible to gain and lose 4-5 pounds in a 24-hour period? It’s not by crash-dieting, not by detoxing all day, not by any other form of lose-weight-fast schemes out there.

It’s by being human, people.

...

This experiment demonstrates the intricate and individualized science behind weight sensitivity, but can have significantly positive emotional and mental consequences for us all! Knowledge is power – it frees us from unnecessary anxiety, stress, disappointment, discouragement, and unease.

Yet another vote for throwing away that worthless tool.

http://www.loveyourbodyproject.org/#!How-I-Gained-4-Pounds-in-One-Day%E2%80%A6-Then-Lost-It-All-By-the-Next/c1fhr/568bc0000cf23ef0cf5d9b3d

You Need Fun - Lots of It!

Sometimes the big important things are as small as this: how to have more fun in your daily life.

Here's a great little post about exactly that: http://whole9life.com/2014/02/take-back-the-fun-part-2/

Stumptuous: Rant 73

I will always read her. Always.

I don’t give a fuck about your self-righteous ideological rage regarding the Great Corporate Conspiracy or how fitspo is ruining all our lives or how People Who Do Sport A are complete idiots compared to People Who Do Sport B.

Because truly, unless there is some very pressing and important reason to know or do a particular thing in a particular way (like maybe you are actually James Bond and it would be good to know how to fall out of a helicopter properly)…

…almost none of it really matters.

Instead:

Do what is meaningful and fun and life-expanding and energy-giving to YOU.

https://www.stumptuous.com/rant-73-jan-2016-nothing-matters

100%, yes.

Find a job and hobbies and service work that you enjoy. Find the thing(s) that fulfills you, that challenges you, that helps you to become a better person, better able to help others around you, and encourage others to do the same. Not to do the same thing that you do, but to find their version of it.

Don't Be A Diderot

I never knew there was a name for this, but I recognize it fully. It's stunning to absorb how purchases lead to more purchases.

Like many others, I have fallen victim to the Diderot Effect. I recently bought a new car and I ended up purchasing all sorts of additional things to go inside it. I bought a tire pressure gauge, a car charger for my cell phone, an extra umbrella, a first aid kit, a pocket knife, a flashlight, emergency blankets, and even a seatbelt cutting tool.

Allow me to point out that I owned my previous car for nearly 10 years and at no point did I feel that any of the previously mentioned items were worth purchasing. And yet, after getting my shiny new car, I found myself falling into the same consumption spiral as Diderot.

http://jamesclear.com/diderot-effect

I feel like I have too much STUFF in my life. In some ways, I'm combating it: I am adamantly against gift-giving among my friends and family to avoid receiving more, and I have managed to stick to a rule of tossing out an item of clothing for every item purchased - but the same cannot be said of other accumulated stuff. Furthermore, I find myself coveting more stuff on a regular basis.

Time to re-focus on simplifying, and I feel certain this article will help me with that. I believe that seeing this so clearly laid out, and having a name to identify it, will help me avoid spiraling into such spending in the future. Hope it does the same for you.

Why all the effort?

A few weeks ago, I had long, curly hair, about to my waist. It was gorgeous, a beautiful spiraling waterfall of the family curls.

But as a runner encountering summer, I began to think about how HOT & annoying it was. I realized how often it was a pain, and when I began looking back at old pictures, I became ready to go short again. Short wouldn't be a gorgeous waterfall of curls, but it would still be cute enough (I wouldn't look odd), and it would be EASIER.

I spent a full week stopping myself every time I thought about my hair, and asking how short hair would change this problem/situation/thought, until I was still 100% certain I wanted to chop it.

Within 24 hours of my cut, I had thought to myself at least 24 times: I can't believe I waited so long!

I was astounded at how much work & annoyance my long hair had become, in so many tiny ways:

• Gobs of product to have it look good (about 4x what I use now). 
• Stupidly-long showers spent working the conditioner through and pulling out the knots.
• Going to bed with hair that felt like cold, wet, gross seaweed, hating for it to touch my back before I was in bed & it could lay on my pillow behind me (like cold, wet, gross seaweed).
• Styling options limited by the day's workout (can't bench with an updo, yo).
• Playing with it while thinking, like I was 12.
• HOT.
• Holding it down in the wind, lest it become a frizzy frazzled mess.
• on and on

After the cut, I had a couple people ask me what my husband thought of my new hair, and my answer was essentially, "Don't know, don't care. It's not his hair." (With varying levels of accompanying expletives based on the asker.)

I've not asked him. I don't care about his opinion, I care about MINE. He wasn't the one dealing with the annoyances above, so why would he get a say in whether or not I should keep it that way? Whether my hair is long or short or gone, he loves me, and I know this. I know this because that's how I feel about him. I don't tell him to shave his head, or to have a goatee. As long as he looks reasonably presentable to society, I'm cool with his appearance. And vice versa.

And the same is true for everyone I love, and everyone who loves me. Their opinions are unimportant. I might think my friend Becky looks amazing with her hair down, but if she loves the daily ponytail that gets it out of her face, well, what the hell does my opinion matter? It doesn't. And her preference for my long curly waterfall doesn't even slightly impact my preference for short & easy.

Reflecting on allathat got me wondering...how much else am I holding onto, just because I think I should?

What else are ALL OF US doing, that we don't truly enjoy doing, but don't yet feel brave or confident enough to stop doing?

I can think of many other cuts from my life recently. All of these are small moves, with fabulous results:

• no more nail polish: haven't missed it for a second
• no more eyeshadow or eyeliner: sure, I look better with it, but I also look fine without it - and I don't miss it
• Twitter & Instagram & Pinterest & all the rest besides FB & DM: I don't feel I'm missing out
• TV: haven't watched it in months
• email newsletter subscriptions: if I'm just deleting them without reading, or stacking them up in my "to read" folder (which I never get to), then I just unsubscribe
• news: I don't bother, because mostly negative (if there's an important story, I'll hear about it somehow - but I don't need most of it)
• Facebook friends 
• who only post complaints: if I don't want to blatantly unfriend them, I hide their posts
• who often share annoying shit but are otherwise cool: I hide the sources of their shared political posts & recipes & whatever
• who I wouldn't ever stop to talk to in the grocery store: unfriend 
• pages I've liked that post multiple times per day, every day, or only share links that I never click on, or are constantly outraged & up in arms (even if it's a cause I agree with): unfollow
• who share clickbait bullshit ("you won't believe #8!"): never click, EVER, and hide them

Clothing choices, grooming choices, workout choices, friend choices, food choices, activity choices, job choices, housing choices...so many possible annoyances we've built into our lives, without even thinking about it, without ACTIVELY CHOOSING them, but merely going along with society's norms.

Decide to live a FUCK YES kind of life. Decide to cut out everything that isn't FUCK YES.

What is weighing you down because it's actually someone else's choice that you're doing it, be it society or significant others or parents or peers or boss?

Can you make your OWN decision instead?

What will that bravery cost you?

Oh, but my friend, what will it GAIN you?

--

A side note, I wrote this many months ago, left it in draft stage, because it felt like there was much more clarity I could bring if I took the time to polish it up. Well, 6 months later, here it still sits. I've got lots of these half-baked ideas in draft stage, and I'm throwing them out to sink or swim without much further assistance. You want to write and get better at it, then damn it, you write, and you share it, and you write some more. It's a blog, for fuck's sake. Do I want to share worthwhile thoughts, and possibly help people, or don't I? There is not much point to write things and keep them hidden, nor to wait for perfection. Fuck perfection.

I'm saying it again, just to make sure you saw it: fuck perfection.

It's time to help.