Institute of Step-Family Dynamics

Tag: Healthy lifestyle

  • One Life Enhancing Choice At A Time

    One Life Enhancing Choice At A Time

    Not going to lie, I have been feeling rough physically recently. I could say it’s from the pandemic stress, but that would be a lie. You don’t get a body like mine from a lifetime of healthy choices. It takes years and years of unhealthy choices, of ignoring pain and warning signs. It’s years of not so benign neglect that has me staring down the barrel of 53 with aching joints, a bloated stomach, and a general feeling of blerk.

    It should come to no surprise to anyone who knows me that I have attempted to address this at times, over the years, sporadically. I’m sure my long suffering children can remember the various lifestyle choices they’ve been subjected to. One of the worst was what my ex-husband called ‘Fit for Unhappiness’. I think the actual title was ‘Fit for Life’, but the unhappiness was more accurate.

    So while it may seem that I’m a slow learner, I’ve realised that I am not one to sustain drastic lifestyle changes. I gave up being buddhist in my 20s because I really didn’t believe God wanted us to live lives of deprivation. I am a hedonist at heart. I love indulgence.

    It has now got to the point that my body is craving a different kind of indulgence than I have previously been offering. It wants me to indulge its needs, rather than my wants. Sigh… Bigger Sigh… The body has tools at its disposal I can no longer ignore. The day of reckoning has come.

    This is not where I declare that I’ve joined the gym, even a virtual one, or signed up to some weight loss program. Nope, I know from past experience this wil result in me resenting spending money on something I didn’t really want to do in the first place.

    Instead I am declaring today a day of life enhancing choices. Tomorrow and the next day seem likely to head that way too, rinse and repeat till life consists mainly of life enhancing choices.

    Yep – Life Enhancing Choices.

    This is an addition to my life that I can get on board with, in fact it’s one I use already in many aspects of my life…just not for my poor long suffering body.

    So what do life enhancing choices look like?

    Some of them are small.

    This morning I had a choice of my favourite decadent chocolate bar for breakfast with a coffee, or banana on gluten free toast. Actually, I probably had many more choices, but those were the two that presented themselves most readily. I decided to compromise and have the toast with a chocolate bar chaser. Then I tuned in to my body, I asked myself – did I really want the chocolate bar or was it because it’s habit and a way I have framed as ‘treating myself’? Damnit! My body was not craving or needing the chocolate bar.

    So toast it was. It was delicious toast. I feel replete. Life enhancing choice #1 done.

    I was then sitting there engrossed on my phone and I needed to go to the bathroom,

    Hands up all the women who put off going to the bathroom.

    I see you there!

    It’s a chronic problem among women. We somehow put our basic bodily needs behind all of the other things we feel should do first.

    Go to the bathroom people!

    Life enhancing choice for my body #2.

    It’s not always the big things that matter. I have a very sore elbow at the moment. It’s easy to ignore it. Instead I will put some balm on it today before I start work in my office. It’s putting on the balm, drinking the water, not wearing the uncomfortable clothes, going to the bathroom the moment we realise we need to…those seemingly small things can have a massive impact on our general wellbeing.

    Sometimes it’s bigger, more uncomfortable things.

    Recently I have been cutting back my client hours on the weeks the children are here, so that I can help them with their schoolwork. After the last time they were here, one of them threw me under the bus spectacularly with their mother, after lying to me all week about their schoolwork. I decided that sacrificing my work to help someone who had no regard for the value of my time was not life enhancing for me. I made the decision that I would set aside two days to help, my mother is doing one day, and my husband is taking annual leave to cover the other, and the kids can cope while I work on the other. It seemed like the only option was for me to do it all, until I decided that wasn’t working.

    An even more uncomfortable choice I am facing is that I know I need to knock consuming dairy on the head. I’ve given up gluten and nightshades for my joints, booze for my mental health, but the dairy…*sobs* I LOVE dairy. Cheese, cheese, milky coffee…these are the highlights in a dreary day. These highlights also leave me feeling physically crap, bloated, and sore. The life enhancing choice is going to be saying good bye to cheese and milk for a while, to restore balance to my long suffering body.

    I’m going to need a warm up to that. It’s ok to need warm ups for big changes. For me  a warm up looks like this: acknowledging change is required. Sitting with the frustration, annoyance, and sometimes grief around letting go fo the thing I need to let go of. Then might come bargaining…this may take some time! Finally comes acceptance. The pain of the loss is outweighed by the pain of staying the same.

    Since the dairy is such a big one for me, I might decide to break this down into a series of life enhancing choices. It could be I have a black coffee in the morning, instead of a delicious frothy latte. I might use pecorino on my nachos, which is not cows milk, instead of tasty cheese. Big changes that we find overwhelming or are resistant to, might need a more gentle and gradual approach. I struggle with structured exercise regimes, but I can make the choice to stretch my body a couple of times a day.

    What life enhancing choices can you make today?

    These aren’t shoulds, oughts, or I’m going to do all of the things right now. These are single actions or decisions; I won’t reply to the toxic text, I’m going to assume good intention in this situation, I’m not going to beat myself up for not making the bed today…

    Just pick one thing. If you find yourself motivated, pick another. Life enhancing choices are only life enhancing if we do them willingly and feel good about them.

    I’m off to go cut some lemongrass for my tea for my next client session. Life enhancing choice #3.

  • New Year’s Revolution – or how not to fail at doing all of the things

    New Year’s Revolution – or how not to fail at doing all of the things

    Years ago one of the kids asked about New Year’s Revolutions. I thought it was cute and kind of accurate. As I thought on it again this year, I realised just how accurate it is. So often our New Year’s resolution are like a revolution in our lives. Out with the old, in with the new, get rid of everything we don’t like and we will live happily ever after in the new republic.

    Except we don’t.

    And then we do it again. Year after year. Decade after decade.

    All we are doing is reinforcing a sense of failure and helplessness.

    I gave up New Year’s resolutions quite a few years ago. I just couldn’t stand setting myself up for failure any more. My theme song when I tell myself I am going to do something goes something like F*ck you I won’t do what you told me! Honestly, the best way to get me not to do something, is for me to tell myself I should or it’s good for me.

    So I had to get off that merry go round. I had to start tricking myself into doing life enhancing things. Obviously the life span of that was short – I’m pretty smart, and I know myself rather well!

    So I started thinking about who I wanted to be, and what resources and actions I might need in order to be that person. Notice I used the word BE rather than BECOME. It’s kind of key here.

    This morning is a great example. For nearly a year now, I have wanted to be a person who walked their dog when they got up in the morning. For nearly a year now, I have been a person who wanted to walk the dog in the morning. Today I am a person who walks the dog in the morning. What changed? What is my magic formula? Which affirmations did I use?

    The only thing that changed was that I got up and walked the dog this morning.

    That’s it. No magic, no preparations, or incantations. Today I got so sick of not being a person who walks their dog in the mornings, I decided to change it.

    I’m not going to pretend I am now a person who walks their dog every morning. I’m not that attached to setting myself up for failure any more. I am now a person who knows walking their dog in the morning is as easy as getting up and walking the dog. I am pretty sure I can do this again. If I don’t do it one day, it will be because my higher value is not being a person who walks the dog in the morning. It might be because my higher value is resting because I am unwell, or getting somewhere early in the morning, or a myriad of other reasons that take precedence over being a person who walks the dog in the morning.

    I have tried so many different ways to become a person who exercises regularly. I have had lots of pain and injury issues, so the process used to start with me being active. It would progress to me getting out of relationship with my body in the eagerness of being active, from there it would turn to injury. The final chapter would be me being too scared to return to that activity in case I injured myself.

    I decided I wanted to become a person who could stay in relationship with body and keep my activity levels in line with my current physical capacity. This capacity is not static, so it meant checking in with my body as I did things. It meant taking rests. It meant realising it’s ok not to finish something I start if I get too tired or my body gets sore.

    Living this way means I know that some days I will be a person who walks the dog in the morning, and some days I will be a person who knows today is not a dog walking day.

    When we start to ponder the coming year, as we inevitably do around this time, rather than making a laundry list of all the things you are going to not do/do, what about instead pondering what kind of person you want to be.

    If you want to be a person who eats healthily, that might mean first being a person who stops buying unhealthy food. You might also need to be a person who replaces the unhealthy snacks and foods with healthy ones. You might want to consider being a person who notices when they crave unhealthy foods or habits and figure out how to avoid those moments.

    I stopped drinking alcohol about 18 months ago. It had just become a habit that wasn’t working for me anymore. I was sick of feeling subpar and having our social life revolve around alcohol. It was interesting watching when I craved a drink. It became really clear it was when I was very depleted and had pushed myself beyond the point of exhaustion. I knew then I needed to be a person who was aware of her available energy and did her best to not reach that point of exhaustion. If I had told myself my resolution was to stop drinking, my inner rebel would have had a huge tantrum and sabotaged within days. I know this, I’ve done it before. Deciding to be a person who didn’t drink alcohol, rather than stopping drinking is such a subtle difference, but for me it made all the difference.

    The photo above is my breakfast this morning. Today I am a person who wanted to fuel her body well. Tomorrow, I may not be that person, but I know that I feel better when I do this, so I will be a person who fuels her body well more often than not.

    The bottom line is – trying to stop or start things doesn’t seem to be very effective, instead focus on who you want to be. Give yourself grace for the days when you don’t want to be that person. It’s ok, we aren’t machines. We ebb and flow, we have days of high function and lower function.

    There is no magic to making change – be the person who does the thing you want to do, then you will be the person doing the thing you want to do.