willpower is a hiney-kicker.(Amy)

First, an update on my progress:

Semi-vegetarian meal planning, 1. (fyi: I'm finding I’m fairly good at meal planning, not necessarily its execution.) 5 K training/working out, 0.

Also, I have purchased a journal in which I will record food eaten, work outs accomplished, and any other emotionally charged thoughts I may have. I have not recorded anything in this journal yet,
but Melissa has. --->

And one day I saw a really good book by workout guru Jackie Warner with a lot of good information in it, and I almost bought that book, but its title was This is Why You’re Fat! and my ego would not let me put it in front of a check out cashier for him/her to judge me. So I’m going to hang out on Jackie's website instead and do cheap, casual research.

In other words, I haven’t done much. To explain myself, I’m going with the old “Halloween is such a hiney-kicker when you’re trying to get healthy” excuse. In about 3 weeks I can recycle this by replacing the word Halloween with Thanksgiving, and that makes me nervous and fidgety. … Have I mentioned that there is currently about 50 lbs of Halloween candy in my kitchen pantry? Fifty pounds! Five-oh. But it’s dwindling fast, and not because Melissa’s been into it (quite frankly, I’m pretty sure she’s forgotten it even exists).

Which is why I’ve decided to spend this post ruminating on Willpower.

Now, I have an in-the-know work friend who’s informing me I can just take the portions of that 50 lbs of candy that will not melt in desert heat (ie, everything but the chocolate), bundle it into a cute little care package, and send it off to our Halloween candy-deprived troops in Iraq. This would certainly solve my non-chocolate willpower woes AND I’d be helping some hard-working, brave soldier find his or her way straight into a blissful sugar coma. Except here’s the problem: I don’t have any non-chocolate candy willpower woes. If it doesn’t have chocolate in it, I can take it or leave it, and I typically choose to leave it.

I think I alluded in my first post to my galactic-sized scary challenge in turning down free chocolate. And it’s not just saying no, it’s also being able to stop indulging once I start. For me, eating certain foods is like being a single girl with severely bad emotional boundaries who's dating an abusive, narcissistic bad boy my friends despise and they keep trying to make me to see the big picture, but no. I just keep going back for more, sure I can help him change, positive he’ll eventually love me for ME. But I just get lied to again, cheated on, and emotionally kicked in the face with his emotional steel-toed boots every time, and I'm left crumpled on the ground, bruised, bleeding, with zero self-esteem or confidence left.

So let’s talk willpower, shall we? Because I have so little of it, and to complete this challenge, I’m painfully aware I will need all I can find.

Judith Beck (cognitive behavior expert and PhD) thinks the definition of willpower should be: "getting yourself to do something you don’t want to do.” True dat, Judith.

She says we all have large wells of willpower inside of us, and we all make ourselves do terribly un-fun things each day, requiring us to dig deep into our willpower reserves. Like, every night? I remove my make up, wash my face, brush my teeth. In the mornings, I brush my teeth, take a shower, put make up back on, style my hair, and dress myself. Some days, I really don't feel like going through these motions. So why do I do it? Because I don’t want gross skin, I have a paralyzing fear of root canal surgery, and I generally submit to societal pressures to smell decent, look as cute as possible, and not leave the house naked.

Yet when it comes to chocolate (and certain other foods) I do not submit to any societal or inner pressures. Which is so odd, because I actually have this unfathomable fear of obesity-related disease and early death. And so what do I do to address this unfathomable fear? Right now, for example, I am addressing it by eating a couple of tootsie rolls and some M&M’s. And later tonight, I’ll probably address it by having some more tootsie rolls and M&M’s. Also, it’s been a rainy, nasty week and I have avoided all forms of physical movement--who wants to move when there's rain in the air?! And I have a deep suspicion I will again find some similar excuse and not make time to exercise away any of those tootsie rolls or M&M’s the whole rest of this week. That’s how I like to address my deathly fear of poor health and all that it brings.

Let me reiterate this lack of logic to you: I fear dental surgery, so I brush my teeth. I dread looking at bad skin, so I wash my face. I do not want to be arrested for indecent exposure, so I wear clothes. I feel yucky and gross and I'm totally dejected when I see full body images of myself with 50 extra pounds on me. I worry constantly about the bad effects this can have on my health and my life, and I’m acutely aware my daughter is now at an age where she is watching everything I do, every choice I make, and she'll soon be creating her own ideas about what constitutes good healthy choices based on what she witnesses from my actions and inactions. To address all of this, I......eat M&M’s and tootsie rolls in mass quantity and then remain in a state of relative inertia???

Dr. Judith says the problem behind this illogic boils down to how I think. And I agree; I've always been aware my thinking methods are in need of deep repair.

First of all, I’m an impulsive person and not necessarily in a good way. I prefer Life to be lived organically, which means thinking about and creating personal schedules and sticking to them didn’t officially enter my life until a newborn did. The sad thing is I have a deep awareness of feeling more together when I’m on a schedule…yet I don’t LIKE being on a schedule. I resist it, to the point of weirdness.

After reading Judith’s thoughts about how to go about this brain re-programming, I decided I may need to tweak my thought processes a bit in regards to my personal scheduling habits and just Do. It.

(Note: there’s this little voice inside me this very second attempting to bargain this down to a nub: “Oh come on! Are we SERIOUS?? Surely there’s got to be a freewill/by-the-seat-of-your-pants non-schedule out there for us, one which will let us hang out on the couch and eat bon bons most days of any given week and still lose 50 lbs! This SUCKS!”)

To shut this person up, Judith suggests the following:

1-Specify goals in behavioral terms.

Mine will be:
-One piece of candy a day until it’s gone or I send it to Iraq.
-Sixty minutes of work outs for 9 of the next 10 days.
-I will visit the gym at least 6 of these 10 days.
-I will drink ONLY water, all 10 days, no more sodas of any kind.
-I will write every single day in my food/workout/emotional journal. Every! Single! Day!

2-Make sure your goals are reasonable.

Okay, okay fine!

-3 pieces of candy a day until it’s gone or I send it to Iraq.

-I will commit to 30 minutes of some type of exercise for the at least 5 of the next 10 days.
-I will think about visiting the gym at least once during those 10 days,
-and I will only have one diet coke a day instead of 2.
-I'll research some good food/workout/emotional journals and set mine up for the week after this week.

3-Reflect on all the reasons you have to reach your goal.

I want to...

*Feel better
*Be stronger
*Have good health
*Look cute
(It’s fine, you can judge me for it: I embrace the shallowness.)
*Keep up with Melissa
(do you know how FAST those suckers get once they’re 2??)
*Model healthy habits for super-fast, impressionable daughter
*Rediscover my confidence
(once upon a time, I really think I was far more confident.) (In my head.)
*Be photo op ready, at all times
(See? It's cool; I own the shallow.)

4-Read this list every morning, even if you think you don't need to.

I will be posting these on my desk at work for perusal, first thing.

<-- Photographic evidence.

5-Reflect on the consequences of your goal.
I will remind myself, each day, that if I do not achieve my goals, I will be very, very disillusioned with myself. I will feel poopy. I will feel frustration. I will feel overwhelmed. I will probably make several highly caloric and unhealthy food choices and end up in a vegetable state on the couch, mourning my life.

6-Solve problems that interfere with goal attainment.

I'll have to do some deep negotiations here. Melissa hates the gym’s daycare; she cries hysterically and they always cut my workouts short by 20-30 minutes by calling me over the intercom to come get her and take her wailing behind home. I’ve been avoiding the gym because little Miss M is emotionally traumatized by its daycare, and its babysitters refuse to engage with traumatized children. I suspect this may be due to the fact many of them seem to lack basic human interaction skills. But it is what it is.

However, I also know negotiations with 2 year olds generally have disastrous, less-than-ideal results, so I will negotiate instead with her dad: C, can you watch a 2 year old for at least 30 minutes for about 5 out of the next 10 days? And since I do this 10 out of 10 days already in addition to all bath/bedtime routines, and change 9 out of 10 explosive poopy diapers, I’m going to negotiate your answer for you right now: Yes. Yes you CAN do that. Thanks, C! (Hi, C! I love you!)

There! Negotiations accomplished.

(In addition, I will be in constant negotiation mode within my own head: “Self, you said ONLY 3 pieces of candy per day this week. That’s 4. Yes it is, stop lying. No, you can NOT count that mini tootsie roll as half a piece. That’s 4 pieces. Put it back. Put it back. PUT IT BACK!!”)

7-Beware of excuses.

Oh dear. I am an EXPERT at these. This alone is a super scary challenge.

8-Say “No Choice.”

This is a good one. I do not give myself a choice about getting up to go to work and showing up there (fully clothed and smelling nice) on time. I do not give myself an excuse to not eat when I’m hungry. And so it will be for candy/workout/ soda goals. It has been decided that these things will occur this week, and that’s all there is to it, the end.

9-Give yourself credit.

Judith says one key to successful willpower is that I’m supposed to remind myself at various points this week what a good thing it is that I’m sticking to my goals. This will help build my sense of self-efficacy and awareness that I CAN make myself do things I don’t really want to do, and doing this will help pull me through low willpower moments.

But she didn’t mention positive reinforcement. As a teacher I know: positive reinforcement works with 2 year olds, kindergartners (6 out of 7 of them, at least), 1st graders, and most (non-narcissistic/sociopath) adults. And so I will do this for myself this week. Sometimes, you just have to love on yourself in a way that does not involve food consumption, even when it’s a gross, rainy day and the people surrounding you clearly need to be on some type of anti-psychotic medication.

You know what else Judith didn't mention that totally works with getting kids and grownups to do what you want them to do? Bribery. So I added it for her:

10-Bribery is KEY to willpower.

Because basically, I want a cute pair of new red shoes. If I can work out at least 5 of the next 10 days, consume no more than 3 pieces of Halloween candy (and other undesirable food choices) per day, AND stick to one diet coke per day over the next week? I’m going to buy me a cute pair of red shoes. I think everyone on a mission ought to have a cute pair of red shoes.