Willpower vs. Stress: An Unfortunate Reminder

The past week and a half or so I've had to perform in two choir concerts (both on weeknights), layer my clothes like crazy every day since the weather has been so up and down, set all my clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time and lose an hour of my weekend, take apart five old computers to remove the hard drives, figure out what's going wrong with one of the servers, fight a workplace plague that claimed almost all of my coworkers at one point or another, and use about half the albuterol in my inhaler thanks to all the tree pollen floating around.

Have I mentioned that I hate springtime in Denver? My allergies and asthma go nuts, work gets progressively busier, there are no holidays to look forward to (only summer, which is anything but holiday-like for us), the temperatures are summery one day and wintry the next, and there are hardly any flowers anywhere for more than a week or two. The best I can say for it is it's at least less torturous than the perpetual pollen-ridden Santa Barbara, where I lived before I moved here. But after growing up in Texas, where we routinely started swimming in our unheated backyard pool in March, and spending five years in the lush, green Southeast, I just can't appreciate the Colorado springtime.

Yes, I'm a cranky old woman. Thanks for pointing it out.

So anyway, I've been working to lose weight since the New Year and it's been going mostly well. I got into a gym routine and started carrying around a little notebook in which I enter everything I eat and corresponding calories (since I am lazy, and also have little to no willpower, this means I eat a lot of Lean Cuisine and other prepackaged foods. Oh, well. I'll cross the nuked-plastic-caused-cancer bridge when I come to it). That is, most of the time. Except when I decide to cheat, and then it's often too difficult (and shameful) to calculate the calories.

A couple of weeks ago, when I started having trouble breathing all the time (when I go to bed, wake up, walk a block or up a flight of stairs, and sometimes randomly at my desk) and waking up with a sore throat every morning, I decided to take it easy on the gym.

Mistake #1: disrupting an already fragile routine. Granted, since my asthma is partially exercise-induced, I try not to poke the beast any more than necessary when it's pollen season. But I should have found a less aerobic exercise so as to keep my momentum. Instead I used it as an excuse for a "vacation" from my good behavior. Since I was home at night, and bored, I decided to order takeout. Which turned into several days of takeout, buying junk food at the grocery store, eating random snacks at work, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Mistake #2: exacerbating the problem by throwing my hands up with an "in for a penny, in for a pound" (or technically, in my case, three pounds and counting) attitude. I should be more careful, not less, about food when I'm not exercising - especially as food can also be really important in regards to my mental and physical health. I was especially tempted into all this because work has been busy and stressful, and I had the choir concert to worry about as well. I once read an article that described the results of studies that showed people have a finite amount of willpower (although luckily it can be increased with practice). Basically, if you're exerting too much willpower in one area you're much more likely to fail in others. I was concentrating on work and choir, and getting my other necessary things like laundry and groceries done, at the expense of the mental energy it takes me to stay on track with food and exercise.

Mistake #3: letting my mental energy lapse. I should always have a plan for ways to relax and de-stress. Enjoying myself and refusing to take life too seriously in my free time is what allows me the strength to do things I find difficult or scary the rest of the time. I know this, but I let myself slide into old habits, which only make things worse in the long run. Maybe rather than doing laundry I should have planned a trip to the library, or a long walk in the neighborhood, or an apartment-reorganizing project, or a non-food indulgence like a massage or a pedicure.

I realized today that my muscles are sore (maybe because on Wednesday I went back to the gym after a two week absence, or maybe just from recent tension) and that my plan to 'reward' myself with a massage once I get back on track was flawed. I can't deny myself pleasure and relaxation until I've been "good" again; I need to actively seek them so that I can be "good." Long story short, I scheduled a massage for tomorrow.