In architecture, the very first step in the process is clearly identifying and stating the problem. It took me a while to understand why this was necessary but after a while I realized that it really is impossible to solve any issue unless there has been a very clearly defined issue to solve. This is true in a lot of things in life.
I’m applying this same process to my health. I’ve been pretty unhealthy, physically and emotionally, for a while. Actually, a little less than two years ago, I worked with a great personal trainer who helped me up my physical condition but since then, I’ve let it all fall apart again. I have to take control, or make my best attempt to do so.
So the first thing I decided to do was identify the problem so I know how to find appropriate solutions, or in the case of health, probably better stated as appropriate habits.
- I have put on weight. I lost a couple of pounds around the beginning of August and then proceeded to add 4 pounds since then. That’s 4 pounds in 4 months. The rate of that is pretty scary – 12 pounds heavier in one year? I’d be going up at least one size every year in perpetuity if I don’t change this rate of increase now.
- Food is my drug. I’ve been depressed for a while and that only got worse with the fact that I lost my job again (although, ultimately, getting out of that toxic work environment is a good thing, but it would have been nice to be able to make those choices myself!). Some people turn to alcohol, tobacco or other substances actually classified as controlled substances, I eat. I don’t know when this happened exactly. I don’t remember eating non-stop in my twenties, but sometime after that decade, apparently eating food became a way for me to cope. I am going to go out on a limb and say this, when I was in high school, I knew my next step in life was to go to college. After undergrad, I worked a little bit and felt lost, knowing that I didn’t want to do what my degree was in but unsure of where I was supposed to go. Then I figured out I wanted to go into architecture and had the next three years of my life set again as I returned to college. I graduated at 30 years old with no clearly defined next steps in life. I think perhaps I started to use food as a comfort to the constant change that is ultimately life. Thankfully, I have a decent metabolism because as a general rule, I probably eat 2500 to 3000 calories a day, by every right I should weigh over 200 lbs. I am lucky.
- I have constant physical pain that is getting worse. Thanks to my general lack of movement during the day, my back aches all the time, as do my hips. Over the last year, this has moved into my shoulders as well. I spend a lot of time curved forward, shoulders hunched. As I get older and have become more inactive, things start to stiffen up and it all hurts. I wake up with a slight headache and sore muscles. This is getting tiresome!
- My knees have bio-mechanical issues. This isn’t something I can actually change, I was born this way. There is some arthritis creeping into my knees, something that has already crept into my toes. Of course they are related issues. What I can do about this is lose the extra weight that I’m carrying because even 20 pounds overweight is 20 extra pounds my structure has to bear every moment of every day and that will cause a slow, but steady, strain and further deterioration of the joints. I am not ready yet to limit my life because I wasn’t doing everything I could to keep my body working.
I’d say those are the four biggest problems associated with my health currently. I’ve been wanting to get myself back into a healthy state for a good 10 years and feel like I need to dedicate a nice sized portion of my energy into doing so. I need to get my muscles back in working order to help me age more gracefully.
I’ve been working on this off and one for a while as well and there’s one thing that I know, I need to incorporate this into my lifestyle. Dropping everything all at once to just get healthy doesn’t work for me. I want to be healthy in a sustained way moving forward, and for me that requires it becoming a natural part of my life and not some goal or chore that I need to complete every day. Otherwise it just won’t happen!
I’m going to start this series on what I need to do to get to that healthier state, and it’s probably going to be through baby steps. I hope that writing it down and putting it out there will help me be more accountable to myself as I will need to report some type of change (hopefully progress) in my posts.
