Healthy choices

So I've been doing fairly well with making better choices. Food, exercise, pretty much everything. Until yesterday. Road trip! Well that sucked. So I remembered everything for the kids. I remembered directions. Took take of the car, topped off the oil, got gas. You know, all that pre-trip shit you do. What I completely forgot was food. Didn't even think about it. So what do we do? Hit the drive-through of course. Not once, but twice. I feel like crap today! And swollen from all the sodium in that crap. And it didn't even taste good. I actually gained almost 5 pounds in one damn day. 5 pounds! That's a lot of water retention right there. Fell right back into those old habits. On the road, in a hurry, no time to stop, fast food. It's really more a reminder of how much I need to plan better than anything else. And just how easy it is to go back 5 steps and revisit old habits.

Speaking of habits. I've smoked in one form or another for more years than I didn't. I started smoking cigars at 18, working construction and picking up all kinds of interesting new habits. Then I started smoking cigarettes and put away a pack a day for 20 years. Tried the vape thing and that just didn't seem to do it for me so I started smoking the occasional cigar. As we all know, moderation is not something I'm capable of, so the occasional turned into the frequent and now I think I'm smoking as often as I ever did. It's time to quit this shit. Smoking is the one vice I just don't seem to be able to quit. Drugs I quit. Drinking, well, that's a once in a while thing now instead of an every day thing as it once was. I've even managed to get the eating under control. Now it's time to work on the next one. It's time to stop.

Though I'm loath to admit it, I'm getting old. 42 is next month. How much longer can I smoke before it becomes a serious issue? I feel it every morning when I wake up, that ever present reminder that I smoke. And yet I keep at it. I've seen the pictures, I've read the "literature" and heard the lectures. I've known the people who died of cancer or other smoking related issues. And yet I continue. I know why I continue, what I don't know yet is how to stop. Living with depression, nicotine has a different effect on me than many people. The addiction is actually worse.

Nicotine has been shown to have effects on anxiety and depression in both human and animal studies.These studies suggest that nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) can modulate the function of pathways involved in stress response, anxiety and depression in the normal brain, and that smoking can result in alterations of anxiety level and mood.(1) It's a bit like an antidepressant with some nasty effects that you get addicted to. Patients with depression tend to smoke a lot, which led to the idea that nicotine may ease depressive symptoms. Research has shown how the process works. Nicotine binds to particular receptor molecules on the surface of nerve cells in the brain, first activating the receptors, which actually increases depressive symptoms, but then when the receptors turn off, an antidepressant-like effect does seem to follow.(3)

In the UK, smoking rates among adults with depression are about twice as high as among adults without depression. People with depression have particular difficulty when they try to stop smoking and have more severe withdrawal symptoms during attempts to give up. Nicotine stimulates the release of the chemical dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is involved in triggering positive feelings. It is often found to be low in people with depression, who may then use cigarettes as a way of temporarily increasing their dopamine supply. However, smoking encourages the brain to switch off its own mechanism for making dopamine so in the long term the supply decreases, which in turn prompts people to smoke more.(4)

So here's to quitting, or losing my mind. Or both.

1. Effect of nicotine and nicotinic receptors on anxiety and depression Marina R. Picciotto,CA Darlene H. Brunzell and Barbara J. Caldarone
2. Virginia Commonwealth University. "Why nicotine in cigarettes can relieve anxiety in smokers." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 November 2012. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121108181723.htm>.
3. Smoking and Depression: Targeting Nicotine Receptors To Relieve Depression
4. Smoking and Mental Health
5. Nicotine dependence and levels of depression and anxiety in smokers in the process of smoking cessation

Make it a priority.

Or, more accurately, make you a priority. Your health, your life, your well being. You're not much good to anyone if you don't. And certainly no good to yourself. But how do you do that? Well, here's what I did. It took several years, lots of trial and some error and a lot of persistence.

Step one: Decide to do something. Quite honestly, being obese, unhealthy and inactive is a choice. An active choice you make every single day. When you eat, what you eat, now much you eat. Taking the elevator instead of the stairs, parking as close to the entrance as you possibly can instead of walking a little. Sitting on your ass making excuses for why you can't. These are all decisions we make every day. You have to make an active decision to change. And you have to stick with that decision every single hour of every single day. It's really easy to have a pity party and think of all the excuses to not, or all the excuses to fail, give up and do nothing. But they're all bullshit. Don't think so? Go do a search on Youtube for "motivation" and take a look at some of those people. If a man can leave the military minus both legs and run a marathon you can get off your ass and go to the gym. You simply have to choose to.

Step two: Commit to it. Seriously. Stop making excuses for why you can't and start finding reasons for why you can. "Oh it's just too hard" isn't a reason, it's an excuse. Surviving obesity and multiple health issues is hard. Taking a bunch of medication every day so you don't die or lose you mind, that's hard. Not being able to walk through a store, find clothes that fit, play with your kids, drive a car, wipe your own ass, those things are hard. Doing something to be active every day may start out hard, you're not used to it. But the more you do it the easier it gets. You have to commit long enough, you can't go on a diet for two days and then say "nope, didn't work", the same applies to working out. I have many days when I feel like I've accomplished nothing and then I'll have a day when multiple strangers come up and tell me how much weight I've lost and how much I encourage them. I look back through my workout records and my weight log and I see how far I've come. I feel different, I look different, I may even act a little different. It takes time and it takes commitment. Don't give up.

Step three: Learn and grow. When I started this blog it was mostly an outlet for the crap floating around in my head. I did a blog simply because I couldn't find a program that did what I wanted the way I wanted, or it would have stayed on my computer for ever. But then I started learning things. The more I learned the more I changed and the more I wanted to write about it and share it. I hadn't really exercised sense high school and even then it was more about throwing the weight around while grunting and sweating profusely than doing anything productive. It was 1980's bro science at its worst. Form and technique? Ha! It's a wonder we didn't seriously screw ourselves up. We never learned about things like proper rest periods or rotating body parts or nutrition. I learn something new almost every day. A new technique, a new exercise, something new about myself.

Step four: Remember that one size does not fit all. While we are all essentially the same we are also quite different. What worked for your friend may not work for you. Just because someone else does it does not mean you should, or that you will have the same results. Don't let that discourage you, keep trying new things until you find what does work for you. My workout routine is constantly changing. I add things, I remove things. I change the order, the progression, the time. And I take notes. I pay attention. How tired am I after? How is my energy the next day? Do I sleep well or not? What did my weight do over the last week? Am I lifting more? My diet is the same. I'm constantly looking for new options, new recipes, new things to try. It's very easy to fall into a rut with what you eat. Sticking with what you know really limits you needlessly. Remember when your mom said "how do you know you don't like it if you don't try it"? Ya, that. And I don't mean try the newest fad diet, give up and try the next. I mean explore the web, the library, your grandmothers recipe box. Watch some of those food shows, read a magazine or 5. There are quite literally millions of recipes out there. There's probably two thousand different ways to make a hamburger. Give some of them a try. Did you know they make edamame pasta?

And that's as far as I've made it. Step 5 is in progress. I really don't know at this point, other than to keep doing steps 1 through 4, every single day. I know there is no magic answer, no simple solution. Sure, you can go with the "eat less, move more" mantra, and it's a good one. To a point. But to eat less, or more appropriately to eat better, requires a plan. It requires effort. It requires commitment and, most importantly, it requires that you make a choice every single day. Many times a day. It's a lot like being an addict. As an addict you make the choice every single day to not use or to use. You make a choice every single day to be healthy or to not. To work towards your goal or to not. To make good choices, or to not. When you shop, when you eat, when you cook, choices. If you've made the commitment to yourself to make yourself a priority and you've found the strength to stick with it, those choices become easier every day. Eventually those choices become habits and after a while you simply can't imagine going back to how things used to be. You create a new normal for yourself.