I hate it. Deeply. With a passion. As an idea, as a chore, as something I have to do, before I start doing it.
Yet, I’ve noticed that each time I abandon the practice, the responsible adult part of me seems to subside and take a back seat.
Maybe that’s not the correct way to phrase it, but every time I start binging on food, smoking, gain weight, reduce activity levels; coincides with me losing myself to some important seeming hobby/pursuit and absolute abandonment of what’s truly important.
It’s almost as if I seek out a distraction, unconsciously amp it up as something critically important right now and suddenly that’s the focus of my free mental bandwidth outside of work and family matters.
I’ve done this to myself many times, countless car sell/buy/repair loops, where “I just have to solve this one thing” or various hobby pursuits consume months of effort and I completely forget how important it is to allocate bandwidth for mindful food preparation/eating, how important it is to find time to go to the gym and work out.
All of this leads me to forget what’s truly important: my health.
Being morbidly obese is something I’ve gotten used to, a scary thought.
I’m actively taking quality years off my life at both ends while pretending that something else (like cars or other hobbies) can be more important.
It’s just so easy to focus on work, then get super hungry, order a ton of wildly unhealthy food for delivery and just stuff it inside of me while working or watching something.
Yet, if I were to obsess with meal prepping, food and workout schedule planning 10% as much as I used to over cars and other stuff, I could probably be a bodybuilder by now.
Weight loss is a slow, boring and exhausting process, obviously it’s much easier to divert attention to a shiny new toy.
This is why journaling is crucial. It’s like a round table for all of the personas of my mind.
There is nothing like it, meditation is about silencing every one of the personas and I’m sure that’s valuable too, but I think right now they are all silenced enough by the constant consumption of music or video content.
I have to make sure I let the boys speak and hash things out from time to time, otherwise I am likely to again lose myself to some next shiny distraction.