Everybody knows that the road to oblivion is paved with well-intended resolutions. And yet, what better time than the start of a year to start all over again? This time, it’s for real. Promise!
It’s only 10:30. I have eaten 603 of my allotted 1800 calories. And Sunday cravings have got me like… pic.twitter.com/FXqxaXXVs0
— Dave Luis (@TaineMcLean) December 18, 2016
If you’re anything like me, seeing all those sanctimonious New Year’s resolutions posts on Facebook makes you want to deactivate your account. Especially since anecdotal evidence means scant few of those will still be in place by February 1. I despise the piety that ordinarily decent folk bestow on themselves as they list how they plan to live their Best Life over the next 365 days. Call me the New Year Grinch, if you will. Besides, I’d already done my version of a resolution when I decided that I was not #NotEatingOut, last year in October.
So I suppose it is universal karma that has forced a whole new way of living on me this year. My only saving grace is that this happened at the beginning of December. “Pledge now and avoid the rush!” it seemed to say. So technically, not a New Year’s resolution at all. Dave 1, duplicity 0.
A bout of gastro forced my long overdue hernia operation to happen, and – being me – I didn’t really pay attention to the doctor when he told me to eat before taking my pain medication after the op. Neither did I bother with sticking to the right dose. Nett result? An ulcer that ruptured and sent me back into hospital for seven agonising days and added two weeks to my recovery time. Great. I found myself drinking my meals, rather than eating them.
But karma wasn’t done with me yet. Not by a long shot. Cue the Serious Talk with the doctor before he released me back into the wild. “Your lack of self-care and unhealthy eating habits caused this whole mess. From the severity of your gastro, to the complications with the hernia and recovery. It’s time to fix yourself and your eating habits. You’re overweight, unhealthy and unfit. Next time this could be a lot more serious and cause permanent damage.” Sobering. And embarrassing at age 42 to be told that basically, you need to grow up. It seems my #NotEatingOut campaign was too little, too late.
I found myself a week before Christmas living on a heavily restricted diet so that I could at least keep the food down. Nothing spicy. Not even salt or pepper. Nothing rich. No sugar, no fat and no acidic fruit (like, basically – no fruit at all.) Worse was to come – the portion sizes I was restricted to would have barely sustained a supermodel. And I’m no Kate Moss. I like my food in size XXXL, thank you very much!
By day three, it was abundantly clear I had no idea what I was doing, and that attempting this radical change on my own was an impossible task. I needed a way to make it merely Herculean. So I picked up the phone, dialled a number and said: “I need help!”
The voice on the other side had been waiting for this call for years. Jeané and I worked together years ago, and she was horrified by my bad eating back then, and as a food and lifestyle coach she tried her best to save me from myself. But none so deaf as those who will not hear – I wasn’t interested or ready to change a thing back in 2008. But now it was a life or death matter: I would rather die than ever feel like I did the day my ulcer ruptured. Jeané was duly conscripted into my #SaveDave campaign.
“Open your fridge, get rid of the cheese!” Well. The first instruction seemed more painful than that damned hernia. Several other instructions and guidelines followed, and I spent a day opening cupboards and clearing out food that No Longer Served Me. (It went to a good home, don’t worry!)
Next came the daily eating plan, with calorie limits, and fibre and protein targets. And reading material about how food works to fuel my body.
Each week, Jeané would add a new task to my weekly goal. Week 1 was to limit my calories to 1800. In the second week, I had to ensure I drank 2.5 litres of water daily. Week 3 had me chasing a daily target of 140g of protein. Week 4 has been the toughest one yet: three sessions per week of 30 minute workouts.
The aim here is to get me to lose weight (sustainably!) and make healthier food choices. By introducing elements incrementally over a 12-week period, the change will not be so radical as to make me rebel against such a huge revision of my life. Come February 1, I want to be proud of what I have achieved so far, not guilt-ridden over yet another year’s well-intentioned and ill-conceived resolutions come to nought.
A lot has changed in the last month. I don’t hoard food. I plan my meals. I drink more water. I exercise. I eat vegetables and I don’t have any cheese in the house. If you’d told me to do that all at once, I would have scoffed at your sheer detachment from my reality. Perhaps the way to approach your resolutions is a scalable approach. Little by little. Easy does it. All the clichéd mantras that slide so glibly from our lips.
New year, old me, new ways. I will forgive myself this sanctimonious moment, because this time – this year – I really mean it!
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