Baby Steps or Big Change?

As I mentioned previously, I have become fascinated with the idea of neuroplasticity. (According to the dictionary, neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury.  In other words, You can create new and healthier connections and pathways in the brain with purposeful behavior.)  I started out just looking at techniques for creating new habits, then changing behavior, especially anxiety driven behavior and I stumbled upon neuroplasticity.  All of these are intertwined.  Even if you know or care nothing about changing your brain but only about creating healthier habits or whatever, you ARE changing your brain when you create a new habit. ;)

So, this morning, I was rewatching a video I had seen a couple of years ago on tiny habits.  It's a TED Talk by B.J. Fogg, a Stanford prof who holds workshops and such on changing your life through the use of "tiny habits."  (I'll link the video at the end of this blog entry.)  I resisted this approach on one level because of my experience of juice fasting (a HUGE, all-at-once change) leading to a far easier transition to eating WFPBNO than I could have possibly made in any other way.  I had tried the baby steps, small-changes-lead-to-big-changes approach to diet my entire life which led me to be 340 miserable, ill pounds by age 50.  And I've witnessed virtually everyone I know failing the same thing.  I'd been force-fed the miserable statistics on how ridiculously few people actually lose weight and keep it off my entire life. I KNEW this approach didn't work.  But while listening to professor Fogg and taking notes and finding once again that it really made sense to me and that I really believed I could develop some better habits in this way, I had an epiphany.  Now some of you may think this is common sense that should have occurred to me long since but it didn't, okay.  Small changes do not work for physically addictive behaviors but may work quite well for many other behaviors.

I still believe that the baby steps approach is not the way to go for many people to change their diet, but it may very well be the best way to change most other habitual behaviors, and make no mistake, anxiety, fear, resentment and often even depression are HABITS and/or the result of habits.  The "many people" that I'm referring to above is anyone who is obese or has any sort of eating disorder or who has struggled over a long period of time to lose weight and never successfully lost it or kept it off.  There are some people who are a bit overweight and maybe even have diet-related illness who simply need education as to what food is actually doing to them.  Once this is clear in their mind, they begin to make the necessary changes a bit at a time so as to cause less disturbance in their home, family etc.  Many people in my facebook group, Let Food Be Thy Medicine, advocate this approach and I always cringe because I firmly believe that it isn't likely to work for most of the people who come to the group.  But it is such an easier pill to swallow you see.  Here is me saying, just do it!  Jump in the deep end!  Way easier, I promise!  While Betty and Bob are over here saying, be kind and gentle with yourself.  Cut back on meat to one meal a day and then cut back on cheese, and then... and then... and then....  But in reality, for anyone who has been obese for many years, this approach just doesn't work.  If it did, they would have stuck to one of the dozens of diet attempts they made in the past (and they have pretty much ALL made dozens of attempts in the past.)  Because if weight loss is your only concern, just about every diet out there will work if applied consistently.  Why don't we apply them consistently?  Addiction.  Many of the problematic foods for the human race are physically addictive.  And for we poor souls who also have addictive emotional habits, it is a deadly combination.  Now, to be clear, even the lucky few with no true addictive tendencies are probably going to have to go cold turkey to break the physical addiction of certain foods at some point.  Cheese and sugar, for example, are highly addictive, period.  Cutting back on those a little at a time is going to be nearly as impossible as telling an alcoholic to drink a little less each week till they've cut it out.  Any true alcoholic will tell you the folly in that notion. For a far better explanation of the addictive nature of food, please read the excellent book by Alan Goldhamer and Douglas J Lisle called The Pleasure Trap.  Really a must read if any of this is of interest to you. And if it weren't, you surely wouldn't be reading my little blog so... read it!!

So, that's my epiphany for today.  It may seem obvious to many but it is a huge realization for me.  I can now give myself permission to change some things a little at a time and not feel that I am copping out or wasting my time while recognizing that this doesn't change the fact that where my diet is concerned 100% is the only way for me.

You can find the video I referred to here:  https://youtu.be/AdKUJxjn-R8

Reboot 2018

Wow, three years.  It's been three years since I posted.  I gave myself the excuse that it was just too inconvenient to try to blog on a tablet and I didn't have a computer anymore but the main reason I stopped was that I felt irrelevant.  It seemed there were so many voices out there sharing information about the whole-food, plant-based way of living that were way more consistent, knowledgeable and successful than I was that I let my own insecurities and lack of confidence and lack of knowledge about how to promote myself on social media undermine my commitment to myself and to anyone who might have been finding any little bit of motivation from my blog.   I still have no idea how to promote myself on social media and after three and a half years, I know I have no followers here.  But now that I have an actual computer with a keyboard again, I will be blogging again anyway.

I will be blogging because since junior high school, I have been a writer.  I have found comfort, therapy and self-revelation in writing and I have just flat-out enjoyed the process.  It's been a long, loooong, time since I was in school so my grammar and punctuation skills may be rusty so cut me a break. ;)  I just enjoy writing and it is good for me.  For ME.  And that's enough.  Also, I am in need of rebooting my journey to health and sharing that here will help me to hold myself accountable.  Yes, even if nobody else reads it, it is still "out there."  And, as always, if even one person finds their way to hope and action towards regaining their health and quality of life, it is well worth facing my insecurities.

The last couple of years haven't been kind to me and my family.  It's been rough.  There has been major illness, death of a close friend, financial disaster, divorce, etc.  It has undone decades of progress I had made on my mental and emotional health issues and it has undone a great deal of the good I had done to my body with my healthy lifestyle.  I've regained quite a bit of weight - more on that later.  But probably more importantly, yes really, MORE important than that is the return to living from a base of fear.  I spent my entire first 17 years of life in an environment of legitimate fear and it created a very firmly entrenched approach to life that was based in fear.  A lot of  therapy and self-work in college got me out of that to a certain extent and I gradually made more progress over the years until, after going plant based, I found my way to truly living from a place of trust and happiness most of the time.  Toward the end of 2015, some things happened that began to erode that progress.  I didn't recognize it at the time.  I'm not planning to go into the specifics of the things that went wrong during late 2015 through to now, really, but especially throughout 2016 and the first half of 2017.  It really doesn't matter for anyone reading this.  Fill in the blank.  What has gone to hell in your life?  What is eroding YOUR sense of trust in the world.  And then, let's not even get started on how, in the United States at least, the world is indeed getting twisted.  I weep for my country on a regular basis these days which doesn't help my emotional issues.

So, from this point, for a while at least, my blog will be dealing just as much with emotional work as with physical.  I HAVE to get back to a higher level of commitment to my physical health with an excellent dietary lifestyle and I also HAVE to get back to living from a place of faith, trust, hope and happiness.  So many people are finding that difficult these days.  But what I know from my past experience is that you MUST live from that place to be effective in your life.  To be successful and healthy in your life, you must live from that place.  It doesn't mean you don't recognize the problems in the country, the world, your home and family or your own skin.  It just means that in spite of the problems, in spite of the bad things, YOU are a happy, hopeful person.  I can't afford therapy right now so it's really a good thing that I have the knowledge already in there from previous years and I just have to bring it back to the surface of my everyday life.  I'm reading books and blogs and watching youtube videos that contribute to my progress and I'll be sharing insights I glean from those here.  I hope to eventually regain enough self-confidence to also start making youtube  videos again but that isn't going to be for a while just yet.

On the physiological front, I'm more committed and convinced than ever that a WFPBNO lifestyle (get used to that acronym as I'll use it a lot - whole-food, plant-based, no-oil) is essential to excellent health.  And I know that when I am living that lifestyle fully, it also contributes to my mental well-being.  Our brain and gut are quite definitely connected after all.  And right now, my gut is in poor condition.  I haven't slid so far downward as to lose all my health gains, thankfully, but I have regained about 35 lbs and am back to having no energy and feeling weak and "unable."  My blood pressure is still pretty good without medication and my chronic pain is not back.  I haven't had it checked but I suspect my thyroid is sluggish again.  I have had a couple of fairly minor flares of myasthenia gravis.  I never walk or workout anymore.  And while I am still conscious of trying to focus on veggies and fruit, I am back to eating way to much processed food, technically vegan but certainly not wfpbno fast food, and not enough fresh freggies. (Freggies = fruit and veggies - I'll use that often as well.)

For the time being, I am in a comfortable home with a decent computer, keyboard and all.  I even have a functional kitchen!  I miss my little RV in a lot of ways, believe it or not, but I really do love my little house more.  I have an actual computer and keyboard so the writing goes quickly and smoothly.  I have freggies in my kitchen and a great book on neural plasticity in my audible library and I have a notebook to start a gratitude journal.  So here I am, baring my shortcomings and struggles with the world so that I can share my triumphs in the weeks, months and years to come.  Whether or not anyone else is actually paying attention is irrelevant.  I have a lot of work to do.  Time to get started... again.