Just Stop Eating Crap

There can be a lot of confusing ideas and points of view for the Paleo newcomer to digest.  It’s a natural thing.  There is such a plethora of interesting and intelligent people associated with Paleo eating that it can be a bit overwhelming.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing but it can cause some false starts and backsliding.  I thought about the beginning of my own journey and what the single piece of advice I would have given to myself.  After some introspection, it came to me.

Just stop eating crap.

Really.  It’s that easy.

This is the commandment from which virtually everything else flows in Paleo living.

The best part?  You know you’re eating crap.  Even when you love that carton of Ben and Jerry’s or bag of chips so much that it seems like it is life itself you know it’s crap.  And if you aren’t conscious of that fact you may have some larger issues to address beforehand.

In the business world there is the axiom of picking the low hanging fruit.  It means you take care of the easy stuff before you tackle the hard stuff.  The same applies here.  Pick the low hanging fruit of processed, and downright junk, food off of your diet.  After that you will be in a much better position to progress through some of the tougher concepts and ideas you’ll find in the community.  Sometimes we try to tackle change all at once and it’s just too much of a shift for someone that isn’t ready for it.  Take care of the easy stuff first and it doesn’t become an obstacle for the harder part later.

Just stop eating crap.

The Agent of Your Own Change

It’s so common it almost seems like a stereotype in the Paleo community.

Someone posts on Twitter or Facebook or where ever that the biggest obstacle to their beginning or continued success is their spouse, live-in mate, or co-habitant.  If only they’d go Paleo they argue, it wouldn’t such a burden on me.  Having all their food in the house is just too much of a temptation they lament.  If they really loved me they’d understand and try to support me.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news today but that attitude is going to get you to one of two places.  You’re either going to end up resenting that person so much it seems almost unbearable or you’re going to fall into your old habits and find yourself at the bottom of a bag of potato chips.  And the worse part?  The other person isn’t even aware of your intentions, let alone the mental anguish you might be feeling.

All of this, I think, falls back into two common fallacies we often associate with romance and Western culture.

The first is the notion that we can change someone.

Do you really think you can change someone?  Do you really think you turn around a lifetime of habits and thoughts in two days through the sheer force of your own nagging and passive aggressiveness?  Of course you can’t.  It is the sheerest of follies to believe otherwise.  People change because they want to change.  Because they see something in themselves they don’t like and want to eliminate from their lives.  The best we can be is the light that shines on that change, that points it out them in sharper focus.  Does your spouse eat a bagel with cream cheese and three doughnuts for breakfast?  Just eat your breakfast without any condescension or meanness.  Field their questions if they have any.  But most of all, be understanding if they don’t want to change with you.

Which leads me to the second idea.

We often have the romantic notion of dedicating our change to someone else.  That somehow making someone else the centre of our endeavour will give us the strength and ability to see it through.

It’s a nice idea to believe but it won’t get you any where either.  You may tell yourself that you’re a fat slob who sits around all day, eats, and watches football.  You may also tell yourself that you’re happy with that but you want to change for your spouse.  I deluded myself for years with this idea while I happily puffed my way through half a pack of cigarettes a day.  The simple fact is that you will never do anything for someone else.  You’ll take out the trash because your wife asks.  You’ll clean up the garage because your husband is away on a business trip.  You’ll even make your kids favourite dessert when you don’t want it.  You won’t, however, ever make an effective and deeply psychological change in your life for someone else.  I’m sorry, I know that’s harsh but it’s the truth.  You do something for yourself or you won’t do it at all.

All of this then to state this one thing.  There is no external force in the universe that can make you change or that is inhibiting it.  You are the agent of your own change.  You need to press forward when that voice in your head says stop.  You need to understand that the only person stopping you is you.  Personal ownership is the name of the game and if you’re not willing to take it, the game is already lost.

It’s All in My Head

Unless you really sit down and think about it, the average person doesn’t really realize how much of the process of eating is purely psychological.

Think about it.

Are you eating because you’re hungry or because it’s convenient?  Are those four Oreos you’re walking back to the couch with necessary for the sustenance of life?  Are your morning breakfast choices based on need or desire?

I’ve made a concerted effort this week to really think about my food choices.  Every time I find myself angling for the cupboard or fridge I’ve forced myself to wonder at my motivations.  Why am I doing this right now?  Am I really hungry?  Do I need a snack?  Am I just eating to fill time or procrastinate?  It’s an interesting psychological (and sociological) exercise.

My outcome so far?

I’ve discovered, almost exclusively, that most of my between meal snacking is in my head.

All in my head.

It’s the same thing with coffee.  I’m beginning to see that coffee and I have the same co-dependent relationship cigarettes and I used to have.  When push came to shove, I didn’t need to smoke.  Granted, I had to go a little crazy before I finally overcame the psychological addiction, but I survived without smoking.  I’m trying this week to survive without drinking as much coffee as I have.  Seriously, I drink between 50 and 65 ounces of coffee a day.  My highly unscientific self-study has revealed that after the first two 16 ounce cups it’s all diminishing returns.  I’m not drinking coffee to survive or stay alert, I’m drinking coffee out of habit.

And how many of us can say the same thing about how we eat?

We walk through life doing things because we believe we should or because of unconscious habit developed through rote action or belief.  I’ve really come to believe that if we sat down and removed ourselves from our fictitiously busy lives for a few moments and really thought about our motivations and actions we would come to some startling conclusions.  Food is meant to sustain and energize, not comfort and fill psychological niches that need something else.  There’s no hole in your heart that can ever be filled by rocky road ice cream or that bag of chips.  Your daily chocolate bar is as much a habit as the poor souls standing in -15C temperatures to have their hourly cigarette.  I know, I used to believe I needed both.

So be honest with yourself today.  Go find a quiet room or put on your headphones, close your eyes, and blot out the office for a few moments.  Really, honestly assess your eating habits (and your life as a whole if you’re up to it).  Got those things in your mind that you can easily identify as unnecessary?  Good.  That’s a place to start.  Successful change isn’t a radical process, but one of steady and recursive identification and elimination.

After all, who knows what you’re capable of?  If I can cut down to one cup of coffee a day, ANYTHING is possible.

A Little Motivation

This is quite possibly the most stylistically confused music video ever.  I think you get the message anyway.

Everything Old is New Again

I was reading a New York Times article yesterday from 2009.  Discovered through Tim Ferriss‘ web site and clipped to Evernote, I finally had a chance to sit down over coffee and read it.  Entitled Are Your Friends Making You Fat? by Clive Thompson, it got me thinking about diet, the company I keep, and how I’ve backslid since exiting stage left here back in September.  The basic thrust of the article is that research is starting to show (or at least it was back in 2009) that our habits, likes and dislikes, and even personal health is influenced by those around us.  Which, when I started to think about it, really made sense to me; especially in the light of the last six months or so.

All of this to say that while I haven’t been consuming a bag of Oreos every day, I certainly haven’t been sticking to Paleo living as much as I should.  Now there are a lot of contributing factors to that but the article certainly illustrated the need to surround yourself with like-minded people.  That goes as much for the novice as it does the person who thinks they have everything mastered.

Hubris, my friends, is a dangerous thing.

So dear friends, I hope you’ll have me back.  It seems I still have a lot to learn.

Taking Down the Shingle

There comes a point in any journey when you have take down your shingle and move on.  It occurred to me this week that I’ve reached that point with the Paleo Campfire.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up on living Paleo; quite to the contrary.  I do believe however I have written down all the things I wanted to say about getting across that metaphorical river.  Buddhists know that a raft or boat is handy for getting across the river but is of little use when you get to the other side.  This blog was always about being the boat, the thing I needed to bridge the gap between the life I used to live and the one I do now.  There will still be ups and downs of course, but I feel I’ve covered that ground already.  My words will still be here to encourage me when I get there.  I hope you find them encouraging as well.

As with any journey, there are new adventures and new things to see.  I wish you luck and good fortune in your Paleo or Primal journey.  I’ll still be kicking around Twitter, Google+, and the Interwebs.  I’m sure our paths will cross again.

Backsliding

I’ve written a couple of posts over the course of this blog discussing my issues with food with tongue implanted firmly in cheek.  It feels good to be able to laugh a bit about it, get some jokes in at my own personal expense, and move on.  If you listen very carefully though, you can hear the brittle, nervous nature of the laughter.  If you’ve battled your own food issues you’ll know exactly what I mean.  I smoked for 15 years, quit, and haven’t smoked again (other than the occasional cigar) since 2005.  I have absolutely no desire to take on that habit again.  Something as deeply ingrained and pernicious as smoking was forgotten but after almost 37 years on this Earth I am still struggling with food.

I say all of this in the service of confession.  I have been backsliding terribly these days, fighting a running battle just to get back to level again.  I’m not sure what precipitated this mess but now I have to find a way out of it.  I mean I’m sure we’ve all had that day when we had that fudge brownie sundae against our better judgement but this has gone on for a couple of weeks now with no sign of abatement.  The wheels seem to come off some time in the afternoon and it’s a screeching car crash by supper; sugar and gluten scattered every where.  It hasn’t been a pretty sight.

I guess what I’m trying to say is two-fold.  First, stay vigilant.  Some of you may laugh at me for saying this but I truly believe the food issues people struggle with can be just as pernicious as any addiction and if you’ve battled that monkey off your back be damn sure not to let it back on again.  Not for one second.  I know this cascade started somewhere with something I should not have eaten.  I’m not back to square one entirely but probably square three or four.  Don’t give these things one inch in your life.  Smokers shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking one cigarette won’t hurt.  Alcoholics shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking a small drink would be fine.  People with food issues shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that slice of cake is harmless.

Second, if you’re sitting where I am this morning we’re in this together.  Every day is a new day and the perfect day to start over even if you have to start over every day for a while.  You’re not alone and neither am I.  Find your friends, reach out, look for support.  If you don’t think your physical friends can help, there is a whole world of love and support online.  Go to Google+, go to Twitter, go to Facebook and search on Paleo or Primal.  There is a whole community of people out there who want nothing more than to help you along the way.

As for me, I recognize today is a new day.  A day to start over.  I may backslide again or I may make it through but every day is just one day at a time.  That’s all we have the power to do but we don’t have to do it alone.

Summer Faileo

It hardly seems possible that Summer is almost over.  Wasn’t it just yesterday the kids were bursting through the door trumpeting the end of another school year?  As a home-based worker there is a certain part of me that’s a little excited about the onset of another school year but this has been such a great Summer with my family that I hardly want to surrender it.

As good a Summer as it has been, I have to admit it was filled with more than a little bit of Faileo.  Those of you who are new to the Paleo and Primal lifestyle may be unfamiliar with the term.  Faileo is a bit of an inside joke.  Faileo refers to a backsliding state where those of us attempting to live a Paleo or Primal life have indulged in those things we have sworn to leave behind.  Summer, especially, is filled with the ingredients for a proper Faileo state.  Hot dog and hamburger buns, tonnes of homemade sweets, and more than a few glasses of soda were my nemesis this Summer.  The good news though is that I more or less was able to keep it in check and I didn’t really gain that much weight.  Now I get the Fall and Winter to try and plot how to tackle all of this next Summer.

If you’ve had a bit of a Faileo Summer as well, don’t worry about it.  There’s no better time to get back on the path than today.  Don’t let the worry or recrimination you may be feeling for having indulged this Summer drag you into more of a spiral.  Take a deep breath, acknowledge that you had some fun this Summer, and recognize that it’s time to get back to work.  From today I’m going to try to avoid the things I had been avoiding so well before the Summer again.  I challenge you to do the same.  Together we can make a Faileo Summer turn into a Paleo Fall.

Good luck!

You’re Not Strong Enough

I have some bad news for us both.

You’re not strong enough to live with your bad habits and temptations.  Neither am I.

We all have that closet in the dark recesses of our life that contains our bad habits and temptations.  If you’ve altered your lifestyle in some way, say quitting smoking or eating Paleo, that closet is stuffed particularly full.  There are a lot of gurus and books out there that want to tell you the 10 step plan for banishing them from your life.  They’re lying.  Everything ends up in the closet, worn out and unused clothes no one quite has the wherewithal to throw out.  You can believe they’re gone from your life but they aren’t.  They’re just laying there waiting for you to open the door again.

At some point in your journey the thought will enter your head that you’re strong enough to live with the temptation, just a little bit, and you open that door ever so slightly.  Oh I can just have ONE bowl of ice cream.  Oh I can just have ONE cigarette.  Oh I can just have ONE drink.  And then I’ll be okay right?  I’ll just close the door again and move on with my life.  How many times have we told that lie to ourselves?  It’s like that sight gag you used to see in the old Looney Tunes cartoons.  The first character is frantically running around the house cleaning up because some unexpected visitor is at the door.  Everything gets thrown into a closet in a rush but the immediate outcome is the house is spotless.  The visitor comes in, they interact, and at some point the visitor opens the door to the closet full of junk and it all comes tumbling out on them.  As long as we keep the door shut on it, the house looks great but once we open the door it all comes falling out again.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve told myself the lie that I could live with the things I had banished from my life.  I don’t know about you but food and information are my pressure points.  Food’s an obvious one.  If you’re reading a Paleo blog it probably means you’re making the changes and dealing with the challenges of moving a lifetime’s worth of ingrained eating habits.  You understand what it feels like to open the door on all of those bad habits that feel oh so good but are incredibly, incredibly bad.  Information is the same for me.  I am a hard, hard, hardcore information junkie.  I opened the door on that the last few weeks too, telling myself the lie that I was well enough again to start accepting all the bad habits associated with it back into my life again.

Boy was I wrong.

So now I’m here, trying to get everything stuffed back into the closet again.  The good thing though is that it was an instructive experience.  Once I finally get everything stuffed back in and the door shut, I am never going to open it again.  Or at least until the next time I look at it and think that may be I’m strong enough to just peak inside.  Living with bad habits is a daily struggle.  If you’re fortunate enough to lock that door and throw away the key, good for you.  I’ll have to walk by that door everyday on my way to my life.  At least now I know the trick isn’t to not look at the door, acknowledging it is fine.  The trick is to not open it.  If I can remember that, I just might be okay.

Conspicuous Absence

I have been conspicuous by my absence as of late.  I hope you don’t mind.

I haven’t given up on this endeavour, it’s just on hiatus for a while.  I’ll be popping in from time to time to post but Summer tends to be very demanding.  The kids have organized sports, we’re on the road a lot travelling or exploring, and it tends to be a bit of the silly season at work.  All three have conspired to keep me busy over the last little while.  You may have noticed my posts start to tamper off and then disappear entirely.

I’ve also quit Twitter in the mean time so for many of you I may have seemed to have dropped off the radar entirely.  It had simply become a place of too many people yelling and selling and not enough people simply talking.  I’m more interested in the conversation than selling myself or huckstering you into coming to my site.  There may have been a time when I thought some kind of Internet fame could be garnered doing that but I realize that’s not terribly interesting any more.  So if you’re interested in a conversation as well, I’m on Google+ now.  Just search for Erin Peterson.  If you’d like to get on Google+, give me a shout and I’ll send you an invite.

I’m still here, just a little busy right now.  I’m sure Summer plays havoc with your schedule as well.  I hope you’re having a great Summer.  See you next time.