CARING FOR YOUR HEALTH

If there’s one thing you don’t fuck around with, it’s your health. Face it, there’s no reasoning or arguing with it, if you don’t take care of your physical well-being, you’re basically screwing yourself from the back end of your life. Our physical bodies are a base factor that all humans must deal with, and everyone in human history has had to deal with it. Unless you’ve found some way to exist without being slave to your physical needs, you better take good care of your body, it’s the only one you’ve been given.

Slave to my body? That’s right, that’s what happens when you don’t take care of your body. Ever hear about those people who obviously didn’t pay attention to their diets and got so overly obese that they can’t even get out of their homes, or get out of the bed/couch they last collapsed onto before their legs gave out to their massively overweight bodies? Or people who have smoked so much that they lose a lung or get a hole put into their throats so that they can scare the hell out of little children? These are only a few extreme examples of what may happen when you extremely mistreat your physical self, but the point is even if these people woke up and decided to stop mistreating their bodies, their past decisions have put them into complete enslavement that they’ll have to free themselves of before they can start getting better.

But for most of us, we enslave ourselves through small mistreatments of our bodies, such as not eating a well rounded diet, overeating, under-eating, not exercising often enough, drinking too much alcohol, not sleeping enough, doing harmful drugs, smoking, not keeping ourselves clean, stressing ourselves out and staying in stressed states, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. But not to worry, our bodies give us signs to remind us of how we mistreat it so that we may recognize them and fix the problems. Such signs may be headaches, pains, upset stomaches, upset anything, lack of energy, blood shot eyes, more susceptibility to catching illnesses, being out of breath going up a small flight of stairs, hangovers, coughs, etc, etc. You get the idea, you already know what these signs are, as you’ve most likely already felt many of these symptoms before.

STRESS, THE AMERICAN DRUG!

Studies show that a particularly common type of male pattern beer guts have a strong correlation with stress. While it’s not indicative that stress directly causes beer guts, the much more troubling suggestion is that stress causes people to be self-destructive, especially to their bodies. Ever walk into a meeting of corporate middle-managers? It’s like the beer gut is part of the uniform, just like the cups of coffee-sludge they’re drinking. The physical effects of stress have become the badge that good American workers can complain about while being patted on the back proudly. They’re “sacrificing” for their families and nation. What bullshit. How many people do you know talk about how stressful their work situations are? If you work with many people in many fields, you’ll notice how common it is. But it’s become an accepted thing, in fact when you and I think stressful job we usually also think “important” job. Notice how easy it is to make that connection, even though there’s actually none whatsoever.

But the problem I see in most of my “peers” in their twenties and thirties, is that most of us learn to ignore the symptoms of our bodies, and continue to mistreat ourselves physically. And this may be very tempting to do while we’re young and hip, and keeping up with the fashionable zombie/methamphetamine look and partying or drinking every night, trying hard to show how independent we are in our Gen-Y web 2.0 infused lifestyle. And if you don’t fall into that label, maybe you’re building up your “career,” working hard today, reading this at 10PM in your office while you finish up a project, but neglecting your sleep, diet, and health, so you won’t have to work so hard sometime in the future, whenever that future may be. They’re equally bad, especially in the context of our generation’s propensity for eating chips, drinking soda, and treating hamburgers, fries, and pizza as social food, or as “rewards.”

It’s easy for these ideals to become more important to us than health, we’re young, we don’t have to worry about slowing down until we’re older, right? After all, that gnawing feeling you have of “I’m making a bad choice for my body” most likely comes in the tone of voice that your parents talk to you in when they’re disappointed. And we all know we don’t need to listen to them, right? After all, we only live once, and why should we waste our young and beautiful years worrying about those things that only older (and therefore less free and probably fuglier) people worry about, right?

Well, sometimes the choice of responsibility is the hard choice to make, especially when it comes to being good to yourself. For as much as we talk about how awesome we are, there’s no such thing as a 20-something that doesn’t at least subconsciously harbor feelings of self-destruction. Sure, you may have just heard that french fries are more carcinogenic than cigarettes, but damn they taste good and they’re cheap, so fuck it. You can live your carefree party days today and worry about whatever harm you did to your body later. But if you want to actually attain your goals and become more than the person you are today, to become a more intelligent and successful person, to live consciously and act consciously, to achieve those dreams you have in doing something that adds to the world and is new and fresh and represents you, you’re going to have to start with the basics, and the most basic is your body.

OVERCOMING RESISTANCE

If you’re like me, you’ll scoff at the idea of changing now so suddenly, since after all you’ll “eventually” get to it. There isn’t any time now to worry about eating good diets every day, or getting to the gym often enough, or sleeping, who really needs to do that? I’m young now and I’m paving a road with my daily sacrifices on my body so that one day I can truly devote the right time and mental attitude to fully accomplishing these physical goals. I had this attitude for years, cranking out money with hard, stressful, unsatisfying days at work, learning to use my bank account and property as the only sign of my success in life. It was hard to break out of it, but I realized I was absolutely wrong in the decisions that got me there. I wasn’t paving a road for a better career with more money so I could later work on improving the parts of me that I don’t like. I was paving myself into a hole directed straight for mid-life crisis.

You’ve heard of that term, mid-life crisis. Maybe your uncle went through it and bought a Lamborghini, maybe your parents even got divorced in their forties after a mutual falling out, it happens a lot. A lot of 20-somethings look at being middle-aged as if it were a millennium away, its vague promises of stature and wealth and “adult” problems beyond the horizon. I thought that way too, being middle-aged is what I’ll be when I’ve “made it,” as if the clock was ticking and it was a slow steady race to finish before the time was up. A lot of my friends have this attitude as well, as if the ages of 25-40 are kind of just a gliding period where stuff happens, small successes mounting towards a large success later when you’re middle-aged.

Of course, middle-age is the age in which you’d start working out and taking care of your body, right? So just put that off, wait until then. Maybe you’ve got some big scheme you’d like to try, you can put that off until then too, right? Hey, maybe you have an idea for a novel, or want to go to Europe, or want to start a business. When you have the money, you can do those too, so just put them off too. Well, the thing is, in putting things off, you’re getting very good at doing one particular thing, and that’s putting things off.

When you get good at putting off your dreams and compromising your life goals, you do it over and over again easily, for decades until one day you wake up, you’re middle-aged, and you look back on your life and wonder what the fuck happened. Won’t happen to you? Then don’t let it happen, the seeds for mid-life crises are planted when the person is in their early twenties. See, delaying and procrastination is a skill, the more you do it, the better you are at it, coming up with even more convincing and elaborate excuses to stop yourself from doing things. Soon, your goal-making is automated, and you don’t even have to think about it, you’re just flowing through life, climbing up the corporate ladder, working at that dead-end job, or maybe even sucking money out of other people.

“I need money! Who can argue with that?”

I’ve been saying this, and things like this, all my adult life and I’m no better for having a bunch of goals that I never get around to accomplishing. I would find out topical stuff about things I really wanted for myself, and put them on my list of “life” goals, waiting for some day that I might actually take action on them. And I realized as I was growing more and more unhappy with myself, fear was crippling me, because I had allowed it to, using my own weaknesses and limitations as excuses, creating more weakness. Weakness in my body and mind. The excuses I was coming up with, that had become part of my life, that seemed even at the time to make me stronger, were all holding me back.

I could do one of two things to make myself feel better:

1. Keep ignoring the negative symptoms my body, emotions, and mind were sending me till I was totally de-sensitized to it, and hope I wouldn’t forget to accomplish my goals someday when I really felt I had the time to devote to my life goals, or

2. Achieve my life goals no matter how scary it was.

I decided I had enough of option #1 and that I was fed up with with it, so I’d try #2. So I decided, intellectually, to move ahead with #2, but what I found was that I had built up a huge amount of resistance (ie. excuses) to actually taking action towards accomplishing my life goals. I cried and got stressed out, sat around doing nothing for days, got mad at myself, and lashed out at people close to me, blaming them for holding me back. I acted like an ass. Eventually, the internal turmoil I was going through quieted down enough for me to be able to act, and after I got past the initial struggle, I started making small steps of progress.

I started sleeping more hours, and I lost those circles under my eyes. I felt more energetic, I felt less stressful. I got a gym membership, I went to the gym, I got even more energy, I built some muscle, I lost 10 pounds. I ate more regularly and in the right proportions and nutrients, I got even more energy, I weakened the Hangry Monster so he has trouble visiting or even showing up. I went to the doctors to make sure I was as healthy and as efficient as I could be and that I wasn’t hiding some cancer in my body, I got immunizations to make my body stronger, I got cavities removed from my teeth, I got better prescriptions and Lasik for my eyes so I could see more efficiently, I got warnings from my doctors of what I needed to look out for in my health. In other words, I was suiting up, charging the warp coils, and training the armies to continue in my journey to bring the ring of power to Mount Doom, to face Darth Vader and the emperor and bring peace to the galaxy, or whatever my life journey would lead me to.

I didn’t quite understand what I was doing when I was doing it, but in hindsight, I realize I was freeing my body. It had been enslaved, drained of energy, unable to feed my mind the nutrients it needed. Worse yet, I had been plagued with guilt and worry of my possibly deteriorating health, due to ignorance, due to lack of information, but mostly due to fear. It had been a slow process and it’s still an ongoing struggle to keep up the exercise, diet and sleep, but I’ve now put in motion so many changes in my physical well being, that they’re becoming easier to do. Beyond that, change and betterment are themselves becoming habits, skills that I’m practicing and making stronger. I know that the other goals I’m aiming for will not be far from being accomplished at most, and attempted at least.

CONCLUSION

Take care of yourself, and if nothing else about yourself, at least take care of your body. Your body will in turn give you the energy to look around and prioritize the other problems in your life. Your body is like a self-diagnostic tool, it tells you when you’ve fucked up, and when it’s stronger, your ability to meet and deflect obstacles — physical, mental, or emotional — becomes more active. Exercise, take vitamins or at least eat nutritious food, and develop a healthy sleep pattern (this article can help you reach that goal). If you can muster enough change in your physical self, you’ll be able to feel the benefits of it and have the physical power to start doing the stuff you really want to do with your life. People recommend that you start somewhere if you want to improve yourself, I say start with the physical, you’ll be surprised how you feel when you really take care of your body, and that even those seemingly small changes can help you realize how you can move forward. Ultimately, those life goals you may be leaving for later will never get accomplished until you say you’re going to tackle it today.

But when you awaken, it’s a different story. You’re all hot and sweaty for some reason, your mind is a cloud of confusion. But there’s more than that, there’s an ache right in the pit of your gut, what the hell is that? It’s hunger, it’s your body eating itself alive because you’re the genius who decided to nap for way too damn long without food or water. When you stand up, it feels like you’ve got a bowling pin shoved down your throat, and certain parts of your brain are refusing to respond. That’s because your hypothalamus has commandeered the mother ship, half an hour ago it was tapping politely on your shoulder saying, “We gonna eat?” But it’s gone past that now, now it’s a constant air-horn of agitation screaming, “RHAAAAAAHHHH.” The Hangry Monster has struck.

Hangry is what happens when I haven’t eaten for such a long time and let my blood sugar drop so far that I’m not just hungry, and not just angry, I’m HANGRY. Hangry at myself for not having fed myself, hangry at others for not feeding me, hangry at the whole world for inventing food, and more specifically, the lack of it. It’s an entire man vs. self, man vs. man, man vs. world dilemma. It’s when you‘ve become so hungry and so angry, it necessitates a new word to describe it: hangry.

You’d think that when the hangry monster comes out, you’d get up from whatever you’re doing and put food in your mouth. But you can’t! That would be way too easy, hanger is a dark cloud over the world, and like the virus in 28 Days Later, strikes at the very heart of the human brain stem, turning you into a mindless zombie. Your eyes are bloodshot, your hair’s a mess, your shirt’s so last winter.

Now that everything is fucked up, you try to start picking up the pieces and getting yourself fed. But first, you’ve got to have an argument with someone, god damn it. Some unsuspecting victim with delicious brains to… have a stern conversation with. They don’t know what hits them, you’re like DeNiro in Raging Bull, but less talented, and more unintellige-abled. They throw you a banana to eat, you beat them with it and fling your poo at passing motorists.

Eventually, you spot a single radish, in it goes. A brown piece of lettuce, down it goes. A box full of donuts, an empty box. A glass half full of water, a glass half empty. A matza ball, you consider becoming Jewish, but instead swallow.

But the Hangry Monster is like that spam email mailing list you got on because you signed up for that one site, you know the one, we all know it because there’s 79 trillion of that website everywhere. You wanted a quick peek, who would know? You try to put the whole domain on your spam list. But it gets through, months go by, you think you’ve beaten it, but it gets through.

So remember, eat and drink, have nutritious snacks often, and you too can keep the Hanger at bay.

COMING SOON: The Hangry Monster Part II