#oneaday Day 18: Attempting to Reset

I put half a pound on this week. This is not, in the grand scheme of things, a huge amount of weight, but I am a little disappointed and not at all surprised. I have not been particularly rigorous about taking care to be sensible with what I eat, and that somewhat laissez-faire attitude is being reflected in a lack of positive results.

All you can do in this situation, though, is hold up your hands, admit you made a mistake (or a few) and try to right the ship from hereon. What has already happened can’t be changed; what’s important is what you do next and what you learn from that mistake.

I’ve already started taking positive steps with the exercise. I made it out of the door and to the pool for a decent length swim this morning, after what was a surprisingly good night’s sleep. I woke up a lot of times, but every time it was because I was convinced it was 7am and time to get up, only to get the very pleasant surprise when I looked at my bedside clock and discovered that “time to get up” was still several hours away.

What I need to do is focus on some of the things that Slimming World talks about in the sessions, rather than just nodding along. Probably the key thing I need to focus on is “triggers” — in the slimming sense, these are the things that aren’t the greatest for you which you eat then immediately want more of. They are one of the biggest barriers to weight loss, because they are the things that are most likely to send you catastrophically “off plan”.

In many respects it’s like an addiction. I have some experience of dealing with people who have struggled through addiction to substances more harmful than food — thankfully, those addictions appear to be in the past for the people concerned — but I recognise some of the same behaviours in myself when I “lapse”. A desire to make myself “feel better” through the thing that is the source of a lot of my troubles; an inability to stop once I’ve started that “self-medication” process; the mental association between feeling like I “deserve” something that is bad for me for [insert justification here].

Part of my trouble is not having what I think of as “safety nets” in place — and the fact I’m somewhat inclined to think negatively of those safety nets. My immediate reaction to seemingly obvious advice like “don’t eat a bag of sweets, have a piece of fruit instead” is that this is an absolutely laughable statement, even though I know fruit can be perfectly satisfying and even delicious. I need to get out of that mindset — and to have those pieces of fruit readily to hand so I can start making positive associations with them.

There are countless other examples, but there are days when it just all feels like work. And it is work; work with tangible benefits over the long term. It’s those long-term benefits I need to keep my focus on, because it’s short-term factors — i.e. the way I’m feeling right now — that is causing me difficulties.

I don’t need advice or anything. I know what I need to do, and putting it down on “paper” will likely go at least a little way towards fixing some of those things a bit further forward in my mind. I know I can do this — I’ve done it once before — so I just have to knuckle down and actually do it.

For now, though, bed. Without biscuits.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

1888: Put the Phone Down

I’m coming to detest my phone, not necessarily for what it is, but for what it’s done to me.

I don’t specifically mean my actual phone, either; more the general concept of smartphones and the “always-connected” nature of modern existence.

I don’t even specifically object to the “always-online” nature of modern society, more the habits — or, more accurately, compulsions — that it tends to instill in people. I’ve become very conscious of my own compulsions in this regard recently, and I’m making an effort to try and change my habits.

Here’s the problem for me: picking up a phone and fiddling with it (usually checking Twitter and/or Reddit) has become a default thing to do if no better activity is available. Phones are great for that; with the wide variety of apps available these days, there’s something sure to distract and entertain even the most attention-deficient individual, even if only for a few seconds. That “even if only for a few seconds” thing can become a problem, though; the fact a phone can fill an empty few seconds easily means that it’s easy to reach for it while you’re in the middle of something else, breaking your concentration and perhaps immersion.

I became particularly conscious of it while I was playing Criminal Girls the other day. (Side note: I’ve now completely finished that, so expect a comprehensive writeup on MoeGamer very soon.) I noticed that even mid-battle, I was reaching for my phone and fiddling with it while animations were playing, or sometimes between turns. There was no good reason for it, either; I wasn’t particularly interested in what Twitter had to say at that moment, and I was genuinely enjoying the game. It was just a nigh-uncontrollable compulsion to reach for it and look at it.

It happens in the night sometimes, too. I can’t get to sleep, so I pick up the phone and look at whatever vapid nonsense social media is spewing at any given hour. There’s rarely anything meaningful — although there’s occasionally an enjoyable late-night conversation with some of my friends in other timezones — and it doesn’t really have any value; it certainly doesn’t help me get to sleep when I find myself mindlessly refreshing for minutes at a time instead of putting the damn thing down, closing my eyes and trying to disconnect from the stimuli of the outside world.

So I’m trying to stop myself from doing these things. When I’m sitting down to play a game, unless I’m specifically intending on “liveblogging” my experiences as I play, I’ve started putting my phone out of reach or, at the very least, covering it over so I can’t see the notification light and screen. When I go to bed, I’ve started switching my phone off altogether rather than just leaving it in standby mode. And while a phone is a convenient thing to fiddle with to stave off social anxiety when dealing with other people face-to-face, I’m going to try and make an effort to keep it in my pocket unless it becomes clear that I really am surplus to requirements in a particular social situation. (Not necessarily in a negative way; I may just be along for the ride while others are discussing making arrangements for something or other that doesn’t directly involve me, for example.)

I feel like smartphones have done serious damage to our collective concentration spans over the last few years. And I’m quite keen to get mine back.

1697: Adjustments

I am very tired. This is a side-effect of my new routine, which necessitates getting up at some point before (or, more commonly just before) 7am, going out, doing some work for a normal working day, then coming home in time for about 6pm, eating dinner, then doing something relaxing and pleasant in the evening.

This may not sound all that tiring to those of you who have happily been holding down nine-to-fives for the last umpteen years, but it’s been something of a culture shock to me.

Actually, that might be a slight exaggeration. But after four years of working from home, often in my pants, there have been a number of adjustments I’ve had to make. And, you know, aside from the whole “getting up early” thing (which I still loathe thanks to my body’s uncanny ability to be extremely tired in the morning regardless of whether I go to bed early, timely…ly or ridiculously late) these adjustment haven’t been all that bad — and I think they’ll have a positive effect overall.

The biggest change is, of course, the fact that I am no longer working from home and consequently have to 1) put clothes on and 2) travel to work. The former’s not really an issue — I joke about working in my pants, but in reality more often than not I did get dressed to do work, because it put me in the right mindset to do useful things.

The latter, however, is a noteworthy change. I have a drive of about 45 minutes or so to my place of work, followed by a 10-15 minute walk from where I park my car to the actual office. This means that I’m getting a bit of very light exercise every day, which is probably a good thing. I can’t say it’s particularly strenuous exercise, given that I tend to walk quite slowly — a trait I have apparently inherited from my mother without noticing at some point — but it is exercise of sorts, and it’s every day.

There’s also actually a gym on site at my new workplace, which I will probably join at some point soon, since it’s a lot cheaper than the one I’m currently a member of. (Plus I walk past it on the way out of work every day, so that makes it a lot more difficult to ignore… and it has the advantage of meaning that if I stay late to do even a short workout, I’m less likely to run into rush-hour traffic on the way home, which will be very nice indeed.)

The fact I’m working in an office rather than in my own house, which, to put the following in context, is approximately 5 minutes’ walk from a Tesco Express, means that I’m less inclined to wander out and purchase various snacks and sugary drinks when I’m feeling hungry, too. Instead, I’m drinking a lot more water, I’ve cut down a fair bit on the lattes — no more than one or two a day, usually just the one to pep me up a bit in the morning — and I’ve almost entirely eliminated fizzy pop from consideration when I think about what I’d like to drink. I take my own lunch when either Andie or I remember to prepare it the night before (because let’s face it, neither of us feel inclined to do so at that ungodly hour in the morning) but even when I don’t, the work canteen is pretty good, with a selection of decent food rather than the usual “chips with everything” situation I typically associate with the word “canteen”.

So on the whole, then, things are going well and I hope they will have a positive impact on both my physical and mental wellbeing. It’s too early to say right now, but I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on things as I continue to settle in.