On Cultivating New Habits

This post primarily deals with how much thought and care I must use when making choices, and it also elaborates on how poor decision choices lead to bad habits, and it, finally, talks about two of the three behaviors that I am proactively changing through very careful consideration of movements that have become unconscious and innate. But, let's start with an anecdote...

Silverlake Reservoir, circled twice, with detour: five miles

After dropping Dexter at preschool, I began my alone time today with a five mile run, which I made speedy time of, completing it in about fifty minutes. This is not surprising. I make a good habit out of regular, strenuous exercise. I would say, however, that although breathe and muscle did not balk, I was nevertheless uncomfortable during the last third of the run. I had chaffed my inner thighs through my running pants because my thighs had rubbed holes through the material. That's because they touch, dear reader, but here is why I'm still carrying around a good seven pounds of unwanted weight: I don't take any real care when I eat or drink. Thus we get to the first two behaviors that I am changing.

I worked a collective eight years in the restaurant industry as a server and bartender in fast-paced establishments that did not allow for dining breaks. I ate my meals furtively, ravenously, and almost always while standing. As a result of this, I have had a hard time eating slowly, even when out for, say, filet mignon with my in-laws. Furthermore, when I ate on my own as a instinctual necessity, I often just stood over the sink and shoveled food into my mouth until I wasn't hungry anymore. The problem with this, aside from pegging me as a bit of a savage, is that it's impossible to know how many calories I was eating. That was fine before I changed my body through childbirth, and it was fine when I busted my ass for ten hours behind the bar, working to the brink of physical exhaustion. But that's not my life anymore; now I'm a stay-at-home mom who enjoys more moments of stillness, more sitting, and this does not support willy-nilly eating. 

Too much of a good thing?

This role as stay-at-home mom also compounds the problem. I take care with Dexter's food, but I don't make any time or effort to prepare meals for myself. I just graze around the kitchen, eating this and that. And sometimes this is chocolate cookies. Sometimes that is random chunks of cheese. It's not that I'm gorging on french fries and chocolate shakes, but I'm just careless enough that all of the exercise I do simply maintains my slight paunch. So to change this behavior, I must put food on a plate. I must plan carefully. I should sit and eat with Dexter anyway as a way of setting good habits.

The second behavior that must change is related to the issue of eating because it involves caloric intake, but it's also fraught with other perils. And this behavior is the careless consumption of alcohol. I do so love to drink, although I would argue that I am not an addict.

In the restaurant industry, drinking is not only commonplace, it's also a behavior that mutates from conscious, good fun to regular, habitual sloppiness. There are a lot of alcoholics in the industry, but I would argue against the idea that the industry attracts individuals prone to alcoholism. Or maybe all the bartenders and servers I have known have an inkling of addictive sickness running in their blood, but the culture of the restaurant industry encourages drinking, and when an individual engages in a behavior that occurs regularly, it's very easy for that behavior to become habitual. The problem is when a habitual behavior first becomes unconscious and then becomes a physical and psychological necessity. That's when they/we/I must become conscious again of what we're putting in our mouths. It's important to weigh our every move to avoid transitioning from unconscious habit to addiction.

The pleasures and perils of the restaurant industry

So much gravitas in the paragraph above, you would think that I'm consuming a fifth of Wild Turkey every week. On the contrary, what happens if I don't tread carefully is that my one glass of white wine turns into three glasses of white wine. This is over the span of an evening, from about 7pm to 11pm. Not too risky in terms of habitual sloppiness, however the calories from three glasses of wine coupled with the aforementioned chocolate cookies, and any gains I made during the day from exercise are thrown out the window. Or down the gullet, as the case may be.

As for the perils of unconscious alcohol consumption, I find it incredibly easy to drink bourbon on the rocks. For as many years as I have been drinking, I have developed a heroic tolerance. I could have three in a night, every night, and be little worse for the wear in terms of the morning after; however, this is not a habit one can develop that's divorced from the body. The body comes to need the effects of three bourbons a night, and if it doesn't get the three bourbons, it has the potential to get crabby. Regular habits affect our dopamine, and when we engage in them, we get a nice hit of feel-good juice. When we deny or resist the habitual urge, we feel bad. 

So the point is that when I decide to have a drink, it must come from conscientious choice-making. Not only because I can't afford the huge injection of empty calories, but also because habitual drinking, habitual anything, creates a physical and psychological need related directly to how our brains release the feel-good juice. And, look, I suppose this can happen if one is addicted to something redeemable, like running or crossword puzzles, but there's a saying I've heard. Something about too much of a good thing...

Ultimately, it's probably good to avoid habits that are related to pleasure-seeking. If one makes an unconscious habit out of flossing one's teeth, there's little danger that this habit will tap into something dangerous and addicting in the brain of the flosser because it's hard to imagine an injection of dopamine being triggered by oral hygiene. On the other hand, hygienists would be out of work if this were the case.