Defeating myself

About two weeks ago, I completely lost my motivation to be healthy. It was a downward spiral that led to a low point and then to me picking up the pieces and owning it again.

One thing that my buddy, Diamond Dallas Page, says is “Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” It’s a quote that I heard a number of times.

A few weeks ago, the combination of social obligations, life stresses, and other small but unfortunate events led to me defeating myself. My workout frequency, which was once high, dwindled to nothing, and, I figured that I shouldn’t even bother keeping up with preparing my meals since it wouldn’t counterbalance all of the heavy meals and lack of exercise. It led to a good week of large meals and snacks. The quality of these meals varied; one lunch was Chinese buffet at the Dragon Buffet; one night, I had a burrito and some tacos from La Mexicana, and then this happened.

One morning, our little Maltese-Poodle, Emma, stumbled out of her crate in the morning and yanked out one of her nails. She wasn’t in a lot of pain, but getting the bleeding to stop was outside of our expertise, so we sought out veterinary help. The bill was rather high, and it came right in the middle of a time where the bills were piling up. On my lunch break, I drove to pick up Emma and bring her and her bandaged paw home. I was pushing the lunch hour, but I needed a meal, so I pulled into a McDonalds to grab something from the drive thru.

I had two $5 gift cards that were awarded to me by Klout hanging out in my car, and I was planning on either using them while on vacation, or for a quick coffee, since I am conscious that McDonalds “food” isn’t the best thing for my body if I want to be fit. As I pulled up to the microphone, my eyes struggled to read the menu, even though it was pictorial. When the young lady came on the microphone, she said, “would you like to try fkldhjsklgdskljkldfj?”

I hate those stupid intercom systems, and what she said may or may not have been clear, but, whatever it was didn’t process in my brain. Regardless, I said, “yes”, made the meal a large and drove up to the counter to have them swipe my gift cards to cover the $9.06. I drove back to work as the smell of fries took over my car.

Now, I’m not the type of person to be ashamed of what I’m doing, especially what I’m eating. That day, I walked with that bag and soda in my hand dreading every conversation that could potentially happen. I mean, I’m not bragging at all when I say that I’m probably the most health conscious person at work, what were people going to think seeing me with a McDonalds bag?

I still had no idea what I was about to eat, by the way.

So, when I got to my desk and unwrapped everything, I found out that it was their featured “Bacon Clubhouse Burger” (100 percent pure beef burger, Big Mac Special Sauce, thick-cut apple-wood smoked bacon, caramelized grilled onions, white cheddar cheese, sliced tomato, whole leaf lettuce all on a new artisan roll). There was nothing outstanding about it, including the “artisan roll”.

So one day I ate like crap, and I felt like crap, so what?

Well, yesterday, the events around me were similarly crappy. Emma had a relapse of a bladder infection and it led to a decent vet bill. All of the stars were aligned for me to blow off my workout that night and go out for a comforting meal. I didn’t thought.

On the ride home with Emma, I did a lot of breathing (it’s important!), and I thought about the consequences of skipping the workout (which was scheduled to be a long DDP Yoga session – Diamond Cutter) and picking up a double cheeseburger and large fries from Five Guys. My thought process was, this shit is going to happen no matter what, why should I change my plans?

So, when I got home, I did the 60 minute Diamond Cutter, then cooked myself a 1/4 lb grass fed beef burger (no bun) and ate that along with a huge bowl of spring mix, tomatoes, string beans with a light coating of homemade cilantro, lime, greek yogurt dressing.

Was it the Five Guys fix I wanted. Nope, but I cook a damn good burger.

The moral of the story ties back to DDP’s quote above. And it also ties into another of his philosophies about how controlling your breath will dictate how you react, how you adapt, how you breathe (duh) and how you take action.

Also, it’s important to realize that I’m human, and we all have days of varying quality. I’m not going to sit here and say I’ll never have a day where I resort to a McDonalds drive thru again, but I will say that I felt much better about myself the day when I didn’t do that.