Tim's blog, week 4: Hitting the wall, and sizing up the demons

Below are this week’s results.

• 118,350 steps;
• 153 floors;
• 56.06 miles;
• 22,280 calories burned;
• 11,257 calories consumed; and
• 2.0 lbs. lost

I’m doing very well. I'm following my program and staying true to being active throughout the day and counting my steps. I've upped my gym visits and continue to log my food and caloric intake.

Many of you would think that this whole experiment is really moving along quite nicely, with nothing but a few bumps in the road. You would be wrong.

My week has been filled with what some people in 12-step programs refer to as “white knuckling,” or hanging on for dear life. In last week’s blog I wrote about how this would be the week in which I would take my experiment to the next level. Not too long after I wrote that, I hit a wall.

Earlier this week I went to the supermarket and started throwing all the “right” food into my shopping cart. I made it a third of the way around the store and suddenly stopped, left my shopping cart where it was and walked out of the store. See, I’ve been here before – this isn’t new territory for me. I’ve tried this healthy lifestyle thing before, and I’ve fallen back into old habits. In order for you to understand part of why this has happened, I need to share something from my past. It’s also something that forces me to go to a deeper level of honesty.

I am a recovering alcoholic and addict (this is the part of my blog where there is collective gasping and forehead-slapping from senior management at HIMSS). I won’t bore you with the details of what my life was like while active in my addictions; it doesn’t help make my point – suffice it to say that I’ve been clean and sober for years. However, when I first tried to get sober, there was an initial euphoria, then a rigorous routine and then a naïve confidence (or perhaps arrogance?) took over, followed by the illusion that I had conquered my addictions. Without going into any further detail, I was quickly humbled and learned that addiction is way bigger and more powerful than I ever knew and that recovery takes tons of hard work, support and truly living one day, and sometimes one minute, at a time. Recovery is never complete or finished during a person’s lifetime. Sobriety comes slowly and it becomes easier in extremely tiny increments; it’s also accompanied by many obstacles, temptations and, yes, sometimes relapses. As many friends have reminded me, recovery is about “progress, not perfection.”

Similar to addiction, obesity is a complex sociological health issue in our country, and some argue it has reached epidemic proportions. The market is flooded by books, videos and websites all obtusely promising that the solution is nothing more than an easy step-by-step process, and in no time you’ll be as fit and trim as the fitness models in the commercials. In my opinion, progress toward solving our nation’s collectively growing waistline is not formulaic, and to pretend it is diminishes the severity of this crisis. As I’m finding out, getting healthy requires time, the right guidance and tools and taking a little time to be honest with oneself. It’s very similar to the aforementioned process of addiction recovery.

So this has been a week of self-reflection. I have decided to regroup and re-assess my approach to this next step in my process. I see now that I’ve been looking at this project as a work goal with a finite end – instead of a lifelong way of living.  If I’m to maintain a healthy lifestyle, I need to understand that there will be good days and days that are challenging, as well as times when controlling what I eat is easy and times when my success and confidence in my ability to make healthy choices will be challenged.

The reality of being committed to a healthy lifestyle really slapped me in the face this week, and believe it or not, I’m happy that I put the brakes on and took a moment to be honest with myself. Now I actually feel more ready to go food shopping. Let’s hope that I make it all the way around the store this time.

Tim Castallo is a coordinator for mHIMSS