trinityvixen (
trinityvixen) wrote2009-02-04 01:00 pm
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Creatures of habit or creatures of comfort?
In his short story "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe," Stephen King proposes, via his smoker protagonist, that there is a very clear and definite hurdle that all people seeking to quit a bad behavior or take up a good one face. This hurdle is the three-day mark. Once you hit and pass that limit, you're home free. The first three days are the test to see if you can make it in the long run.
I don't know that I agree with that exact limit, but I do think he's onto something. There is, most people would agree, a sort of no-turning-back-point where you just accustom yourself to something and you can, without thinking, include it in your life and not begrudge it (or live without it). I think this is definitely true of addictive things like smoking, but it is equally true about hard things like quitting smoking. Addictions are hard to overcome, and you live with the cravings for life. Yet there must be some point where there is no going back because everything you liked about that old behavior no longer appeals.
In case you're wondering if I'm picking up smoking (I'm not), this concerns me on the subject of exercise. Exercising is, to me, like having to quit smoking. It's a lifestyle adjustment that I'm not particularly interested in but that I acknowledge is essential to my continued good health. It's a nuisance, and I hate how mind-numbingly repetitive a good workout is (though I do my best to overcome that obstacle because the hurdle of getting up enough energy to even exercise is high enough as is).
I started regularly exercising about six-seven months ago when I bought an elliptical machine. I used it three times a week for 30-40 minutes, on weeknights, mostly. I fell off with it around the holidays--too hectic, too much time spent away from my machine, etc.--and I came back to it in this past month more than a little apathetic. So I tried to reinvigorate myself by setting a new schedule and waking up an hour earlier to exercise and shower before work. It made sense, as a plan--I wouldn't be too drained by a full day's work to motivate myself to exercise, plus I could shower before work and be all fresh and alert for it. It would be part and parcel of my attempts to remake myself as a healthier person, per my resolutions for this year.
I am now on my third day. So far, I haven't had too much trouble getting up that little bit earlier and going. I'm naturally falling asleep earlier and more easily, which is a lovely change. (I have low-grade insomnia to the point where it takes me about 30-40 minutes a night to fall asleep.) I'm no more exhausted at the end of my working day than I was before (a major concern with waking up earlier and thus "starting my day" well ahead of the work day). The first day was a challenge, but I just forced myself to do it, and it has gotten easier. Granted, I've not tested my resolve after a really late night yet. That might change my opinion. In fact, knowing that will be the case makes me wonder about this miracle point at which waking up early to exercise will become second nature rather than a chore or a duty. I'm okay now, but I don't trust myself over the long term.
The odds of slovenly recidivism are high, in other words. So high that I then have to question whether I do agree with Stephen King's notion of point-of-no-return adaptation. What do you all think? Feel free to conjecture about my own will power, I won't take offense, or your own if you prefer or muse on human will power in general. I'm interested in every angle, really.
I don't know that I agree with that exact limit, but I do think he's onto something. There is, most people would agree, a sort of no-turning-back-point where you just accustom yourself to something and you can, without thinking, include it in your life and not begrudge it (or live without it). I think this is definitely true of addictive things like smoking, but it is equally true about hard things like quitting smoking. Addictions are hard to overcome, and you live with the cravings for life. Yet there must be some point where there is no going back because everything you liked about that old behavior no longer appeals.
In case you're wondering if I'm picking up smoking (I'm not), this concerns me on the subject of exercise. Exercising is, to me, like having to quit smoking. It's a lifestyle adjustment that I'm not particularly interested in but that I acknowledge is essential to my continued good health. It's a nuisance, and I hate how mind-numbingly repetitive a good workout is (though I do my best to overcome that obstacle because the hurdle of getting up enough energy to even exercise is high enough as is).
I started regularly exercising about six-seven months ago when I bought an elliptical machine. I used it three times a week for 30-40 minutes, on weeknights, mostly. I fell off with it around the holidays--too hectic, too much time spent away from my machine, etc.--and I came back to it in this past month more than a little apathetic. So I tried to reinvigorate myself by setting a new schedule and waking up an hour earlier to exercise and shower before work. It made sense, as a plan--I wouldn't be too drained by a full day's work to motivate myself to exercise, plus I could shower before work and be all fresh and alert for it. It would be part and parcel of my attempts to remake myself as a healthier person, per my resolutions for this year.
I am now on my third day. So far, I haven't had too much trouble getting up that little bit earlier and going. I'm naturally falling asleep earlier and more easily, which is a lovely change. (I have low-grade insomnia to the point where it takes me about 30-40 minutes a night to fall asleep.) I'm no more exhausted at the end of my working day than I was before (a major concern with waking up earlier and thus "starting my day" well ahead of the work day). The first day was a challenge, but I just forced myself to do it, and it has gotten easier. Granted, I've not tested my resolve after a really late night yet. That might change my opinion. In fact, knowing that will be the case makes me wonder about this miracle point at which waking up early to exercise will become second nature rather than a chore or a duty. I'm okay now, but I don't trust myself over the long term.
The odds of slovenly recidivism are high, in other words. So high that I then have to question whether I do agree with Stephen King's notion of point-of-no-return adaptation. What do you all think? Feel free to conjecture about my own will power, I won't take offense, or your own if you prefer or muse on human will power in general. I'm interested in every angle, really.
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Personally, I have never succeeded at getting up early to exercise. I'm damned near nonfunctional when I first wake up, and it's like I need at least a half hour before I'm coherent enough to think of doing anything. Unfortunately, part of becoming coherent is taking a shower, and showering then exercising is probably the stupidest thing ever. SO.... I don't know that I would ever manage to do what you're doing. And currently, with no structured schedule to speak of, I have no incentive to even try.
Anyway, I do think you can build or break habits. I don't know about a point of no return, though. It's always possible to backslide. Especially if the alternative is easier: not exercising rather than working out, ordering out rather than cooking, etc. I think that's one place where things like quitting smoking and quitting diet soda and stuff enjoy a particular advantage. You have to go out of your way and spend money to buy cigarettes, soda, alcohol, etc. To stop exercising or cooking, you just have to STOP. The only real insurance against recidivism is, as you mention, the old behavior becoming unpleasant or undesirable.
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I have the same problem getting up early unless I absolutely have to be somewhere. Even then, I'm frequently five minutes late to work and such. However, I have managed to convince myself subconsciously somehow that the exercise is best to fit in in the morning and I only have so long after the alarm goes off to get to it. It also helps that I have a lot of trouble, usually, falling back asleep, so once I'm up, I might as well be up and doing something rather than just being grouchy about being up and not being to sleep.
Good point about the difference between giving up bad habits that are also punitive financially. I suppose if there were financial incentives we could appreciate immediately (as opposed to many decades later) to exercise, we'd be able to do it more readily.
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I'd happily exercise if someone paid me. The rate might be a little too steep, though. I think I'd like $50 to exercise for 30 minutes 5 days a week. That seems fair to me. ;)
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I'm the worst in the morning, ask my roommates. I'm veritable zombie. I'm still muddling around when I get on my gym clothes, and I'm not quite awake when I do my stretches. What I find is that I snap out of that fug a lot sooner with exercise than I do without it, and that's an attraction to this plan that is helping me to stay with it.
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Mr. King (or Mr. King's Protagonist) is either a) super-human, b) delusional, or c) lying.
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Also, I love King right now. He said Stephenie Meyer can't write for crap. Go Stephen!
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I have to believe there is some truth to the exercise thing becoming habit-forming. Plenty of people are addicted to working out and more still rave about how great running makes them feel (to the point where their ecstasies sound suspiciously like drug highs). There has to be a point where it's no longer a conscious decision and you just do it and personal dislike lessens enough to make it easier. It won't ever be easy, just easier.
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I'm not sure if a person who has never liked exercise and exertion can become one of those people, though. I sort of think for those of us not disposed to being addicted to exercise it'll always be a conscious decision, though perhaps an easier one, as you say.
That being said, I'm still rather sedentary, but a lot itchier about wanting to be able to go outside and walk than I ever used to be. The two days it was in the 40s, that's what I HAD TO DO.
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But be a natural runner? Enjoy it? Oh fuck no. Those people are nuts.
I find that exercising has made me more antsy about sitting around. Not that I don't do it--I do, most nights--but that I absolutely have to walk some times. I went for a two-mile walk on Sunday to Staples uptown just to not be sitting around.
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Yeah, I've gotten to that point, too. If it ever warms up enough to not be torture to go outside today I have about a 2 mile walk planned to go do some errands. This is part of the reason I'm afraid of moving back to Texas. I like to have places to walk TO, not so much just wandering around, and in most residential areas, the places I would normally walk TO (store, post office, bank, etc.) are TOO far away to walk to/from in any reasonable amount of time. I was proud of myself, though, when home at Christmas. Not once did I ride or drive the short distance between my parents' house and my aunt and uncle's house. (It's a whopping 1/10 of a mile, but making the trip several times has to add up to something, right? :p) ... Maybe I'll get my bike in good repair when I go back.
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For a second there, I misread your second paragraph as your being happy to go back to Texas because you would be wandering around (which was at odds with the rest of what you said). Silly. Anywho, I totally agree. I would walk anywhere with a destination in mind. That's why I chose Staples. Flimsiest of premises--I needed some paper cases for DVDs--but it gave me a goal and that made the walk worthwhile. My brother-in-law used to do that in San Francisco, too; he called it "urban hiking," which it is. I need to explore more of the city anyway, but doing it willy-nilly without company (in company, that sort of wandering is okay because you're still socializing) doesn't appeal. You need direction and you can then get there and back however you choose.
The trip to your aunt and uncle's house is a great example of what's wrong with our car culture. Growing up in New York and having parents who didn't really pamper me, I am used to walking everywhere. I was lucky enough to start early, though, since I lived two blocks from my elementary school. From there, it was a longer walk to the bus stop for middle school (and I frequently would miss the bus--by accident or on purpose--on the way back and would walk it; yikes Google says that's almost two miles). I think I preferred not being on the bus with kids who weren't, generally, my friends. And I walked a little under a mile to high school until I could drive. (Too close for the bus, older sibs never in high school at the same time to drive me, and my parents never would/could drive me.) So I walked a lot.
Then I went to college and met...Californians. Southern Californians are THE WORST about walking. Apparently everyone in LA drives or takes the bus even if they're going three steps. Given LA's sprawl, some of that makes sense. (Greater population and less geographical space have forced southern New York into tighter accommodations.) It's the trade off you make for having less of an urban environment, I guess.
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Whether I walked or rode (later drove) to school depended on which school I was going to, etc. In elementary, I didn't walk to/from school until they opened an elementary school by my house. Prior to that, the school I was going to was 3.5 miles away, past several HUGE streets and a "highway." In Junior high, I had a violin to haul around, as well as my bookbag, so even though the school was only about a mile and a half away, it was on the way to work for my dad, so he'd drop me off then I'd go walking around after school with a friend, wait for Mom to pick us up, or walk home. High school? Forget it. My high school was about 5 miles from home.
Even within Texas you get different attitudes about walking. My university has the 2nd largest contiguous campus in the country, so we were regularly used to walking a half mile or more between classes, and at least that far to/from parking. When we went to UT-Austin for a conference, though, our hosts wanted to wait for the bus to go the whole 4/10 of a mile from the corner we were waiting on to the Capitol building. Their campus is relatively small, so to them this seemed like a long way to walk, I guess? We didn't see the point in waiting for the bus when we could walk just as fast.
But yeah, sprawl and also weather contribute a lot to desiring to walk or not. In my parents' neighborhood, for example, the nearest grocery store is 2 miles away, and it's a bad one. Reasonable for biking, less so for walking, and in the summer? Forget it. Give me my car and portable air-conditioning.
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I think it took me about 3 weeks (going 2-3 times a week) to get in the habit where it wasn't so hard to get myself there and onto the treadmill, and over more time I did actually enjoy the cardio and I started spending longer on the machines. It also took me about three days of saying 'eh, next time' to completely lose it.
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The other thing you bring up is why exercising is so hard--it's too easy not to and the momentum takes longer to build in the positive direction than it does in the negative. That's true of most lifestyle changes; it's always easier to fall off the wagon.
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I fell off the wagon hard. It's really hard to not make excuses, because as soon as you do you're sunk. It got really cold and I didn't have any warm exercise clothing, so a few weeks in the snow passed and bam. Now I'm lazy again.
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I think a better perspective is tension-release -- exercise produces a temporary increase in body tension, but that just enhances the feeling of release afterwards when that tension ends. There's also a certain... drunken sort of amusement to watching your body not be able to do things you know it should be able to do. Then again, those endorphins are supposed to be cousins of morphine, so I guess that makes sense...
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Now that I'm exercising more often, however, I'm starting to really like being sweaty when I work out. Part of that is definitely that I dislike being sweaty elsewhere and it's nice to just not have to worry about it and just sweat and that's okay. I still don't like the burn in my lungs especially, but even that's changing. I keep increasing the resistance on my workout to make sure that I am sort of breathless because a) it's too easily otherwise and therefore not really exercise, and b) I have a vague notion that it's good for me.
So yeah, you can totally get used to some of those things.