In addition to dealing with low energy this winter and the weight gain that accompanies it, I’ve been trying to keep the ice clear in the arctic passage between us and Tessa’s son. He’s thirteen and has become withdrawn. Hey, it happens. Your body has become a live grenade. Your number of friends of the opposite sex has gone viral. And your mom still wants to you to be a little boy. It’s too much. So I lay off, mostly. But this week I decided to ask him for some advice with my two problems.
Low energy makes you feel sort of depressed, so I said, “Sean, I’m sad. What should I do?”
He said, “I dunno.”
I go, “What do you do when you feel sad?”
“Talk to my friends.”
“I don’t have any friends,” I said.
“You got Mom.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll try that. What else should I do?”
“I dunno.”
“Maybe I should stop being such a pussy, huh?”
“Yep.”
I swear, he smiled a little. It was a victory.
But I also decided to take the advice. The B vitamins have been working okay to help my metabolism, but I’ve still been struggling with the blues a little. Hey, everybody gets ’em. I want to go out into the wilderness with a chain saw and cut some trees. I want to get in a barn and toss some hay bales to some cattle. My first wife used to say, “Want in one hand and pppbbbttt! in the other and see which one fills up first.” I have been wanting things that I can’t have. At least not right now. That’s the same as wanting not to have problems. So what could I do?
Yep. I followed Sean’s advice. I made a goal. I have karate match in thirty-four days. I have been needing to lose a few pounds for many months. I will lose ten and gain it back. Been doing that for most of the last year. The problem comes when I start crashing from fasting too aggressively. I always seemed to be unable to get my fire to kick in. Well, this week, I simply said, “I’m going to lose twenty pounds before this next match.” That’s it.
So, I went back on my most successful diet. I’m not going to say what it is. Doesn’t matter. All diets work. Mine is just lots of protein and fiber along with my regular karate regimen. And I keep the calories at 2,000. Simple enough, but I often don’t eat enough and then crash and then I over-eat fats and sugars. On the first day back on my old diet, I was nervous because I expected to crash at any moment. Yes, I felt a crash coming on, so I downed a few ounces of orange juice. Yes, I felt hungry, but I held off from eating the wrong things. I had healthy food, low in fat, high in protein.
By mid-afternoon on the first day, I was over the first crash. I still felt a little low on energy, but I was sure my blood glucose was okay. How was I going to kick up my energy without eating? Sean’s advice: I dropped to the floor and did five quick push-ups. Well, maybe not so quick. My upper body strength is a joke. I did five rather slow meditative eagle-claw pushups, using only the first and second fingers and the thumb of each hand. It didn’t take long. It wasn’t anything spectacular. But it definitely fit into the “Stop being such a pussy” advice. The pushups kicked up my heart rate, and I even felt a little adrenalin rush. I repeated this two more times through the afternoon. That was what I had been missing.
I dropped three pounds the first day, but that’s not such a big deal. I always lose lots of waste weight the first day of a diet. But it’s a good start. The pounds are coming off on schedule, and I’m sure I’ll reach my goal by the mid-February match.
Another technique that I’m using with this new effort is what I call Time Whispering. Coming soon, I will talk more about whispering through time to your future self for advice. The best part is hearing what your future self has to say back to you. It’s fun. And very effective. Talk to you soon!