Intellectual Honesty
It occurred to me a couple days ago at the gym that the key to change is intellectual honesty. This epiphany came as I was struggling through situps number 10-15, after committing to myself that I’d do 20. I thought “Well, I could just stop at 15.” But I’d said that I’d do 20, and there was no physical reason (other than wussiness) for not finishing out the set. So I did.
It’s intellectual honesty that gets me up at 6(ish) every weekday morning for a workout, whether or not I have a session with Noah. It’s being honest with myself, first, that stopped me from lying to Noah after one weekend a couple months ago when I didn’t do any workouts. It’s intellectual honesty that keeps me keeping up my schedule because I know that once I let it slip once or twice it becomes easier to slip more and that the only way to establish a new habit is to “just do it.”
It’s being honest with myself that helps me stop when I’ve had an appropriate serving of something “munchy.” It’s intellectual honesty that keeps the ice cream on the shelf at the grocery store instead of in my cart, because if I’m honest with myself, I know that ice cream does not get consumed in 4 oz servings… it’s far too easy to slip to 8 or 12 or 16 oz servings, and that it just can’t be in my house.
It’s intellectual honesty that keeps me from beating myself up if I overindulge one day, because if I’m honest with myself, I acknowledge the indulgence and that it happened, and that I’ll be back on track the next day. It’s intellectual honesty that lets me admit to myself or to Noah when I really *am* hurting - my shoulder pain has come back with a vengeance in the last few days and I could have just “toughed it out” today but instead I brought it up and we did a little bit of massage and release and rehab in lieu of the first 10 minutes of the workout. By being honest, I’m hoping I prevented a more significant recurrence.
It’s intellectual honesty that keeps me off the scale. As much as I tell myself that the minor ups that come with the downs don’t bother me, truth is that they do, and I’m better off only hopping on the scale once every couple of weeks. Weight loss isn’t always perfectly linear, and intellectually I know that, but emotionally I want to see the scale move only in one direction.
And, last but certainly not least (as I hope will be fully validated at my dental checkup this Friday), it’s intellectual honesty that’s (finally!) allowed me to become a flosser - steady since the beginning of the year. I was going to try to do it a few times a week, but in being honest with myself I knew I’d never remember which days I’d flossed, so I decided the best way to create the habit was to do it every single day. I’ll admit some weeks I only get in 5 or 6 times, but that’s 5 or 6 times more than I’ve ever done before.