Incrementalism

Honestly, y’all I thought it was a made-up word.

Since the very beginning I’ve always been an all or nothing kinda gal. Never did anything at half speed or half assed. If I decided to give it a go, I’d do the thing until I was battered, bloody and bruised. No quitters allowed. I might have fared well in the military come to think of it but I cannot fuck around with a uniform. This body just wasn’t built for that kind of constraint. I’m not entirely sure where this particular trait came from. My parents sure didn’t exhibit this type of gusto or passion for sticking with it. Made evident by our numerous moves, many failed business enterprises and ultimately with their divorce (although that one was a blessing). I’ve said this for a while now and I’ll state it again, I do believe we are born with a preconstructed personality and it’s traits. The nurture part just helps to foster it. As I was always described as the “Milk Mans baby” (man the 80’s had some wild sayings) I think I am Exhibit A in proving that I was definitely born my own person, and with that a need to see things through until the bitter end.

It began innocently enough with my addiction and devotion to pop culture. TV was my parent and boy did I enjoy her warm embrace. From TV to movies to music to the insane celebrity obsession of the 90’s and early aughts I was DEDICATED. Picture posters everywhere, a collection of InStyle and Us Weekly magazines the likes of which you had never seen and countless hours of shows taped on VHS. That’s right kids, I’m that Old! I watched movies over and over again until I drove my parents mad and would listen to a song on repeat for days at a time. Quit you say, NEVER! I still have an ever-present love for it all but life got busy and well it’s taken a back burner. That being said, I murder at Trivia nights in this genre and still get repeatedly called out for my random and weird pop culture references.

Next up on our tour, weight loss. And this, my friends, is where we’ll hang out for the rest of our time together. I was miserable in high school and decided to just go ahead and eat my way through it. I chased that with excessive alcohol and a decent amount of drugs and found myself graduating high school quite a bit larger than I would’ve preferred. Thin was KING and the “love yourself” and “body positivity” movements were still about 18 years off so I devoted myself to losing the weight. The gusto in which I hit the gym and would shame anybody who didn’t go was a heightened level of insanity. It took a few years, helped by a geographical move or two but at 25, I was thin. So incredibly thin that my mother walked by me in an airport and didn’t recognize me. GOAL ACHIEVED! Now I just had to hang onto it with my non-quitter death grip and I would be simply fine. Spoiler alert: I’m 41 and the reason I’m writing this is because I am of course still inherently trying to lose the weight. It’s just looking a bit different these days.

My “day job” has me immersed in the world of food, nutrition and with it weight loss. With that comes a huge responsibility to make sure the information I am providing is accurate. You are looking at a girl who has tried EVERY. CONCEIVABLE. “DIET”. KNOWN. TO. MAN. I won’t even say their names out loud because they’ve taken on a “Voldemort” status to me. What I will say, and what is backed up by much science is, diets don’t work long term. You can achieve everything it says you will. However, the minute you divert to anything resembling normal, the weight will come back and usually 2x as much. So where does that leave us? Well, it left me with googling Incrementalism. Definition: belief in or advocacy of change by degrees. That’s right folks, that silly little saying “low and slow” is the way to go. The issue is, low and slow is NOT SEXY. Trust me, I get it. I’ve never done anything slow in my life. I’m rash to decisions, speak with no hesitation or filter and even have a need for speed (my husband is always on his toes). This taking things slowly made no sense to me until one day it just did. A.K.A. the lightening bulb moment. Why was I setting myself up to fail by placing an impossible goal or a super short achievement window? This felt, honestly, stupid and mean. I would never do this to a friend, why on earth was I doing it to myself? Why did I need to be fit in 6 weeks? Why did this summer have to be my fittest? What if I reframed it? Or God forbid try having everyday good habits (see: boring). No one wants to see the science that says, instead of 2 a days at the gym and eating air that perhaps you could eat 3 nice meals a day, do a few workouts a week and maybe take a few more walks with a friend. If the timeline isn’t so compressed than guess what y’all the results do eventually start appearing. But patience isn’t a great inherent human virtue. It’s something we have to work on and in our current landscape it’s made impossible by over stimulation and rapid-fire dopamine hits. So, what do we do?

It starts with these conversations. One I just had with a friend recently. They also struggle with their body and has set an impossible goal for themselves. I simply said, “wouldn’t it be a lot kinder to yourself if you set a bigger time frame to work with?” “Like me for instance, I’ve decided that 2 years makes a lot more sense than 3 months and hey, if it happens sooner, even better. What I will do in the meantime is take each day as a new opportunity to cement some realistic habits that work for my lifestyle and see how that goes for a bit.” They didn’t fluff me off and I think they may have internalized a bit of what I said and so I’ll keep trying. I’ll keep trying for them and for myself because in the end that’s all we can do.

Dying to know, are you an “Incrementalist” or a speed demon like me who’s trying to reform?

Xx

The Conversation Maven