Oh my dear, dear blog. It has been over a month since I posted a new entry!
A lot has changed since my trip to Europe. What started out as a vacation in Barcelona turned very rapidly into an exploratory backpacking adventure all along the Eastern coast of Spain, up into the South of France, and then all over London and southeast England. It all happened after I read The Alchemist for the first time on my flight out. I landed in Spain just as I finished the last page, and that pretty much kicked off the journey. I only lasted 3 days in Barcelona before branching out to other cities and countries.
I struggled in the beginning of my travels. I hadn't realized how rigid and inflexible my robotic diet and exercise routine had made me. For someone who claimed to be an open minded free spirit, I couldn't believe how useless my current approach to diet and exercise had rendered me. For the first three days in Spain I nearly starved to death because I couldn't find anything I could eat. My lifestyle appeared to have rendered me completely lost in translation.
I was fortunate enough to have access to a kitchen at almost every location I stayed at throughout my travels, and I grew to rely on local farmer's markets for all sustenance. I discovered one just in the nick of time, when my protein powder had run out and I feared I'd have to succumbed to heavy tapas and bread and paella which was all I could really find besides the occasional McDonald's (I'd rather starve!). So out of strict necessity, I began to combine things I found at the farmers market into dishes that nourished me, regardless of the calorie content. I had local marcona almonds and honey atop Mató cheese. I ate salads of locally grown bibb lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and Mango slices. I ate Iberian ham (a smoked, dried meat cut) with leafy greens on a rough dry earthy bread roll. I ate bananas a lot, because they gave me the energy I needed. I ate full egg scrambles and bacon with a locally grown garlic, onion and spinach saute.
I made sure that what I ate was farm-to-table, and finally disregarded any of the strict rules I had adopted at home (no dairy / no carbs / only 1 serving of fruit a day / yada yada). They didn't have oatmeal and I couldn't find sweet potatoes or quinoa and so I succumbed to eating bread (the horror!) and dry cereal when I heard my body call for non-fruit carbohydrates. I did everything I needed to do to nourish my body, and did so freely after I had let go of the rules that bound me.
What happened next was something of a miracle I didn't anticipate ever happening. Over the course of the following weeks, I began to feel so alert and alive and full of energy, even in a way I hadn't when I first started clean-eating. I wasn't working out because I was on my feet all day long exploring, hiking, running, backpacking around from place to place, and out of strict survival and necessity, I began to become highly attuned to not only when my body was hungry, but for what. I knew when produce wouldn't cut it, or when protein or fat wasn't what I needed. And I fearlessly ate carbohydrates (and fruits) whenever my body asked for them. When I was cold and craved chocolate, I ordered hot chocolate. I even had wine on several occasions! I did whatever felt good and gave my body what it asked for.
It occurred three days into my trip, on a rainy Saturday morning in Barcelona after a wet urban 10k, that I realized that I had become results-obsessed without even knowing it. I thought that everything I was doing at home was all for my health, and it was indeed a fun challenge to undertake, but it was in Spain that I realized
I had robbed almost all of my life of joy in place of squeezing out
that one last calorie, that one last rep, that 1/2-mile longer on each
run. Yes it was (and is!) fun to challenge yourself to that, but it's a
dangerous thing to realize you may have transformed yourself into a
mechanical object too weighed down by rules to actually be able to adapt
to a changing environment and flourish and really enjoy life. This realization did NOT jive well with me, at all. I knew it was time to rethink things. And wouldn't you know, by the time I had arrived home, I hadn't seen the inside of a gym in 3 weeks and hadn't stuck to any kind of diet (other than no fast food, etc) in just the same amount of time, and yet I hadn't gained a single pound while I was gone. Imagine that! Now, I did lose a little muscle tone, but I felt so HEALTHY when I came home. I think it was the psychological change of feeling more flexible and in tune with my body. I realized that all that time I was spending in the gym and calculating my diet in excel was turning me into a robot, and I needed to find different ways of approaching this lifestyle that didn't turn me into an immovable soul incapable of enjoying the actual experience of being alive.
As such, I have spent the past month in a bit of a holding pattern / balancing act as I try out new things. I didn't trust myself to dive right back into my strict routine out of fear that I would negate all the self-discovery I had made when I was forced to adapt in Europe. So I've been experimenting a little with food and exercise to try to find the right mix to help me restart working toward my goals while still letting me feel like I am living. After all, this is a lifestyle change, and the only way to make it sustainable is to achieve parity between discipline and enjoyment.
CHANGES I HAVE MADE
2. I have decreased the amount of time I play volleyball on the weekends to incorporate other activities. I have gone hiking, camping, I've learned how to fish, I have built a garden with my bare hands (including removing almost 50 cubic feet of dead soil and replacing it with composted fresh soil), and in the next couple weeks I will be learning how to surf, gonna go kayaking, and I'm training to run a half marathon on thanksgiving! These activities have become the new focus on my time now that I have survived the past couple weeks attending to other little projects and such that I have tabled for so long, but that my trip has inspired me to finally take a stab at.
3. I have given myself a little freedom with my diet to explore cooking. Cooking has become something of a spiritual activity for me. It's an art and a science, all mixed into one tasty dish. I find it therapeutic while also informative; I like experimenting with flavors and substitutes in order to make clean, all-organic dishes that actually have flavor. Steamed zucchini and poached chicken breast had it's place in my clean-eating diet in the beginning, but in order for this to be a sustainable feat, I needed a little room to breathe. For instance, I allow myself to have one small banana and a scoop of nonfat 0% Fage Greek yogurt in my morning smoothies. Sure that means it isn't dairy free and sure it may have some extra sugar in it, but it is healthy, clean, and I surely burn the calories off in my bike ride to yoga every evening, so I'm not going to sweat it! I'm a living, breathing human being, not a robot who must live in one extreme or the other.
But, play time is over, and I find it highly encouraging that even with this new found flexibility and perspective to diet and exercise, I am no more wanting to return to old habits now than I was when I first left to Europe. I have fallen in love with this way of life, and now that I am not obsessing so much over results, I feel free to actually enjoy the journey and not feel like I am forced to adhere to all the rules I laid out before. I think it's all a balancing act and learning to be flexible. I still stick to calorie limits, sugar limits, and of course eat lean, clean and organic, but if I want a banana here or there, I won't stop myself. And if I don't feel like going to the gym, then I'll do something else - I'll go run a local mountain trail, or run on the beach, or throw on my roller blades and do a 14-mile cruise down the ocean boardwalk. It's gotta be a balance between results-producing activities and happiness-producing activities. I can't wait to learn how to surf and add that to my repertoire!
I feel so much freer and happier now than ever before. And I am so excited to shed these 5 pounds or so that I've picked up over the past 2 months and start back up where I started, but with the new philosophy in mind that I won't let one thing overtake the other -- I won't let me diet and exercise routine become so rigid that I can't enjoy life's occasional simple pleasures, but I also won't let life influence my desire to achieve the best toned body I am capable of.
It is certainly a balancing act, but I feel like the clarity I now have just may be the best tool I've yet to acquire in my fitness journey to date.
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