FUCK IT

 

I don’t know about you, but change in me frequently happens when I reach the point where I shout FUCK IT!!!  At the time of writing I’ve reached a number of fuck it points with life in general and they are all connected. Fuck it points are that moment when you’ve really had enough of someone or something thing and you proceed to shout FUCK IT!!! and then do something about it. FUCK IT!!! points are moments of profound change/growth.

My first fuck it point is: I’m about to give up alcohol. Alcohol consumption increasingly makes me feel like shit. I can’t drink to relax anymore because my kids smell blood and then behave in ways that jack up the grief to the point where any relaxation derived from getting hammered is negated. I feel overwhelmed and out of my depth when I’m drunk and then the hangover the next morning with kids being just feral just kills whatever fun I may have had in drinking. It’s the sort of cost-benefit analysis a retarded chimpanzee can do. And this particular retarded chimpanzee has done his cost-benefit analysis on his continued consumption of alcohol and you can trust me on this, the balance sheet in favour of continuing to drink doesn’t look good. Beer in any form, even zero percentage beer dicks with my stamina, and in order to exercise in a way that will fix the following FUCK IT!!! I need stamina.

There is the stubborn refusal of my belly to do what I want it to do: No matter how many times I look at my spare tyre and tell it: Look will you just fuck off!!! It declines the invitation. So I will finally stop fucking around and get this job done. The size of my waist and my alcohol consumption are connected. The words: discretionary calories keep getting used. Sugar is sugar, ethyl alcohol is a sugar and there is an established link between sugar consumption and obesity. Alcohol consumption just dumps calories into my diet. And in order for my waist to shrink, these calories need to be taken back out of me. There are two ways I can do this: I can eat less/ eat foods so fully of insoluble fibre that they fill me up with no caloric input or I can exercise to where I’m burning them. The Law of Least Resistance (postulates that animals, people, even well-designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or "effort".) will tell us that it would be easier not to place the calories into me in the first place.  Also, for some reason since I’ve removed alcohol from my diet, the ability to self-regulate my eating has suddenly returned. 

There is the determination to fix the waist permanently. My waistline is the final and very stubborn remnant of my first marriage. My belly is the final indication that I once ate my way to morbid obesity and 140 kg. My belly is the proof I need in my life that you can’t eat your way to happiness. I tried to and ended up with high blood pressure, and a list of comorbidities that had me dying at or before my current age of 52. Looking this is rather sobering. Had I kept eating the way I was in the early 2000’s, I would be dead. If it wasn’t for a FUCK IT!!! I would be dead. Mind you, my change in eating habits and sudden desire for exercise got me accused of wanting to have an affair (I wasn’t). These days physically I’m in great shape. There is just this belly. And the belly has to go. I have muscle definition pretty well everywhere…and my belly makes me look like I’m pregnant.

I have a collection of books on Yoga and Pilates. They look fabulous on my bookshelf, however sitting on that shelf they’re not much fucking use to me, but they look great sitting on that shelf. So in the New Year when I give Dry January a try I will be taking these books off the shelf and making use of them. Given the already acknowledged connection between alcohol intake and a deficient stamina, if I am to pursue Pilates and Yoga, then the booze has to go.

The Pilates and Yoga are going to interact with my belly. And this returns me to my first point.

I begin my FUCK IT!!!’s with a germ of frustration. I know that I have or want to change something. I nurture this sense of frustration and build on it for a couple of months or even years. And then when the moment is right, the FUCK IT!!! blossoms into change.

And for the record…. I was Dry on Christmas Day.