Like a Bigfoot

The Holiday Lake 50k is 2 days away!  On Saturday I’m going to be freezing, exhausted, and sore, but more importantly I’m going to meet up with an old friend…Pizza.  The meeting will be brief.  So brief in fact that I will probably not even recall inhaling this beautiful piece of food, but by golly it’s going to taste FANTASTIC!

Three weeks ago I gave up pizza, ON PURPOSE, with the sole purpose of giving myself a reward to look forward to during the race.

My mental plan of attack:

  • Give up something you love 2-3 weeks leading up to a tough event
  •            -For me that’s the three amigos of deliciousness (Pizza, Beer, Cookies)
  • ​Reward yourself after the event

So that’s the strategy.  Sounds easy on paper.  I mean that’s only 21 days.  But now that I’m 2 days out the thought of pizza has become all consuming.  All I see is pizza advertisements, pizza is being served to my students at school, the smell of pizza lingers in the air as I enter a room.  Tuesday was even National Pizza Day. It’s brutal.

AllI can do is keep trying to trick myself  “You are so lucky that you get the OPPORTUNITY to practice self discipline.”​

Self discipline is not easy, it’s not something you can HACK, it takes HARD WORK to master.  Mind over matter.  You have the power to control your decisions.  No one is making choices for you but YOU.  You should be able to fight your impulses, battle your cravings, and show yourself that you do have self control.

I always try to make sure my life is running on INTENTION not MOMENTUM.

This means my decisions are being made intentionally rather than just going with the flow.  

Have you ever woke up in the morning, eaten breakfast, showered, drove to work and then thought to yourself “How in the hell did I get here?”  You can’t recall anything about your morning?  That’s acting on MOMENTUM and we do it ALL the time.  Sometimes we do it with conversations, other times we do it with food choices, sometimes we can go ALL day just riding the wave of day-in, day-out routines.  

This is where self-discipline comes into play.  Self-discipline brings you back in the realm of INTENTION.  Now you actually have to think and consider a decision, mentally deciding what you are going to do, say, feel next.  Your intention will improve your attitude as you now realize that your decisions led you TO all the challenges you face in life.  Instead of feeling sorry for yourself with the “How did I get here?” momentum mentality, you won’t feel stressed or pissed because you realize that all your decisions have led up to the situation and your intention will lead you out or through.  

Anyways, back to pizza really quick.  I actually had a weak moment during the SuperBowl (which by the way is the worst time to ramp up your healthy eating!)

My wife and daughter ordered…GASP….pizza.  “Oh good, self-discipline time muchachos!”  I did a great job ignoring the delicious gooey cheesiness of the pizza.  Pepperonis, green peppers, and onions?  Didn’t exist in my mind!  The yummy crust might as well have been made of plastic!

But then the pizza delivery guy handed me another box.  Cheesy bread.

Damnit! A loophole entered my mind.

“Technically, cheesy bread isn’t pizza.”  Except that it totally was.  It was literally pizza without the sauce.  But I couldn’t get the thought out of my head.  Momentum carried me as I opened the box, smelled the deliciousness, grabbed a chunk of bread and shoved it into my mouth.  As I was mindlessly consuming the cheesy bread, I sarcastically thought “Good work Chris!  Because the ‘unhealthy’ part of pizza is not the bread or the massive amount of cheese…it’s the sauce!”

Oh well!  Life wouldn’t be interesting without some failures (albeit really insignificant failures in the grand scheme of things).

I’ll update again after the race, when I’m full of pizza and probably fighting a food coma. Have a great rest of your week!