Can someone explain to me why quitting smoking, after 21 years and six months was easier than trying to control what I eat?
I was properly, well-and-truly… ADDICTED to cigarettes! I had smoked from the day before my 13th birthday and I had always smoked as many as I could afford when I was a kid (mainly because I couldn’t afford packs of 20). I had inhaled deeply from the beginning. I had smoked and smoked until I was, in the last few years of it, smoking 25+ per day.
The attempts at quitting had been increasing in regularity and no longer just attached to periods of illness (this was usually one of those chest infections where your bronchial tubes feel like they’re on fire). I wanted to quit, but I was convinced – 100% certain – that smoking had me in it’s clutches forever. I thought I was going to die young, like a lot of people in my family and I was absolutely sure that smoking was going to be the main cause of it!
Fast-forward to six years, five months and 15 days later… I don’t smoke. There has been ONE moment of weakness (not that long ago… late December) where I ended up very drunk and smoked less than 1/3rd of a cigarette. It was disgusting and I really didn’t enjoy the head-spinning sensation that went along with it. I sobered up and felt a great sense of disappointment in myself. All of that combined has proved to me that I am utterly over this most insidious addiciton.
Working in an office is definitely not good for your health (as with many sedentary jobs). Doing ten-hour shifts Monday to Friday and another five hours every other Saturday morning is enough to make you exhausted. This was the main reason behind me not having the energy to stay active or go to the gym.
The other reason for me getting way out of shape was the fact that we had our own little kitchen just off of the main office and a fridge freezer standing in the middle of the room. We didn’t even go anywhere at lunchtime… we would get up, fix our lunch and then sit back down (very often I would just work through my lunch hour).
It got to the point where my work clothes were cutting me in half. It was a very relaxed office anyway, so I started going in wearing jeans until those started doing the same. The weight gain carried on and I left that particular job. I had to buy new work clothes for the new one.
Since I was now doing normal office hours, I decided enough was enough and did what a lot of ex-soldiers will do in a similar situation… I went out and absolutely beasted myself! I didn’t measure it until afterwards, but I went from my front door up to, and twice around, the park. Later, while in serious pain with my back, I measured the distance and discovered that I had done three 10K runs in the space of a week.
Running around in a green, baggy suit gave me experience of what straining your back through exercise feels like, but I had mistakenly taken actual damage occurring for my lower back muscles complaining because they hadn’t been used in such a long time. This kind of pain I’ve felt many times in the past and have had to run through it. I should have probably stopped after the first run.
I gave myself prolapsed discs and pretty severe sciatica that summer. My doctor referred me for an MRI which confirmed the diagnosis, and also for physiotherapy. We explored many versions of pain management with all sorts of types and strengths of painkiller. This was met with limited success.
The doc referred me to a local spinal consultant who told me I was going for ‘facet joint injections’ and an epidural. I only knew what one of those things is and I was pretty sure that it was the go-to thing for pregnant women!
Months later I had my injections. They rid me of the sciatica within days, but the back spasms and excruciating pain in my power back has never gone, despite having two more lots of injections.
Now… in all this time, I have become more and more sedentary and have gained lots more weight. This isn’t through choice, you understand. It’s just very painful to be active and move around. I have tried as much as I can and with various things to help my muscles recover and to make being active easier. It is clearly not working.
A good friend told me a while back: “Forget exercise. Forget physio. You need to diet. You need to manage your weight and bring it down in a way that doesn’t involve you needing to move around.”
This is great advice, but I am finding being sensible and grown-up when it comes to food pretty much impossible. Part of the problem is that standing in the kitchen to cook a proper meal is really painful – way more than normal. I also don’t sleep much (or well) which makes my energy levels utterly pitiful!
No. Instead of doing what I know needs to be done, I end up ordering takeaway food. This has caused so many more problems of it’s own… the main one being that I am gaining not losing weight.
I know that being ill for so long has caused a not-unforeseen-case of severe depression and that this adds to the overall problem, but I can’t understand how I can kick something as addictive as cigarettes and yet struggle so hard with doing something about my diet. It is so ridiculously simple a form of being grown up… we are all armed with the scientific knowledge that x is a good way to eat and y will lead to health problems and, ultimately, early death.
Stopping a pattern of behaviour that you know is killing you shouldn’t be this hard.
I did it once before…
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