Day One X Infinity

This topic will likely feel hauntingly familiar to you and might get uncomfortable quickly.  Good news and BLUF (bottom line up front): the solution is simple but not easy, and all you have to do is commit to sustained action.

Firefighters are a rare breed compared to the general population, but most sworn first responders possess similar personality attributes.  Those shared attributes will save a firefighter’s life in a low-air emergency but also make them exceedingly hard to coach and mentor regarding health and wellness.  

Firefighters are black and white:  This is how you start the saw.  This is how you force a door.  This is how you throw a ladder.  This is the procedure you go through in a low-air emergency. This is how I eat and train (at least right now) until I white-knuckle my way through 6 weeks and fall off the wagon spectacularly. 

You see that black-and-white mentality, that all-in (or all OUT) attitude, and the wild extremism application of effort is exactly what makes most programs, diets, and challenges destined to fail for firefighters. 

Let’s tick off the issues one by one.

1)      Pressing reset

2)      Waiting for Monday

3)      Extremism

4)      Falling off the wagon

5)      Back to the top and repeat for perpetuity

Global issue number 1 is the reset.  The reset goes something like this: “Look.  I need to decrease my body fat (or increase my cardiovascular work capacity or lower my blood pressure).  I know there is a laundry list of behaviors (or, more accurately, behavioral goals) that will help me achieve that outcome goal.  But instead of starting small and conquering one thing at a time, I will do a reset and change EVERYTHING at once!  

That will work like magic!”

And resets generally look like starvation diets, cleanses, overtraining boot camps, and other forms of non-sustainable extremism.  The thought process is that if one can get through the ‘reset,’ they will somehow magically have integrated all the behaviors necessary to continue and ultimately reach their outcome goal.  

Goal:  lose 50# of body fat.  

Solution:  Do a reset cleanse for two weeks and lose 15# (mostly water weight), which will magically yield the sustainable behaviors to lose 50# of body fat.  

Spoiler alert:  this doesn’t work. 

The second global issue in wellness and fitness adherence is what I like to call Waiting for Monday (or January 1 or the nuclear $*#%^@ apocalypse).  To make sure we’re on the same page here, this phenomenon occurs when someone KNOWS that they need to make a behavior change but insists on waiting for Monday (or insert other arbitrary deadlines) to start the behavior instead of just starting it when it’s identified.  

It might go something like this—"Wow, I feel cruddy when I don’t drink enough water.  I really should drink more water.  I’m going to drink more water…starting…Monday.”

Let’s zoom way out and take a 30,000-foot view now.  One of the best lessons I learned was to touch mail once.  Say what?  Mail?  This is the digital age.  I don’t get mail!  

So, PRETEND you still get mail and follow me here. 

 The utility bill comes in the mail (along with all the other garbage), and you bring the whole stack inside and put it on the counter.  

Later that day or a few days later, you pick up the now-ever-accumulating stack again, take the bill out of the envelope, look at the total, and it all goes back into the stack on the counter.  

Then, at a future time you grab the outer envelope out of the cluster and put that in the recycling.  Maybe that time you also throw away some of the catalogs and place a few bills you’ve gotten other days with the utility bill.  

A few more days pass, and you take the stack of bills upstairs to your office.  

From there, maybe the bills get sorted into stacks based on the due date.  They all sit together until you get around to writing checks.  Maybe you write out all the checks and place them with the bills, but don’t put them together in the envelopes to be mailed.  

A few more days go by, and you stuff and lick the envelopes, put the stamps on, and then the whole stack goes and sits down on the counter, awaiting the magical day when they will be put in the mailbox.  

By now you’ve touched that same utility bill and all the other junk ten or more times before it has ever actually gotten taken care of! 

{Side note: Yes, believe it or not, there are humans who still receive paper bills and write checks.  I am not one of these humans, but I have met them. 😊!!!}

Let’s compare to this version, which I boldly entitled: TAKE ACTION VERSION.  

The bill comes in the mail (we’ve REALLY got to get you doing e-billing, but that’s a whole other discussion!), and you bring it inside, open the envelope, put the envelope in the recycling, grab your checkbook, write a check, put it in the envelope, stick a stamp on it and put it back in the outgoing mail.  

Or better yet, you grab your laptop right then and schedule the payment via your billing site.  

The bill has been taken care of RIGHT THEN by touching it once.  The recycling is put away, the bill is paid, and the whole clutter is off your counter and brain.

A necessary behavior was flagged in this example: I need to pay a bill.  

And then you pay the bill without procrastinating, making excuses, or, dare I say…waiting for Monday.  You didn’t pontificate with your spouse about “I need to do a RESET with these bills.  I think I’ll start my CLEANSE with these bills on July 1”, right?  

You just acted: bill came > paid bill > done with bill > move on with life.

Waiting for Monday to start your actions or programs is like touching your bill 10x.  It’s counterproductive and a waste of time.   Identify the problem (I need to plan and prepare my meals) and then start NOW with steps to change.  Yes, I realize that you can’t create change out of thin air.  Sometimes, there is a ramping-up stage before implementing a new habit.  But when planning and prepping meals, you could go to the grocery store TODAY and get easy items you can implement right away while you’re ramping up for the big food prep project.  No time to prepare cut-up vegetables before shift tomorrow?  They are available already for an exorbitant price so you can start TODAY. 

The bottom line is this: Start now. Don’t wait for Monday.  It’s lame and just another excuse that keeps you from reaching your goals.  Remember this term:  GETTING IN YOUR OWN WAY

Coaching clients who insist on waiting for Monday (or other arbitrary dates) end up in a relentless hamster wheel of falling off and starting over. 

Hello Monday, we meet again.

Global issue 3 is extremism.  This issue is especially tantalizing to the firefighting population as it intimately fits the personality profile.  Think about it.  The more extreme the emergency, the more exciting it is to the responder.  And our firefighters leave work and race cars, ride motorcycles, sky-dive and run adventure races.  

Why?  They’re adrenaline junkies. They CRAVE extremism.  Why be moderate and sustainable when one can live on the EDGE?

Extremism generally presents as short-term solutions that are very strict and non-sustainable from the outset.  Extremism looks like excessively low-calorie diets, elimination of entire food groups, very high-intensity short-term programming (such as training for a body-building competition or marathon to control body composition), and multiple-day fasting.  

Extremism is the epitome of white-knuckling your way through a painful and arduous process making radical short-term changes that you already KNOW aren’t sustainable.  Swearing off alcohol, never eating out again, and avoiding family gatherings are the mainstays of extremism.  And so is wicked rebounding. 

Extremism and resets can be similar, but generally, extremism is short-term, and resets are shorter-term.  Neither one addresses long-term sustainable habits. 

Bottom line:  neither work well.

Global issue Number 4 is the proverbial Falling off the Wagon or Coming off the Rails.  Slip-ups or intentionally “going off plan” inevitably happen, even in a long-term sustainable program.  A slip-up is when you intend to eat a chicken breast, rice, and a veggie, and instead, you eat a whole pepperoni pizza.  (It was a snackcident!)

Going off plan entails knowing and recognizing a specific time, such as a vacation, where sticking to your planned nutrition and training will be difficult or undesirable.  

So, you intentionally plan around the event. 

Falling off the wagon rears its ugly head when the off-plan meal or the planned deleted training sessions for a day or a week become a month or six of being off-plan and slipping up. I mean, you dropped your phone and cracked the screen.  You might as well put it on the driveway and run over it 6-8 times, too, right?  That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but neither does falling off the wagon entirely and yet, here we are.

Now what?   

You *could* go back to number 1 for another trip through the cycle, or you could do something smart, sustainable, and long-lasting. 

 But what does smart, sustainable, and long-lasting look like?

•  Small changes executed relentlessly can yield significant results, but this takes TIME and CONSISTENCY.  Giving up one regular sugar soda daily and changing nothing else eliminates between one hundred and several hundred calories based on the size.  Eliminating that one beverage while doing nothing else will still help your cause.  Adding an after-dinner walk will not only benefit your daily caloric expenditure, but it will bolster your parasympathetic nervous system and may even help you be a better functioning human.

•  Statistically, you are more successful working on ONE behavior at a time vs working on multiple behaviors.  Choose a simple behavioral change and work on it relentlessly until it’s mastered before even grabbing another behavior.

•  Making sustainable changes requires a CHANGE in your behavior.  Just saying, “I’m going to eat better,” doesn’t work.  What does ‘better’ mean, and HOW will you execute better?  I’m going to drink 100 ounces of water each day is a solid behavioral objective.  If you can answer the question: did you do the thing or did you not do the thing with a yes or no answer, you’ve got a good behavioral objective. 

•  Sustainable changes equal behaviors that you can see yourself executing for a lifetime, not for 3-6 weeks.  Come from a long line of Italian grandmother chefs?  Stating that you are NEVER AGAIN going to eat pasta may not be realistic for you!

• Finally, always look at low-hanging fruit or big rocks to find behavioral change.  Low-hanging fruits are those easy wins, those simple actions such as adding a serving of veggies to each meal or remembering to drink your water.  Big rocks are those giant actions that will require a lot of effort and bandwidth but yield many benefits.  A big rock might be joining a gym and hiring a coach to educate and guide you.

In summary, firefighters are a unique breed of human who exhibit extreme personality traits in not only their careers but also in health, and wellness.  Moderation and small changes executed relentlessly help keep us off the hamster wheel of on and off the wagon.  Try it.  You’ll like it. 

AZ