Insidious Little Changes

Howdy y’all! It’s another month, and I’m actually managing to crank out my blog post BEFORE the very last day. Be proud of me! XD

As some of you know, I’m constantly reading (okay, usually listening to) books. If a day goes by without me consuming book content in some form, there’s probably something seriously wrong with me.

One of the more recent books I’ve consumed is The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson. It’s not a bad book. In fact, it carries a very powerful message that I wish I’d learned at a much younger age. Alas, I’m not sure a book could have taught it to me; I was (and occasionally still am) a very stubborn creature. But I have come to understand the wisdom of the slight edge over time regardless, mostly due to experiencing it in my own life (more on that in a sec).

The book, however, is a bit, um, repetitious. That is to say, it says the same thing. Over and over. A lot. In different ways, yes. But it’s like repeating yourself. To say the same thing. A different way. Again and again. Because there’s not much to say. So you say it again. And again. And so on.

I think you get my drift.

The Slight Edge: Unpacking the Message

So let me sum up the entire premise of the book for you: If you do small things every day, over time they can have life-changing effects.
To expound on this just a bit:

1. If you repeat little actions that make your life better, the net effect will be positive.
2. If you repeat little actions that make your life worse, the net effect will be negative.
3. In both cases, the effects will be basically unnoticeable at first. But the compounding effects of time will inevitably turn them into ginormous results.

Seems super simple and obvious, right? But it can be really, REALLY hard, especially when we are young and healthy and have our whole lives ahead of us, to grasp just how important these little things can be, and what an enormous difference they can make. I know I sure didn’t. I tried to do what everyone said I should – work out, eat healthy, save money for retirement, etc. But in some ways, life got the better of me.

And like the book says, the changes wrought by making wrong decisions start super small. Insidiously, unnoticeably small. Here’s one of my examples…

Ignored Signals: The Canary in the Coalmine

I remember a time about 15 years ago when I began having trouble sleeping. I didn’t know why. In fact, it made no sense to me at all. I was eating (what I thought was) healthier than I ever had in my life, I was forcing myself to work out even though I hated it, and I was (thank you, Type A personality) throwing myself into building an empire of crappy websites to rack up Amazon & eBay affiliate fees.

So I basically ignored the sleep troubles. Big mistake.

That trouble sleeping? Was the canary in my coalmine. But I failed to recognize it for what it was, and instead kept making all the WRONG decisions. Kept cutting foods out of my diet, in order to make it “healthier.” Kept pushing myself, physically and mentally, to do more and more with less and less. At the time these were all little changes. Cutting out dairy. Cutting out oxalates. Cutting out nightshades. Every time I would have what I perceived as a negative reaction to a food, I would eliminate it from my diet. No food was immune from my quest to become healthier.

I eventually realized that my mood and happiness were strongly affected by the quality of sleep I had gotten the night before, but that’s as far as I managed to get, in terms of recognizing the problem. It would be years before I would realize that the quality of my sleep was directly affected by my energy intake and output. But my problem was mostly on the intake side.

Specifically, I was starving myself to death. Literally. But because I started that “journey” as an overweight woman, all I got from doctors was encouragement. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working! Keep it up!” they would say, even though the primary purpose for my visit was to find out why I was losing so much weight, so fast (we’re talking 40 pounds in a couple of months). I literally thought I had cancer. Turns out, I just needed more calories. But no one mentioned that, because all that mattered to them was that I was finally coming down to a socially and medically acceptable weight. Nevermind that it wasn’t fat I was losing, but muscle. But I digress…

Small changes, having a cumulative effect. My sleeping problem got worse and worse, until I was basically an insomniac. I would literally get a maximum of 45 minutes of sleep per night. I’m honestly not sure how I survived that period. It lasted months, and I not only kept up with a full workload, but also did all the packing and unpacking of moving house, because I worked at home, and my husband at the time worked outside of it, so he “didn’t have time.”

Looking back, it’s so fucking obvious what was happening. But at the time? It was just pieces of straw being added to the camel’s back.

Good Intentions Pave the Road to Hell

There’s a name for this problem, of course. Orthorexia, from the Latin for “right eating.” An obsession with consuming only healthy foods, and in the process restricting to an incredibly unhealthy degree. One day I stumbled upon an article about this, and the pieces started falling into place. But by then it was basically too late. I was certifiably scrawny enough to qualify for residential eating disorder treatment, so I got an official diagnosis. Alas, there were no such programs that were affordable, so I had to recover on my own. Well, in my own home, at least. More on that in a sec.

It’s taken me nearly 10 years now, and I’m still dealing with the aftereffects of that godawful period of my life. My sleep still hasn’t returned to normal. But I’m getting closer every day, because I’ve stopped trying to fix every problem in my life with the same tool. I’m finally to a place where I can begin exercising again and have it effect my sleep in the way it should – by making it easier to sleep at the end of the day, rather than harder.

Put simply, I’ve finally got the slight edge working FOR me, rather than AGAINST me. The little changes are no longer insidious. Instead, they’re slowly accumulating into a snowball of happiness, health, and prosperity. But holy shit, did I ever have to learn things the hard way.

Now you know why weight loss culture is my biggest soapbox issue, and why you’ll see me climb onto it and shout every chance I get. I was fortunate to find a fabulous group of people online who were going through much the same thing, at the same time. We supported each other strongly, and still touch base once in a while. Unfortunately, we have lost a couple along the way; eating disorders are no joke. In fact they’re the single most deadly mental illness. That’s right; deadlier than depression, PTSD, psychosis, you name it.

Eating disorders are also NOT restricted by age, size, or gender. I was 35 years old with a BMI of 35 when I started my downward spiral. And we had several males in our recovery group as well. So I urge you to rethink anything you may think you know about disordered eating. It can happen to anyone, at any time, and be deadly.

steps down off of soapbox

Embracing Health, Resilience, and Self-Improvement

Needless to say, going through crap like that changes you. I am just very thankful that it changed me for the better, rather than flat-out killing me.

Gratitude changes you, too. Among the other Slight Edge-style habits I've been adopting over the past couple of years (long before picking up The Slight Edge), I've started consciously practicing gratitude, because I’m now grateful for every day I get to continue to live. I'm determined to make the most of whatever life I have left, and help as many people as I can along the way.

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