My mom had a stroke on the evening of November 8, 2018. Around the same time, it was discovered that she was also a diabetic. Just a little less than a month shy of turning 67-years-old and her world was flipped upside down. It was a right-side stroke — a minor one that occurred in a major area of the brain that completely hampered the left side of her body. By far one of the scariest nights of my life, to imagine losing my mother, having already lost my dad a week before Christmas in 2003 when I was only 12-years-old.
My aunt, my mom’s sister and someone I consider to be like a second mother to me, had a heart attack on March 10, 2019, just eighteen days shy of turning 59-years-old, after about four decades or so of smoking cigarettes and working stress-inducing jobs emanating from oft-drama with co-workers.
My mom, as I liked to tease her about, has always had the eating habits of a little bird. She’ll eat a little bit throughout the day, here and there, never eating a big meal, only snacking. She has always been the type of person to pass up a solid dinner for sweets. She loved soda, candy and ice cream. After receiving the news of her diabetes diagnosis, she kicked soda to the curb in favor of diet soda and flavored water. I never realized how expensive sugar-free candy was until I started buying it for my mom! Also, after being used to ice cream deals at local grocery stores at prices of 2 for $4, it is roughly $4 to buy her the ‘no sugar added’ ice cream varieties for her favorites (butter pecan and neapolitan). Her blood sugar typically stays between 120-150. She isn’t on any diabetic medication for the time being. However, she is taking two different blood thinners, two types of blood pressure pills and, unfortunately, a cholesterol pill.
My aunt is taking a host of medication. She hasn’t switched off to flavored water as far as consumption habits goes, being a Diet Coke addict and all, but I’ll give her big props on one thing: she did the unimaginable. She quit smoking cigarettes the day she had her heart attack and hasn’t looked back. She uses nicotine patches for the time being.
I’m proud of both for the lifestyle modifications they have made, even if I only mention one for my aunt (giving up the quasi-‘cancer sticks’). I feel like, for my aunt, the damage has been done after several decades of smoking, but it is better to quit at some point than to never quit at all. We begged her to quit for years, especially bringing up how she would want to live to see her two grandchildren graduate high school, and she would always snap at us for offering such visceral banter.
People spout words like ‘motivation’ and ‘discipline’ all the time when it comes to lifestyle changes, and there is a sense of motivation at first, and discipline has its place in keeping someone’s feet on the ground, but more than anything a change in one’s lifestyle is directly related to the change of habits and incorporating those habits into one’s routine by doing the same thing over and over each day.
Back in 2014 and 2015, when the Xbox One was only a year or two old, I became hooked to Xbox Fitness. It was a free app where one could use the kinect that the Xbox One mandatorily came with to work out in front of, earn points for executing proper ‘exercises’ and give themselves a full body workout in the process. I was, in a way, addicted to the MOSSA workout series, especially MOSSA Fight! Call it boring, but for two months straight, I was doing the MOSSA Fight workouts daily and felt a sense of anxiety if I had not completed my workouts on certain days. It was a solid routine that was only upended once the fall semester of 2015 began and my science courses (particularly chemistry, when at 24-years-old I had never taken a chemistry class in my entire life, dating back to grade school).
In 2017, Microsoft/Xbox did away with Xbox Fitness. It was a sad time. Basically, they abandoned the kinect. There was controversy surrounding the kinect ever since it was announced that it would be a mandatory inclusion with the console when it was released in November 2013, which gave Sony and Playstation a massive lead in the console wars, a grip it still holds over Microsoft and Xbox to this day, and when Xbox began to do away with the kinect, it was only a matter of time before Xbox Fitness kicked the bucket.
I prefer working out from home. I live in a rural, small town community where there are only a couple of options as far as gym-going goes. At home, I have a 22 lb. dumbbell, a 35.2 lb. dumbbell and a 50 lb. dumbbell that I can execute lifts with, and here’s a treadmill in the basement for cardio. I consider mowing the yard to be quite a workout, too, with a push mower, as I have a relatively big yard that is uneven and a hillside to mow. I mention the yard as being ‘uneven’ because there are tiny, little mini-hills all over the yard where, if you are mowing it, you are constantly exerting strength to push the lawnmower over such areas to adequately cut the grass.
I wish I had a bench and barbells to work with, at home, but it is what it is. I suppose what I have is solid enough for maintaining a decent level of strength albeit it is not optimal for maximum strength or even better hypertrophy as it pertains to muscle growth. However, it is better than nothing.
I may be moving this post all over the place, but my entire point is that one can do what they can with what they have in their lives.
My mom did well enough to kick sugary sodas and most sweets (she still indulges in sugary sweets from time to time, but she has cut back significantly since her stroke). I wish both her and my aunt would try and incorporate regular ol’ water to their daily consumption.
As human beings, our collective lives are shrouded in habits. Creating healthy habits is tantamount to showing compassion for your future self. Benefits may not show tomorrow, or a week from now or even three months from now, but six months? A year and beyond? Dividends eventually occur. Life can be a ‘give and take’ battle at sometimes. Your actions have consequences, even if they don’t initially rear their head.
Motivation doesn’t last, and I’ll let you guys argue about discipline at its core being enough to set someone on a path, but habits are everything. We are creatures of habit, from showering daily to brushing our teeth to what we do in our spare time separate from our work lives.
Your body will tell you all you need to know, most of the time, about how you are doing.
I’ve never been diagnosed, but I know for a fact that I’ve been suffering from depression since at least last April. That was the first time I felt a semblance of it. I began feeling hopelessly empty and jaded over life. I began to feel no enjoyment in my hobbies. It has come and gone, but when I’m deep in the throes of depression, my motivation to do anything is hindered by extreme fatigue and striking emptiness. I used to believe that depression was merely the feeling of sadness, but no, it is so much more than that. For me, again, it is that empty feeling and the extreme fatigue that comes along with it. This is part of the reason why I mention habits, because I’m fighting daily to overcome it all. From eating whole foods to supplements to attempting to be active. I try and take five to ten minutes out of each day to engage in my own form of ‘mindful meditation,’ cheesy as it may sound, but taking that time to realize the self-awareness of what is going on in my head, assessing what any anxiety I feel is rooted in, appreciating what I have in life even if it is difficult to do so with how I feel… it helps, even just a little bit at times.
Life can be overwhelming. Developing habits isn’t easy, but it helps to have a “why?” when you do what you do.
That is why this “V-Neck Gangster” blog is a form of expression and escape for me. The title of the site may be ridiculous, as I’m certainly no ‘gangster,’ but it is a fun play on words and adds a little zip of my personality that includes my v-neck t-shirt wearing habits and gives a face value basis to who I am in the slightest way.
What are your habits? What do you feel like you could work on in a better way as a person?
V-Neck Gangster 