Idiotic Self-Defeating Ideas

This morning, it was my turn to exercise. I wasn’t really feeling it — it was the first day since I started exercising that I wanted to just crawl back in bed for another hour or so.

But I didn’t, because I knew that would make me feel like a loser. So I went and put in my contact lenses and brushed my teeth, and then I hopped on the scale.

It’s been two weeks of eating pretty well and exercising a fair amount, but the damn scale told me that I had gained a few pounds. I’ve looked it up, and it does seem like you might just weigh a bit more in the summer as your body holds on to more water (courtesy of Scientific American):

In the summer, body weight can go up by several pounds due to increased body water. This is accomplished through fluid-conserving hormones such as aldosterone, which allows the kidney to retain more fluid and reduces the amount of salt in sweat, a measure that also aids in water retention.

But, well, my body has probably been holding on to its water all summer long, so while I might weigh a bit more in the summer than in the winter, I should still be dropping weight relative to where I was a month ago. So, really, I’m just disappointed in the results so far. I think to myself that I should go back to bed, or maybe just go downstairs and watch Bob the Builder with Rypp for an hour.

I buck myself up a bit and remind myself that everything is just a series of small steps in the right direction. Keeping in mind my checklists, I remind myself that I didn’t want to wake up this morning, and it’s probably just a confirmation bias or something similar that’s telling me that exercise is a waste of time. I put on my running shoes and step out the front door.

I open the door, and it’s easily 95% humidity outside. It’s like trying to move my entire body through molasses. I think to myself, “I’m not going to make it very far in this weather. I should go upstairs and just do some push-ups or something and call it a day.”

Then I think that Catter and Rypp just did a quick cheer for me while they were watching Bob the Builder, and that it would be a terrible lesson to show Rypp that I’m cool with giving up because it’s going to be hard. Heck, a lot of our stock parenting technique is to help him understand that things are hard and that he’s going to be frustrated, and that he has to find the right outlet for his frustrations.

My outlet is being outside. I need to go for a run, and I know it. I try to find a silver lining in that the town mowed the side of the road near one of the most dangerous curves I run on, which is also right in front of my house, and so I can run in the dirt instead of worrying about getting hit by a car.

The silver linings approach doesn’t really work. I keep thinking to myself, “Is today the day that I’m going to stop and walk home?”

That thought is a terrible thought. I try to push it out of my mind, but every single step I’m taking through the steamy, syrupy air is telling me that today just isn’t my day.

It’s times like this that I’m glad I made a sacred fist bump promise to Catter that I’d spend more time outside exercising. A promise is a promise, and if I’m not going to hold myself to that very low standard, I’m not sure I want to look at myself in the mirror.

About a mile into my run is where I have to make a decision about what kind of run I want to do that day — if I want to tackle the big hill again, do a shorter loop around town, or go run through some of the dirt roads. My knees are hurting a little bit, and so I opt for the dirt roads because they’re softer and a little less hilly. Besides, I had done the big hill on Tuesday.

I almost immediately regret my decision, because the dirt road path is also the longest run I’d done — about 4.7 miles. I’m unhappy. I want to stop. I’m still pissed off that the scale is telling me that this is all worthless. The ground is far too muddy for me to run through the woods without losing a shoe. I should turn around, go home, and save my energy for another day. Or for work, because I know that today is going to be a long one at work.

Yeah, work needs me to be peppier than this run is going to allow me to be. I should turn around now.

I wave to the one other jogger in town (ok; there are maybe three total joggers in town that I’ve seen in two weeks of running, but there will probably be more when school starts in two weeks). She’s in her late 40s and says “hi” back, which is a first in the three or four times I’ve seen her. I feel better for a moment.

At the next fork in the road, about a mile down, I decide that I want to try a new route that runs around the golf course and by a school. It’s a dirt road, and I want to try it because I think that it’s shorter, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it through the big loop. I think to myself, “Well, I can salvage this. I can do a shorter run and that’ll be fine.”

I say, “Ok. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? It’ll still probably be about 4 miles. I can be happy with 4 miles.” So I took the shortcut.

I throw up a little behind the golf course next to an old cemetery when something goes down the wrong pipe, but I know that I’m about as far from home as I can be, and so I just start running again. My legs seize up on me a bit because the air has gotten heavier (if that’s even possible). I think about that promise I made. I try to figure out if quitting would be on some checklist I should have made, but I didn’t make one in advance and I’m finding that entire line of thought off-putting.

I turn on the road for home, thinking that it should be downhill most of the way, but that turns out to be wrong. There’s a series of short, steep hills that are just brutal. Plus, this is the only truly crowded road around, so cars are spewing exhaust at me, which makes the entire experience just really, really unpleasant.

I want to stop. I look at the hill and I think to myself, “Maybe I should just walk up that hill.”

Then I tell myself, “Quit it with these idiotic, self-defeating ideas. Just move your ass up the hill already.”

So I do, and then the next, and then the next, until finally I reach town again and can (I hope) coast downhill most of the way to home.

Then the one light in town turns red, and there’s oddly enough traffic that I can’t jaywalk (well, jayrun) across the street, so I stop to stretch for about 30 seconds until the light changes. My legs seize up again. It feels like I’ve got two-by-fours stuck to my legs.

“Stop,” I think to myself. “You’re only a ten minute walk from home. Walk it in.”

I debate this for a moment, and then say, “No. I didn’t make it this far to give up now.”

“It’s not giving up,” I think. “It’s just common sense.”

“Shut up, brain.”

I make it back to the dangerous curve and stop where I always stop — at my mailbox.

I want to fall over. I’m exhausted. I’m hot. My Top Writer shirt from Quora, which is quickly becoming a favorite work-out shirt, feels like it weighs thirty pounds because of sweat.

But I made it.

And that ‘shortcut’ I took? It actually made my run longer — I ended up going about 4.8 miles instead of 4.7.

Just like every other shortcut I’ve ever tried to take. It always takes a bit longer in the end when you think you’re being smart and saving yourself some time and energy without good information.

On the bright side, the scale was really polite to me after my run. It didn’t show me the numbers I wanted to see, but it was at least directionally right.

And, at least for today, I could tell those idiotic self-defeating ideas to shove it.

Jon has been published in Time, Inc., Forbes, The Huffington Post, and many, many other publications. He’s written novels, run a couple of start-ups, been a venture capitalist, a consultant, and has spent most of the last ten years climbing the corporate ladder. The Cold Shower Diet is a blog about finding motivation.