“You know what procrastination is? Control. ‘Oh, I’ll just do it later.’ Control. ‘Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow instead.’ Control.” -paraphrased from Mel Robbins’ workshop

As I set out for my run yesterday I decided to spend some time ruminating on my relationship with food. The quote above popped into my head and I had that OMG! IT ALL CLICKS! moment.

My love of being in control is a well known fact (and source of amusement among my best Type A friends) and fairly well documented on this blog. It’s why I like training plans: run 3 miles? did it. check. control. It’s why I like planners and Google calendar: write it down, cross it out. structure. control.

So on Friday when I was stressed about someone leaving at work and what that meant for workflow for this busy season, I said, “Fuck it. I don’t care.” And emotionally ate my way through random gross snacks of a peanut butter Snickers egg, chips, pickles, etc. It occurred to me, during my springy jaunt along the river Sunday morning, that (LIGHTBULB!) saying, “I don’t care that I am eating this food I know I don’t like/isn’t good for me/isn’t what I want/even though I’m not hungry” gives me… CONTROL. If I do care butI do it, then I’m upset. But if I “don’t care” then fuck it, I’m in charge, baby. Doin’ what I want, how I want.

But I’m not really in control. Just like procrastination. It’s an illusion. Putting things off or declaring in that moment that you don’t care doesn’t get to the root of your issues and doesn’t get things accomplished.

When during Mel’s workshop we had to turn to a partner and declare our “big, scary, embarrassing goal” publicly, the only thing I could think of was “I want to be 160* lbs.” So when forced to publicly proclaim the one goal I REALLY want that I just haven’t tackled it was… to lose weight? Seriously, of all the big audacious dreams I could have, this is the one that gnaws at me? I need to just get this done so I can move on to the other big, awesome things I’m going to do. (*160 is an approximate number based on what I think will be a healthy weight.)

So, I decided that if I’m self-sabotaging my own goal by allowing my brain to give me a false sense of control by saying “I don’t care,” I’m going to fight back. From now on, when my brain says, “Pfft, eat that stale day-old free brownie because you’re bored, I don’t care, we do what we want!” I’m going to reply back, “I DO CARE AND I AM IN CONTROL.”