Can't, Shouldn't and Don't want to...

Over the past four and a half years one of the most significant ways I’ve evolved, in my humble opinion, is in my catalyst for making healthy decisions.

When I first had surgery, I was very much comforted by the concept of “can’t.Â" I can’t eat that, it’ll get stuck and make me sick. I can’t eat that, it will make me dump. My brain has always grasped the concept of can’t better than shouldn’t. Shouldn’t simply has too much wiggle room.

And thankfully the dumping thing turned out to be true, as I found out one hot summer day in what I will forever deem “the Starbuck’s incident.Â" So that worked for a while. But then, as I got further out, and my pouch capacity increased I was faced with a new challenge: the ability to eat more volume and variety of foods, which came with more choices of what I should eat to keep my pouch full.

Intro the concept of “shouldn’t.Â" I shouldn’t eat those things together, that’s too many calories. I shouldn’t have starchy carbs at lunch if I want dessert later. At this point, can’t was still in play, although it was losing strength. One day I ate some chicken with a lot of bbq sauce on it (was served to me that way) and had absolutely no ill effects. So I had an inkling that if I paired sugar with protein my body did not react the same as if I consumed sugar alone. So can’t was starting to dissolve just as shouldn’t kicked in.

The shouldn’t was more about my own comfort. I wasn’t losing anymore but I knew if I kept a handle on my eating stats, I at least would not gain (this was after the bounce, btw). It was my way of exerting control over this process. My bounce occurred when I was at the height of my workout schedule, ate pretty darn compliantly…so understandably it felt like I was losing grip. Controlling what I ate, manipulating those numbers, made me feel a lot better.

These days, along with the concepts of can’t and shouldn’t, I have embraced a new concept that’s very liberating: don’t want to. Here’s how this all plays out in my head.

There are still foods I straight up can’t eat. And now combinations of foods I can’t eat together (lest I want to have monumental blood sugar drops).

Then there are foods I just shouldn’t eat because I know I can’t regulate them well. Peanut butter is my most frequently used example but another is potato chips.

But the dominating factor over everything these days seems to be “don’t want to.Â" I don’t want to put crappy food in my body. It doesn’t make me feel good. It doesn’t help me to do the things I want to do. Hell, sometimes it still makes me sick. I like healthy food. It makes me feel good to prepare and eat foods that are nutrient rich. Veggies make me smile.

I attribute my changing attitudes, in part, to the development of self-esteem. I didn’t have much of it when I started this process. I put damn near anything in my body and it didn’t matter. Now it does. It matters to me if there is pesticides on my veggies or pink slime in my meat. It matters to me if there is saturated and trans fats. It matters to me that I get antioxidants and fiber. These things matter to me because for the first time in my whole life I actually do love myself and I want to be healthy and feel good and live a long life.

So I thought I’d share that reflection with you all. Some of you may still be motivated by “can’t.Â" That’s fine! If I hadn’t started out with can’t I don’t think I could have graduated to “don’t want to.Â" So if you are in that place, take heart and keep on moving. Whatever is your catalyst for doing good for yourself, hold onto it. Loving yourself is a choice and choices are habits. It takes a while to establish habits so sometimes you have to “fake it till you make it.Â"

Have a good day everyone.

Very good post Nik!  I agree with so much of it.  I try to put in the good stuff and make my food the non processed varieties so that I know I am doing myself good rather than just filling up the stomach.  Feels so much better doesn`t it!

I just love the way you think/write!

So true-as we age into this process we become people we never knew we'd become!  I too actually crave good stuff.  When I think I want something (like a Burger King Whopper Jr) it ends up tasting like crap.....I've finally figured out the taste of those foods didn't change.........my tastes changed!

Thanks for an insightful post and for putting into words what many of us cannot.

Your post are always great!

 Good post. 

i agree. A big part of having this surgery, for me, was just getting back to a place where treating my body well didn't seem so fruitless.

"Don't want to" is so much easier to attain when your goal is in sight. When I was sitting on my ass at 260lbs, and losing 110 lbs seemed so incredibly daunting and futile, there wasn't much motivation not to eat that double cheeseburger. What's the worst that will happen, I'll get fat? Ha. 

But now, at only 35lbs away from my preliminary goal, "don't want to" is so much more relevent. Instead of comforting me, that cheeseburger might make me feel like crap and will derail my efforts. So no. I don't want to. Because now, I can more clearly see where I'm going, and I'm excited about it. 

 I still have a lot fo can'ts in my vocabulary.  And a lot of them are really shouldn'ts that I strictly enforce INTO can'ts.

I can't eat sugar.

I can't buy nsa whipped cream or a certain brand of oatmeal raisin cookies.  I can eat them.  But I CANNOT buy them.

I shouldn't buy sf or nsa baked goods in general.

I shouldn't buy Chex Mix.  Or Goldfish.

And I have a whole lot of don't want tos.  Unfortunately I haven't yet fixed the don't want tos into can'ts.  ALL of my can't are don't want tos... I guess my scale is ordered a little bit differently than yours.

But it's all about what works for each individual person!

 Most definitely.

I've said from the beginning (and I know folks sometimes think I am hookie about this) that this is all about the story we tell ourselves in our head. As a writer, I am I guess more aware of how reality can change by how you tell a story. 

So I tell myself stories of "can't, shouldn't and don't want to" in the terms that make the most sense to me and you do the same for yourself. It took me a while to grasp that it's ok for your process and mine to be different. In the beginning if my process was vastly different from someone else's I automatically thought mine was wrong. 

Thank you once again, Nik.  I am working on it.

You come with alot of sound advice, Nik.  You have a gift.  You can write and should write because you have a gift for that also.  Everything you just wrote wa****ting the nail on the head.  I have learned from you to stop and breath when things get to be more than I can handle.  Maybe a book is in your future?
Take Care, Jane in California

Love this post! You always post something that makes me evaluate my own thought processes on why I do what I do. Fake it till you make it is my current Motto