OPINION: Winter blues

As a part of my New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been moving through the beginning of this year with a goal of creating “healthy habits.” Right now, I see myself as pretty undisciplined as a human being, a mostly spoiled child (not to the fault of my parents who did try extremely hard against me wanting to play video games all afternoon) and my body is slowly consuming itself. There’s still time to change.

Before every meal, I eat a bowl of vegetables. It’s helpful for curbing my appetite, and it’s much better than my typical diet. You’ll learn more about it soon. I have a rotation of iceberg lettuce salad, spinach and snow peas which helps give me a bit of variety. It’s a start.

I’ve started brushing my teeth twice a day (I’d rather not talk about how much I did before), trying to combat the most horrifying part of my body which I’ve only recently started admitting to friends: my poor gumline. They’ve mystified dentists across the state of Iowa, terrified them with an angry red color and forced me to consciously close my smile to hide them. Probably should have got to that a lot earlier in my life, but I can work at it now.

Before bed, I do 15-30 minutes of home exercise. Simple stuff right now, squats, planks, knee-to-chests and some overhead presses with dumbbells. Nothing too crazy, although it’s been making my muscles quite sore. These exercises have actually taught me about the muscles of my body more than any health class. I feel good when I want to get better.

At times, it feels like I’ve given up the ideal mid-20s body, now going for resilient and brave 60-year-old. I have to remind myself it’s a good thing to not go for the immediate gratification of junk food or lazy screen staring.

I have an addictive personality. There’s a psychology experiment done on rats by B.F. Skinner called the operant conditioning chamber, or Skinner box. A rat presses a button and is immediately rewarded with food. Over time, the rat displays an addiction for hitting the button and the instantaneous reward. Casinos, video games and even dating apps have used the experiment to keep their users addicted to their product.

I am the rat in the Skinner box. I hit my instant gratification button, and I just want to hit it again. I’m grateful I’ve never tried any hard drugs or nicotine before. I’d surely be doomed.

How do I know this? I’m addicted to fast food. Did you know McDonald’s has buy one get one for $1 on double cheeseburgers? And with mobile ordering, you can get a large fry for free, and the drinks (I always go for soda pop) were always pretty cheap anyways. It’s just so easy to do. Horrifying.

Anyone who has ever glanced at my frame would recognize my proportions look like a melting ice cream cone. I’m not totally obese, but I have a prominent belly which is enough to at least look the part. We live in a much more body-positive age and I am at least not shameful enough to be unable to joke about my blubber, but I do want to slim down.

Close ones know I was diagnosed in college with anxiety and depression disorders. Please don’t feel bad, I only mention it because it matters to this story. It often gets worse based on the season, with winter being a frozen mental hellscape.

It’s cruel for New Year’s resolutions to be placed in the dead-center of winter. It’s when I’m least motivated and more likely to quit what I started.

On Sunday, I almost quit my healthy habits. I didn’t exercise for the first time this year and ate a whole pizza in one sitting. No vegetables in sight.

I woke up the next morning, cold. I was in the middle of the most depressive episode I’ve ever had since college. I couldn’t move out of bed, and I clung to my comforter as the one thing keeping me safe. I was a child, I was sore, I was myself disembodied looking down on my own shell. I didn’t get out until a little before noon.

Why do we stop doing things? It happens a lot, and often for no specific reason. Sure, there’s always a bad experience, but for those activities which we slowly drift away from, why do we stop? It’s not malicious and sometimes not even a conscious choice, but always, at some point, we stop.

If I want to get better, I can’t stop. It’s clear some mental part of my body has shifted in the past year which is being nurtured by my new routines. I feel healthy, which is very exciting. I just have to hold on.

I’m open about this stuff because I have no interest in painting myself as a saint or even a good person. I used the term “brutally human” in a previous column, and that’s been my label for myself since 2019. If I always see my actions as villainous, I’ll never grow. I am only human, exhaustingly, sweetly, brutally human.

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Best Picture nominations for the Oscars will be announced on Jan. 23, with my (hopefully) final predictions as follows: “A Complete Unknown,” “A Real Pain,” “Anora,” “Conclave,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Perez,” “Sing Sing,” “The Brutalist,” “The Substance” and “Wicked.”