Lying to Myself

Lying to Myself

Sunday, August 14, 2011 

I lie to myself. That shouldn't be terribly surprising, as most people lie to themselves. 

Part of learning to manage my weight has been to identify lies I tell myself and to first, stop believing them; then, stop telling them. There are a lot of lies like this. 

"I don't need to keep track of what I eat." Yes, I do. Been the route of not tracking, and it leads to fat.

"I'll work it off." No way, for most of the stuff I say this about. Once I start looking, I see that it's pretty easy to add a gratuitous thousand calories to my diet. Enough exercise to burn a thousand calories takes an awful lot of time. 

"Yeah, I'm over the BMI limit; but it's okay because I have a lot of muscle mass." The mirror aids and abets this lie. But the camera tells me the truth. There's a bunch of fat there. 

"I'll burn more calories because I have more muscle mass. So I can eat more." On a weight lifting forum, the resident guru did some calculations to confirm some numbers commonly tossed around. She concluded that the muscle gains for a typical serious amateur weight lifter would amount to burning an additional 50 calories per day while resting. I don't have to tell folks on SP how little food 50 calories is.

Incidentally, the same guru argues that the reason stronger people burn more calories isn't because muscles burn more than fat while at rest, but because they actually *do more work* with those stronger muscles, but don't notice the effort because of how strong they are. The physics argument is that lifting 50 pounds by 2 feet is the same amount of work whether it's done by someone who has to strain and sweat to accomplish it, or by someone who does it without noticing. (Note that this only addresses calories burned, not cardiovascular conditioning.) 

The preceding examples are all lies I've told myself in the past, but which I no longer believe or tell myself. Today I noticed that I told myself a series of lies and it worked out well. 

"Today's Sunday. It's a day of rest. I should just rest." That was a doozy. But I only had 2500 steps in at 1 PM, and I've got a streak of 10K step days to maintain. 

"It's raining. I don't want to walk in the rain." But I have a little-used golf umbrella, and it wasn't raining very hard.

"I have to leave the e-book at home, because I need one hand for the umbrella and the other for my water bottle." I was actually about a tenth of a mile into the walk before I realized I intended to be out less than half an hour, and I could have left the water bottle. Oh, well. Not going back at that point. 

"I'm still sore from the Romanian Deadlifts last Thursday, so I don't want to walk for exercise. Maybe I'll just take the short walk around the block." Got to the first corner to turn and go the short way. Kept walking. 

"I won't work very hard. Probably won't work up a sweat and then I won't need to shower or change clothes." Got to the normal corner and turned at the usual place. Got to the next two places to turn for a shorter walk and kept going. By this time, my pace had picked up to close to my normal walking pace. It was feeling pretty good. 

"My normal walk around the neighborhood is only good for about 4000 steps. That puts me at 6500, and I don't think I'll make up the other 3500 at home." I'm not sure that one was a lie. Anyway, when I got to the next place to turn on the 2 mile walk, I turned the wrong way, deliberately. I added a chunk to the walk, not knowing how long it would be.

By now, I'm really enjoying the walk. The rain has become harder, but nothing the umbrella can't handle. There is no traffic in the residential area, and the weather is keeping the barking dogs inside. It's really quite pleasant. But I had one last lie to tell myself. 

"If I'm lucky, I'll be to 7500 or 8000 steps. Then maybe I'll have a chance of making it to 10K around the house - after I take a nap." Got home, and the pedometer had 8800 steps. The total route turned out to be 3.2 miles, and I average a 15 minute mile. (How did that happen? I was moving pretty slow at first.) I also felt more like puttering around and doing stuff than like taking a nap. I felt even better after cooling down, showering, and changing to some clean clothes. 

It's still a small house, and there isn't that far to walk while puttering around. As I write this, the pedometer reads a bit over 9900 steps. I'll get my 10K in today but probably won't get 11K. But that's okay; after all, Sunday is a day of rest.