I am an Internet potato. (Mashed. And also fried.)
Are you always online? Does work take longer because you see that your friend sent you a David Hasselhoff cd via the German gifts Facebook application and you look up 20 minutes later no closer to deadlines met but having sent sauerbraten to 227 friends? (Or maybe that's just me.)
It’s amazing how easy it is to find time when we cut out all the wasteful and pointless things we do with our time. Take surfing the net for example. This has now become one of the biggest time consuming activities in our society. The couch potato has been replaced by the internet potato. How many hours are wasted drifting from one site to another?
Cut out pointless surfing and you will suddenly discover that you have hours of spare time to use in productive activity. Then there’s that traditional time wasting activity, watching television for hour after hour. One program after another; hypnotized by the screen in the corner.
My inertia is overwhelming, I admit it, for reasons Internet-related and otherwise. I would love to write this post from the perspective of a rah-rah, raring to go, look at me, I'm an exercise superhero person who's back from the farmer's market before my loved ones are even awake.
But I'm not, and this isn't fiction, so I can't. Instead I write this post from my bed, drinking a bloody Mary and eating pistachio nuts, because I just had to put the remnants of fresh fruit that I once again failed to eat before it spoiled down the disposal. (I did eat yogurt though. Does that count?)
Yes, I am ridiculous, and yes, I believe it needs to stop. I can count the times I've been to the gym since I began graduate school in 2007 on less than one hand. Not a structure magician in the best of times, my schedule imploded, a few times over. I spent a lot of time running around but none of it felt terribly productive, and because I was studying multimedia journalism, the boundaries between online and real life grew incredibly blurry. And when I did get home? The laptop snapped open - again - and back to working mindlessly surfing the Web until deadlines snapped at my heels - I went.
Needless to say, I gained weight, which seemed incredibly unfair because I felt like I was running a daily marathon and a lot of times I felt melodramatically like I was STARVING, when really I was in denial about the amount of caffeine, salt and fake sugar a late 30-something body can consume before turning into carbon with a side of hydrogenated whatever oil. I didn't get enough sleep, ever, ever, ever. I talked a lot of nonsense. I have no idea what my blood pressure is, but I should probably find out.
Now, diploma in hand and back to my regular job, you'd think I'd be better. But given the choice between putting on my cross-trainers and walking for an hour on an unseasonably pretty day, or sitting on my ass edifying my Facebook friends with yet another 25 things about myself while procrastinating on the important work of telling you that I'm an Internet potato? Let's just say: #14: The song stuck in my head is - sorry, Denise - Beyonce's Single Ladies.
(Have you actually listened to the words besides "put a ring on it"? The part where she demands that you "put your hands up"? She's trying to kill me.)
I'm not sure this internet potato-ness has so much to do with me being single as it does with me being inherently fond of leisure while also singularly set in my routines once they form - especially the bad, lazy ones that mean no exercise and another dinner of Whole Foods olive bar, crackers and brie in front of the Biggest Loser and Twitter (which I'm sure has caused a ten-pound weight gain alone. Twitter, you...witch.)
Yes, if I had children I would need to get up with them and shuttle them around everywhere. But the thing is, I should get up anyway. And I can totally eat candy and pay attention to my e-mail while shuttling myself, so I'm sure I'd be stealing McNuggets from my children too. I know plenty of single people who run and eat right and are morning people even though there isn't a child involved. I even know that rarest of creature - the single, exercising morning person who gets up on purpose at 5 a.m. Shudder.
That said, I also know slacker parents, seriously - not that I'm talking about you, or you - or even you, so simmer down. My best friend has two kids and if there were an Internet/Couch Potato Olympics, she and her 5 million television channels would totally medal. Another is a DVR master who watches more tv in a week than I do in six months. As I said about my school experience, action does not mean health, or fitness, and motivation to take care of oneself - partnered, parenting or not - generally has to come from within.
This week, I hit a nexus of slack and finally disgusted myself. My already-perilous tendency to avoid exercise hit another wall, when I realized I'd been carrying around gym clothes and shoes in the car for a week, intending to go back to wellness classes at work, or to the gym on the way home, and spent the time and mental energy I could have used to actually DO THIS talking myself out of doing anything at all. I weighed myself for the first time in a very long time. I noticed I was out of breath for no reason besides walking. I dozed off at my desk and in my evening class (where thankfully I'm not the teacher.) I'm avoiding being in pictures. I. AM NOT. HAPPY. I. DO NOT. FEEL GOOD.
So what to do? Well. The number on the scale is in the red alert zone (which in my lifelong weight-battle equals a number I never wanted to see again and when, once I do, spurs me into action.) Wheezing while walking is frightening enough that I must do something about it, and honestly? I want to feel good about myself. I want to feel healthy.
There aren't any magic answers. I just have to do it. Monday, I go back to wellness. I've been trolling Kalyn's South Beach Diet Recipe Round-up for January, because while I don't want to commit to a full diet plan at this point, I know the lower-carb options tend to work with my metabolism and food preferences, and actually cooking things that taste and look good in the process makes me feel better about what I'm putting into my body.
Minimizing tv watching isn't a problem, aside from my Top Chef and CNN issues. As far as stepping away from the laptop, I'm not sure I have the answer for that yet. I'd be totally lying (and setting myself up for failure) if I said I was going to drastically reduce my online time, but there are steps I can take to check my extreme time-wasting habits and how they affect my life. Here are a few that might work, for you too:
*First of all, let online activities run their course. Like in real life, a lot of this ebbs and flows, I believe. I'm already less active on Twitter, for instance, than I was last year, and I can't really say why. I'm better at self-selecting with whom and what I actively engage, and the amount of time I spend doing it. Much of my increased Facebook time is due to old and in most cases mostly real-life-first friends getting on board, which has added a new dimension to those relationships that's been mostly fun, if time-consuming. I'm sure that'll slow down, too.
*If you're really in the face-in-the-screen-zone, set a timer. Anything in moderation is okay, right? Ration out feedreader time or whatever it is you do that takes you down the online rabbit hole.
*If there is anything you really can't stop once you start, there's not much to do but opt out. I can't play games online, because once I start I have trouble stopping and they just aren't worth it to me. That means no Tetris or Bejeweled for me anymore, after my early online years were sucked up with them.
*That said, relationship health can be a fabulous motivator to shut off the laptop or the television and actually TALK. As a former gaming (specifically EverQuest) widow, like this woman on GamerWidow.com (how I love Google), I am really sensitive to the impact of obsessive online gaming on relationships. I'm sure others have had different experiences but this was mine. I'm on my laptop a lot but if I need to be present for conversations, etc., and I'm not because I'm stuck on my screen or my phone or whatever, then I'm just a jerk, not a good friend or family member. I don't want to be a jerk. Log off. Look up. Look - and be - interested. (It's like reduce, reuse, recycle, but not.)
*Add it up. I did that today, and realized that a lot of this time that I'll never get back online I wasn't even aware of. Awareness is key to deciding if behaviors are a problem for you in the first place and what you can do about them if they are.
*Turn off the computer occasionally, just because. Again, log off. Off off. I've started using visual cues like shutting the laptop whereas I usually leave it up and running, and finding that the online world turns without me is a rude, but refreshing, awakening. Log out of e-mail, Twitter, Facebook (yeah, I know.) They will not die without you, nor you without them. And note that when you return in two hours (or however long) nothing really that monumental happened - unless of course something did, which in that case is totally a fluke I promise.
*Take an inventory of your offline activities. Do they suck? Are they in need of an overhaul so you actually want to leave the house or do things that will take you forcibly away from the tv or computer? I know that my exercise abandonment is a fixable situation, and once I get back in the habit of being in the classes again, there are no distractions there. I'm just there. Zen, I know.
*Use your online powers for good. Bookmark fitness sites (including many from the BlogHer blog lists, of course) and add a health and fitness category to your reader to make the topics part of your online life if they're not already. Join a Wii Fit or a Biggest Loser challenge, like these folks, if those are your thing, or find one for whatever is. (Hi, all of Upland, California. Go you. All of you.) Let the people there kick your butt in real time, too. I'm paying for the Jillian Michaels online program, so it would probably be a good idea to actually participate. Yes.
*Tell someone. Ask for help. As much as I love my friends online, in real life and any combination thereof, when I'm making the choice to change my habits or to waste another night online, I'm generally making it in isolation, and that does not work for me. I've reached out to a couple of colleagues and friends and let them know that I really could use exercise partners and people who know about my health concerns (and while this might seem like a single-person's problem, it goes for the coupled who are going it alone on this count as well.) I'm expected in class on Monday and it's a lot harder to bail when someone's waiting for me, jogging in place, by the door.
Seriously, this stuff is hard, and if any answers here sound easy, that's not the intention. But on some level, if I want to feel or look or live differently, I just have to do it.
Motivation around the Web:
Lots of motivation hints at FitSugar (Where Barack and Michelle Obama are exercise motivators? Alrighty then.)
Music is a huge exercise motivator for me. Courtney from the 17 Magazine fitness blog shares her playlist here, which I also just noticed contains Single Ladies. When will it end? Not at GoodyBlog, where it also made Diane's list. Check out the playlist suggestions on Melissa Anelli's Fitting It In Ning community. (I'm going back here, for sure.
If God is your motivator, Therese Borchard at BeliefNet's Beyond Blue wrote about a Catholic Approach to Internet Addiction. (Just interesting, that's all.)
Photos - especially those that I'm truly awakened by, and not just in the "oh I hate how my hair looks here" way - can be a motivator for me. I have an old "after" picture where I just look healthy that i've dug up and I'm going to keep on my desk to remind me of my goals. Ashley just told her story in photos at her Staying Healthy and Maintenance Blog.
Zan, who is way more motivated than I am in the fitness department, wrote a great piece on the subject a couple weeks ago. Bottom line: do it anyway. There are lots of great links here.
Did I miss anything? Do you have a great playlist or a tip for getting yourself moving when you're lost in the Internet time warp? I'd love to hear about it.
Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites. There are a few old "after" photos - and several thousand more - on Flickr.
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