You can count calories, you can (sort of) measure your calories burned. You can track your number of push ups, miles, heart rate, sleep. So much information that contributes to your overall health. Personal monitors that give you all of this are available everywhere, and using them correctly can lead to all sorts of health benefits.
There is no wearable monitor for stress. This is a shame, because even if someone does everything right - gets enough sleep, burns more calories than they consume, takes all of the necessary nutrients and supplements - stress can still prevent weight loss. Which leads to more stress, and a feeling of failure that just might lead you to bash your wearable monitor with a hammer. Hm, would that provide any stress relief?
Life is heaping extra servings of stress onto my plate these days. It really doesn't matter where the stress is coming from, what matters is that it affects everything I am trying to accomplish. Granted, the gym is a great way to work off some of that extra stress. All things being equal I notice I handle stress far better now that I am living healthy than I did when I used to solve the problem with copious amounts of alcohol and late night carb binges. But for me a health plan is like a house of cards that I am trying to keep standing at all costs, and stress is a strong breeze.
I'm doing fine, though. It is funny how, once a habit is reinforced with repetition for long enough, it can keep rolling despite adversity. It's your 'lizard brain'. You can carve habits (good or bad) deep into your brain that take over to improve the ease of tasks. A good example is when you drive the same way to work every day you can eventually do it on 'auto pilot'. I read about this over a year ago, and I've been trying to use it to my advantage, and I have to say it's working pretty well. There are however some unintended consequences.
The more you rely on habit the less mentally present you really need to be. You wake up, your habits kick in that get you ready for work and out the door, to work, through work, home from work, and back into bed again. It's safe, and easy, and robotic and boring. Just like anything else, moderation is key. But moderation isn't exactly my strong suit, as demonstrated by my body fat percentage.
Like most people my age and younger, I am hyper-focused. I can lock in and rock a specific project with more zeal and success than generations before me, probably because of video games!!! But, contrary to proud multi-taskers everywhere, you really can't focus on more than one thing at a time. You can shift back and forth quickly, but when you are never really texting and driving, you are either driving, or you are texting and no one is driving. So many things in my life are priorities now. My routine, the gym, the groceries, the laundry, the kids, my wife, my job, my side job of dueling, the bills, school... This should not be the order, but that is the problem. There really can't be an order, they are all very important right now.
So, that is where I am at right now. Stressed, and fearing that so much focus on me and my health is causing me to lose focus in other very important areas of my life. It may be time to try to add a habit to the list that can help with all of this - meditation. But who has the time?
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