The last time I had my Garmin Device on was May 19th in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Upon arrival, I took it off, stowed it in my toiletry bag, and have not looked back. I feel free. I feel liberated. It has been almost four months, and if I have to be honest, I feel just a little chubby.
As I type this, I have just returned from a hike in Clay Cliffs Natural Area. It is a beautiful hike not far away. It features a stunning view from 200 feet above Lake Michigan overlooking the Manitou Passage. I am in the same shorts that I wore almost every day on the Camino for 45 days. Somehow I feel like they shrunk. I know I washed them in cold water, and they are high in synthetic material content, but I am almost convinced that it is the shorts and not me.
I have, however, considered the far-fetched possibility that it is my own midsection and not the garment. Let’s explore further.
Upon my return from walking 500 miles, I gave myself permission to take it easy for a few months. I did remarkably little in the form of physical activity. I figured I had done enough and was justified in doing nothing. I had not considered my heart rate, sleep score, body battery, or number of steps each day without the distraction of the wearable device. In a word, it was freedom.
Freedom comes with responsibilities, and I completely shirked those. Shirking responsibilities comes with consequences. That is what brings us to today’s topic- my miraculously shrinking shorts. Just kidding. My weight gain has become noticeable only by how my clothes fit. I am embarrassed to say that I am avoiding my bathroom scale like I would a sneezer in an elevator. We see each other each day, the scale and I, but we pretend we don’t know each other.
Currently, I feel like I am on the precipice of lifestyle choices that will impact this final season of my life. Continue as I have done for the last several months and begin a slow, steady decline, or return to the things I know to be healthy and make steady progress towards retarding the decline. I know you know which one I will choose (and I love that about you). So wise. So perceptive.
Part of the motivation, and I am saying this tongue in cheek, but not really, is I don’t want to buy all new clothes. Choosing the route of inactivity and lethargy, also known as “the easy way,” comes with its own challenges, namely a new wardrobe. Now that I am retired, my wardrobe has been greatly reduced. I find very few occasions for suits, dress shirts, cufflinks, and blazers. So, changing my wardrobe would be fairly easy. Just swapping out some casual wear. But I am also stubborn, and replacing my wardrobe would mean defeat to me, and I don’t accept defeat very easily. I am highly competitive.
As an aside, to illustrate my competitive nature, once while playing a friendly neighborhood game of soccer (as a fully grown adult), I knocked over a darling seven-year-old girl while scoring a goal. I made sure the ball went in before checking on how she fared. Not my proudest moment, to be sure, but I am competitive.
So that leaves me with only one option. Return to the healthy lifestyle choices which became second nature while working on my health recovery and training for the Camino. There. I said it. You are all my witnesses, and now unless I do it, I am a liar. As competitive as I am, I am equally as forthright, so lying is not an option.
I hereby commit to stepping back on that scary scale, discovering the bad news and the task at hand, and getting busy getting back in shape. I literally have no excuses. I am retired, which means I have the time. I have the knowledge of what needs to be done, which means there is nothing stopping me but my own leisurely lifestyle.
What will be different this time is the lack of data I was getting from my Garmin device. I have taken off the training wheels from my bike, removed the bumpers from the bowling alley, and gained the knowledge and skills necessary to make the changes required. I don’t need the data anymore; I just need the willpower.
This post is likely more for myself than anyone else. I need to convince myself that it is the right thing to do. Or I could turn to Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: “Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.” Ain’ts and double negatives aside, you get the point. Rather, I get the point.
Brian on Purpose is part of my accountability program. During my professional career, whenever I had a Big Audacious Goal or BAG, I learned to broadcast my plans to anyone and everyone, expressly for the purpose of being held accountable. If you tell people about your big ideas and what you plan on doing, and don’t follow through, they get the idea that you are not very serious, or you’re just a talker running his mouth again. I used this before writing my book: Now What? A Practical Guide to Figuring Out Your Financial Future, competing in the National Write a Novel in a Month contest, and completing the Camino de Santiago.
I have lived in a world with a trackable, wearable device, and a world without one. I prefer the freedom and autonomy of my life without one. I needed that all-important data for a season of my life, and if I had to do it all over again, I would choose to wear that stupid thing. But now I am free of the need for that data. I simply wear a Nigerian, handmade black leather bracelet I bought within hours of permanently removing my Garmin in its place as a reminder of my liberation.