How I Screwed Up, Lost Myself, Got Covid, then Found Myself Again

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I’m pretty peeved today.

I say peeved because this is a family site. The real word I’d like to use is much different.

Those of you who have been here before know about the painstaking attention I pay to setting my body up for success, not failure. That is where health battles are typically won. Not waiting to be saved by a medical treatment, unless those become necessary.

Well, this Christmas, I basically threw myself away.

We’ve been going through the Covid pandemic for a good couple years now and I have been adhering to a strict, no-refined-sugar diet, among other things, throughout.

And during that time my health has never been better.

I’m now 42 but I feel 24. I’ve never felt better.

Then I went home for Christmas.

For a week.

And I lost myself.

I only have myself to blame.

For a week I was presented with unhealthy foods, cookies and cakes coming at me from every direction, no matter whose house I was at.

Which is all great, by the way. People like to make food for other people, especially food they enjoy. It makes them feel good to know that they’ve made you happy.

Conversely sometimes people, like me, like to also make them happy and, in this case, that meant eating those cookies and other foods every day.

For a week.

And I did.

I started off the week pretty well, but as time went on my defenses started to wane in deference to pleasing others, who to be fair never asked me to change my lifestyle for them.

I also presented no defense.

So for two years I treated my body like the temple it is, then for a week I (relatively speaking of course) trashed it.

Stupid.

And I’m peeved.

The first full day I returned home, I felt the slightest tickle in my throat, which I foolishly figured just meant I hadn’t drank enough water that day and my throat was dry because of it.

By the next day, omicron was in full swing.

It turns out my vaccinated friend whom I visited a few days earlier was presymptomatic. Now I may have gotten it no matter what, but I left my body virtually defenseless against its onslaught.

Instead of being free to attack the virus, my body was busy fighting the after effects of cookies and sugar just to get back up to speed.

And since in silliness I did not recognize the symptoms at the onset, I also took no steps to mitigate the onset.

So I got omicron.

All told, it was annoying more than anything else.

Just a fever and headache most of the time. And on the many occasions (daily actually) the fever reduced it would only pop back up the next morning. On occasion I had a sore throat, but not often, and for about a day I couldn’t taste or smell anything, which was weirder than I could have imagined.

But I only have myself to blame.

There is a good chance I would have come down with symptoms no matter what, but had I stayed true to myself and not allowed myself to pressure my own self to make other people happy, I would have been in much better shape.

And yes, any time you avoid refined sugar you are in much better shape, for everything in life.

So, in the future, I will not throw my own self away in an attempt to please others, especially those who didn’t even ask me to in the first place.

People-pleasing can be quite destructive, you see, in more ways than one.

The good news is always in the lesson, though.

We are going to make mistakes in life. We are going to learn the best ways to do things, sometimes by making mistakes.

What matters is whether or not we use those mistakes as learning lessons, stay humble, and then get fired up for doing better.

About two years ago, Covid inspired me to retake control of my health again when I may have been complacent.

I was fired up, happy, and for a while I was doing great. The results were in and I had never felt better. It was awesome.

But then I got complacent again and had to relearn the lesson.

So I did.

And I got mad at myself.

In this case, that’s a good thing because it’s constructive.

I am not going to push myself around or allow any pressure to prevent me from being unapologetically me anymore.

Apparently I had to ultimately learn this lesson the hard way.

And that’s alright. Once you start to look closely, you’ll notice that every day of your life is like a class with little quizzes to test how far you’ve come and what you need to practice and get better at.

As it turns out, I have some work on people-pleasing to do and I needed a lesson of this degree to learn that.

And even though I’m mad at myself because I came up short, I am beyond grateful for the lesson that will serve me throughout life, prevent me from living out a sub-optimal life, and make my life more enjoyable and more prosperous that I ever could have been without that lesson.

Reason to be grateful indeed.