There are subjects I don’t write about because they’re too personal, and there are subjects I don’t write about because they just feel awkward. This is one of those latter subjects, one that has been front and center in my life for the last several months but hidden away from every public word I’ve written.
I don’t really know why. It isn’t shameful — in fact, it’s one of my proudest recent accomplishments. But it sits at the intersection of too many uncomfortable things: self-improvement writing, which I love to consume but feel like an absolute fraud producing; wellness culture, which loves to splash around in the puddles of fat-phobia and disordered eating; and openly boasting online, the thought of which makes me want to hide under my own bed and never come out.
In other words, this feels gross. But I’m doing it anyway.
Some time in mid-autumn, drunk off the cocktail of my recent engagement mixed with some alarming family stresses, I quietly decided to take a few steps, all at the same time, towards looking and feeling my best by the time my wedding came. The steps were predictable, and they sounded just like everyone’s New Year’s resolutions screamed all at once: go to the gym consistently. Drink more water. Take vitamins and probiotics every day. Get on a skincare routine and stick to it like clockwork. Get better sleep.
I only told one person that I was doing any of this: my fiancé. I didn’t tell my friends, not even my best friends. I didn’t post about it. It was me, my partner, and my weirdly clean little secret. And since I didn’t want to talk about it any more than I had to at the time, I just gave it all a quick, lumped together nickname: “the regimen.” I was doing “the regimen.”
There were a few reasons why I didn’t tell anyone about the regimen for a long time. The first was simply that, for someone who loves to write about life online and read poetry into a microphone, I can be a surprisingly private person. The second was that I was hyper-aware that while I definitely wanted to feel my best, at least part of my motivation at the beginning was superficial, appearance-based. This felt harmful to talk about, especially in my circles. I have dear, dear friends who have heroically survived eating disorders and others who battle overt body-shame almost every day. “Hey guys, check it out, I’m working out more!” just didn’t sit right, and I hated knowing that somewhere inside me was a trace of the same internalized body shame that had been weaponized so brutally against so many of the people I love the most in this world.
The third reason why I didn’t tell anyone about the regimen was the most deep-seated and maybe the most toxic: I was almost positive I’d fail, and I hate being seen failing. I always preached the joys and rewards of failure to my students, and I do believe every word I said, but on a visceral level, when faced with the opportunity of failing miserably, I’d rather have everyone think I just never tried in the first place.
It didn’t help that my most negative self-talk has always been something along the lines of “Cleo, you’re incapable of sticking to anything.” If you’re my close friend, you’ve probably heard me externalize this at some point by saying something like “I’m a big ideas person but not a big execution person.” In other words, I loved to come up with plans and then never follow through with them. Deep down inside, I didn’t think I was capable of seeing things through, and certain influential people in my earlier life had made remarks to that effect that only made me feel more and more inept at dedication. Over time, this became a core belief I held about my identity: that I was a person incapable of discipline, that I’d never really accomplish any of the things I wanted to, and that it would be my own fault.
And if I was going to stick to anything, it definitely wouldn’t involve exercise. I mean, I “homeschooled gym” in high school just so I could get out of the physical and social horror of PE. In elementary and middle school, I was picked last in almost every gym class sport. I’d never successfully run a mile in my life — even a tenth of that made me feel like I’d throw up. If zombies ever showed up, I’d be the first to go.
There was no way this was going to work.
It’s not like I hadn’t attempted these goals individually before. I’d gone to the gym once or twice a week for a month or so in the past. I’d bought multivitamins, taken a couple, let them collect dust, thrown them out. I’d filled a water bottle in the early morning and left it purposely and emphatically in my sight line all day, only to pour all its lukewarm contents down the drain before bed.
Plus, pretty much every piece of wisdom on building good habits says to start small. In other words, if you’ve tried five things that have each never worked, maybe don’t suddenly attempt to do all five of them at once, every single day.
And yet, that’s exactly what I did. But this time, I had something I’d never had before: a tangible goal with a date attached to it. The end of June. My wedding day. The point of the regimen was simple: look and feel significantly better on that one day than I did now, on this one day.
Putting the plan into motion started out as messily, inconsistently and reluctantly as you’d expected to. But as fall went on, something started clicking. Naming “the regimen”, which had started as something of a joke, ultimately made me take it more seriously. “The regimen” had many parts, and it was either all or nothing. With my self-imposed deadline on my shoulders, I set off down the road of building a handful of habits at once, and it worked.
What I never expected was how quickly the goal changed.
It happened around the time I found myself willingly doing something I wouldn’t have been caught dead doing before: running. There on the treadmill, I realized I wasn’t doing this for a certain look anymore, or even for a certain feeling. I was doing this to shut up the negative self-talk, to prove to myself that I am not, in fact, the least disciplined person I know.
This sudden urge to prove I could be disciplined led the regimen to snowball in a way I definitely didn’t plan for: my habits have picked up more habits, and then even more.
Since the end of November, along with adhering to every planned part of the regimen, I have written three handwritten pages every single morning with my coffee. In February, I committed to showing myself I could run a mile, and then I did it, and then I did it again and again. I’ve started reading regularly again, and spending more intentional time outside, and taking longer walks. And as of this month, I’ve put myself on a shopping ban (à la Cait Flanders), just to see what other types of discipline I’m capable of cultivating.
These things have nothing to do with how I’ll look and feel at my wedding. In fact, my wedding date now just feels like an arbitrary day — special, of course, but unrelated.
But these new habits have everything to do with the way I talk to myself, the confidence I have in myself, and the way I decide to use the precious time I’ve given myself since I quit my turbo-powered job for a slower life.
The point of this letter isn’t to tell you to take 10,000 steps, or buy a probiotic, or run a mile. The point of this letter isn’t really much beyond a long-overdue share. But maybe the point of this letter is this: I’m proud of myself. Not for learning to like the gym or being better at wearing sunscreen or drinking 40+ ounces of water a day, but for what I’m showing myself about myself. It makes me wonder what other lies I’ve been telling myself, and what other message I’ll have the opportunity to prove wrong. It makes me wonder what lies the people around me tell themselves, and whether you’ve been able to prove any wrong, too. If you have, I’d love to hear about them. And if you haven’t? Maybe now is the time.
What to Eat: I am a devout follower of the church of cauliflower. Since moving in with my vegetarian partner, my appreciation for the richness and texture of a perfectly-cooked cauliflower dish has grown and grown. I cycle through different favorite ways to use the vegetable, but my latest favorite has been cauliflower shawarma. Here’s how to whip it up:
(Note: I found a phenomenal shawarma spice mix at my local world food store, and I use that rather than making my own - some things are best left to the pros.")
Chop a large cauliflower into florets and a large red onion into big, generous wedges. Coat generously in shawarma spices, salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil, spread on a baking sheet, and roast at 425° on the top rack of your oven for half an hour.
While you’re waiting, prepare whatever you’d like to serve your shawarma with. Here are some ideas:
I love to make my own tzatziki sauce with a grated cucumber (strained to let excess water out), a grated garlic clove, some finely chopped mint, lemon juice, salt, and olive oil stirred into a base of greek yogurt or labneh.
My go to tahini sauce is beyond simple: the juice of half a lemon, a grated garlic clove, olive oil, tahini, a tiny touch of soy sauce, and a bit of hot water whisked in vigorously to thin the sauce.
Chop up cherry tomatoes, red onion, parsley and cucumbers as finely as you possibly can and add them to a bowl with olive oil, salt, and lemon juice for a perfectly quick and easy version of Shirazi salad.
When the cauliflower and onions are well-roasted, top with fresh parsley and load up a pita with all it can hold. Add anything else you want (Feta? Hummus? Lamb? You do you) and savor.
On Repeat: You know what? I’ve been in a bit of a music drought in the last few weeks. Part of it is my fault - I’ve been ramping up audiobooks and podcasts and neglecting music as a result. So I’d love to know: what have you been listening to? Do you have a favorite new song or album of the year? Are you revisiting an old faithful? Let me know - I need inspiration.
Great piece. Things like climbing have done something similar for me, where it started as something to just try because I’d been curious about it, to quickly setting goals within it, and then having it become a routine that I’m set in.
Also if you haven’t before, listen to Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There.