Baby steps vs. the ultimate goal

I thought through some things yesterday and realized that I really need to work at encapsulating baby steps.

Up until the present, I've always thought of things in large chunks: for instance, everything that I do that might have something to do with my weight goes in one big pile, with the ultimate goal there being weight control-- but that means that the goal for each baby step is weight control. The goal for drinking enough water hasn't been "staying hydrated" but "WEIGHT CONTROL". The goal for doing exercise hasn't been to improve my running time by a few minutes or up the amount of weight I can lift or to get better at yoga-- I know I said it, I know I've said it a million times, but I swear, I haven't ever been able to make it work.

I feel like this is another place where I'm all clenched up, in this case bunching everything together. Is it part of my obsession with details, or is that obsession part of this?

The thing is, by using all these things as part of the weight loss/maintenance thing, I tied them all together in my head, and that leaves me very vulnerable to the domino effect-- screw up one thing, and everything else gets wiggy-- and also to the "I can't face starting over, there's just too much" feeling when I try to get back up out of a rut. They became a unit, parts of a whole, and if you put enough things together it will always look too heavy to lift.

These things are not dependent on each other, though, and I need to separate them. Encapsulate them. Make each one important for its own sake, important enough or fun enough that I'll want to continue it even if I take away the WEIGHT goal.

Water, granted, has manged to make itself important simply because it's winter, and if I don't get enough water in the winter I start to flake into pieces. Lips crack and peel, skin goes to hell, my legs get all itchy and the calluses on my feet start to crack and catch on my socks. And, of course, there's the fun of dry mouth and dehydration headaches. Water is sufficiently important to manage on its own just fine, as proven by the fact that without even thinking about it I've consumed enough water today to make me flee to the bathroom at top speed about once every hour and a half all damn day. (This is actually TOO much water, but... it's winter!)

If I take the plunge and only do fun exercise, I may be able to make exercise stand on its own. Hell, I might manage to reconfigure the way I relate to exercise, make it something I want to do and relax doing and crave doing, if I start with stuff I enjoy. Hrm. It's a thought.

Cooking healthy is important, on its own, because we do SO much better when we're eating well. I'm weak on this one, though; I really hope my Hub comes through here.

I need new comfort foods. (It turns out we're probably able to pattern those as we see fit. Might as well give it a shot.) No half-assing this, though; I need stuff that really, honestly, seriously makes me feel good and happy and comforted. Research, research, research.

And... oh, a million things. I need to think, and I need to figure out how to encapsulate. One bit at a time.