Unrelentingly Impotent? Unrightfully Malevolent? Indiscriminately Inseminating? Wtf?

My theories on my issues with weight have been pretty clear so far. I am fat… it is my fault. So many people are uncomfortable when they read this. But why? Anyone who knows me knows that I have repetitive stress issues in my shoulder from patting myself on the back so much. I love me more than a healthy amount. I love myself enough to hold myself to a high standard. It does not mean that I dislike myself when I point out my flaws, it means that I am upset I haven’t overcome them. I am upset that I am not meeting my own standards. I love myself enough to believe I am better than this. The “why” in “why are you so hard on yourself”, can best be summed up with how I had been viewing myself in relation to the following breakdown on the four stages of competence..

The four stages of competence can be defined as

Unconscious incompetence

This means that you do not know how to do something, and are unaware of the deficiency

Conscious incompetence

This means that you do not know how to do something, but ARE aware of the deficiency

Conscious competence

This means that you DO know how to do something, but doing the deed takes concentration.. you have to work at something to make it happen.

Unconscious competence

This means that you do not know how to do something, and doing the deed is “second nature”.. you don’t need to think about a task or habit to execute it.

The above classifications have been weighing on me. I feel like diagnoses is the first step to cure, so I have been feeling a need to diagnose myself. I have spent the past 24 hours deciding which category I fall into.

I think the reason I am so hard on myself, is that I have spent the past 20 years thinking I fall into the “Conscious competence”. I know my current lifestyle is unhealthy. I know how to exercise and eat right. I know the process it takes to fix the issue, but the problem is, I am failing at the execution. I RECOGNIZE the issue… I KNOW the steps.. the PROCESS is clear.. I am fully capable of achieving these goals, but I have failed myself by not doing so. I have been knowingly standing in the way of my own success. I can’t blame other people, or misinformation…. I can only blame me for not being willing to take the steps. Letting yourself down should feel bad.

This is how I felt until about an hour ago. After truly looking at my life with a touch of intellectual honestly, I now believe I fall into the “Unconsciously Incompetent” category. FUCK, that’s pretty hard to type. At first, realizing this fact stung… I felt it was basically like saying I am “Stupid with a splash of dumb”. But truthfully, once I started to look into this new classification, I started to have a series of “ah ha moments”. Why did I change my own view of myself? I changed it because there was so much about MYSELF I didn’t know how to fix… or even know was broken. I know the physical steps needed to get in shape… I know how to eat right, and how to exercise, and how to create a lifestyle conducive to weight loss. What I didn’t know was how to apply this information to my real life.

-          I didn’t know that I had less than ¼ the usual testosterone

-          I didn’t know how to motivate myself for long periods of time

-          I didn’t know how to make healthy behaviors become habits

-          I had a stigma I placed on things I arbitrarily labeled as cheating the process (for example: I resisted the keto diet because I felt altering my diet to a temporary and specialized diet was unsustainable. But maybe I should have been worrying about keeping the weight off, after I get the fucking weight off)

-     I didn't know how to overcome my own arbitrary biases 

A big part of any life change is the mental agility it takes to accomplish the goal. It isn’t enough to know how to do the job, it also matters that you know how to make yourself do the job.

So turns out, the  “conscious” part includes the ability to act in your own best interest. It isn’t just knowing how to eat right and workout. So many of us know the correct behaviors, but what we don’t understand is how to motivate ourselves to follow through on the habits and actions needed to regain our health. The hard parts are;

-          Knowing how to avoid pitfalls

-          Knowing how to stay focused in spite of obstacles

-          Knowing how to make actions into habits

This entire process is a mental exercise. It’s about creating a life where our health is sustained in an “unconscious competent” manner. Create default settings where we inherently know the healthy habits, and can follow through instinctively. But this needs to be a process. I needed to get out of the mindset where I was focused on the end result.. I need to learn to dwell on the current step of the process. This is the first step in fixing the "unconscious part". The “unconscious” for me, is about how to get myself to motivate myself to create the habits, not about what the correct habits are. About viewing each step as equally important and not focusing on the fact that I am not at the finish line. The best part of this realization is that now I am aware of the real issue that has  been in my way, I can now label myself as “Consciously ______”… I get to decide the second part of this equation now.

I also decided being “Unconsciously Incompetent” was better than how I spent my alcohol filled early 20’s, “Semiconsciously Flatulent”.