The Philosopher’s Habits

Originally posted 6 October 2017

In three days, it will be five weeks since I arrived at Fernrock, retired and without much on my schedule.  First, there was unpacking and getting settled.  In the second week, I began exercising, swimming at the James Madison University Rec Center.  It was not pretty: I think I did ten sloppy laps that first day, huffing and puffing.   I began reading about habits and about gratitude, which this blog documents somewhat.   I have eaten better and consumed less alcohol.  Slowly I have been trying to build a life that, for decades, I have envisioned living.  I am still far, far, far from achieving it.  One reason for that is that I don’t know exactly what the life I want to live actually is. 

So far, however, so good.  Today for instance, marked the fourth week in a row that I have swum three of the days.  Last week, I hit four days, and if I swim tomorrow, I will hit four times this week.  I am swimming a mile or more with each outing.  I am feeling stronger, and I have lost a little weight, and my back seems to hurt a little less. Also, today, I made a dozen bran muffins, and at this moment I have a batch of yogurt cooking. 

I thought about the bran muffins yesterday because I remembered reading Richard Watson’s The Philosopher’s Diet many years ago during one of my previous attempts to lose weight and be healthy.  I don’t know if the bran muffins make any difference, but it was an action I could take, something better than heading down to the store to purchase a baguette, returning home, and then eating half of it slathered in butter.  Wisely, I had included Watson’s book as part of the fraction of my Austin library that I moved to Harrisonburg.  There is was on the shelf, and there I found the recipe for the philosopher’s bran muffins on page 41. 

Making the bran muffins inspired me to read this book once again.  It is a funky little book, inspiring and cantankerous by turns.  As a philosopher, Watson lays out the truth for us without a great deal of sugar coating (sugar, by the way, is frowned upon).  But he does express sympathy:  it’s hard to confront one’s bad habits and to change them.  Ah, there we are again:  habits. 

On page 28, Watson writes, “My thesis in this book is that taking off 20 pounds and then maintaining the weight reached is a total change of life.  Few people manage to do it because it requires a modification of behavior so radical and so interrelated with one’s customs and habits, likes and dislikes, actions and passions, that few human beings can sustain it.  You can’t just change your eating habits sufficiently to take off a few pounds and then expect to maintain the new low weight.  You have to revolutionize your whole life plan.” 

And that is really what I am trying to do here at Fernrock:  to documents how I am revolutionizing my whole life plan.  Stay tuned.