Going to Extremes

I have a problem with going to extremes.

On one end is the Obsessive Compulsive record everything (stress, caffeine, amount of sleep, exercise, water intake, calories, carbs, BG’s, insulin, phase of the moon, menstrual cycle (er, my wife’s of course – see “stress” above), etc.) me.

On the other end is the reckless, record nothing, pay attention to little, just enough to avoid disaster me.

I constantly swing back and forth between these two extremes. This is typically not a fast swing, but rather like a giant pendulum slowly moving back and forth.

This is an interesting scenario because I’ve figured out what starts the swing from the OCD side to the careless side. It is some obstacle that I inevitably encounter, such as not being able to find an exact carb count for something or not having a good format to record everything (how can I when I try to capture so much?!). The thing is, when obsessing about perfection how can you not run into some type of obstacle?

This is a terribly bad thing. I mean, talk about setting yourself up for failure!

When I’m “in the zone” I can successfully beat back those obstacles, but not for long. It doesn’t take long before they wear me down and I’ve started the swing to the “other side”.

The struggle is one of balance. I can do perfectly well right in the middle of those two extremes. There is no real reason I need to be all the way on one side or the other.

I think we all struggle with balance in at least one form or another. I’ll start with trying to keep the pendulum from swinging all the way to one end or the other.