Procrastination Station! Day 17 comes Early!

I'm Pre-Posting for Day 17, since I'm at work all day tomorrow! ALSO, I'm introducing a special guest for this post, one of my very favorite people, ANDY! She is super awesome and believes she has some expertise on procrastinating :)

Why Procrastination Station? I believe that's what our house should be called sometimes. Most of the time me and Tarver do a great job of getting all of our stuff done. After all, since I like to toot my own horn, Tarver and I both graduated Summa Cum Laude from undergrad, Tarver has his MFA and I'll have completed the requirements for my MS in December. Theoretically, we do a lot of great stuff. But sometimes, we do NOT get stuff done. That's the topic of today's blog, inspired by the laundry on our bedroom floor and also, another suggestion from my wonderful dad. This post is:

Garfield is like a role model for reallly messing up on your diet.

So what should we start with? Procrastination isn't the problem, really. I know some of you who aren't in the mental health field will look at me weird when I say this, but Perfectionism is often the cause of Procrastination.

"What? I'm a perfectionist!"

It seems weird because we think of perfectionists like Bree from Desperate Housewives who finished polishing silver before mourning her husband's death in the first season. Perfectionism makes us think of garages like THIS and closets like THIS:

Who LIVES here? Who ALPHABETIZES their Garage?!

Yeah... the hangers in my closet are perfectly spaced too... 4 inches between... yep.

In reality, that is some pretty hardcore perfectionism, but perfectionism is a mindset more than it is a set of actions. Perfectionism stems from a fear of failure or a fear of not doing things well enough. With this in mind, it makes sense that procrastination would result-- especially if the end goal is far away or difficult. This applies a lot when it comes to losing weight and getting healthy. Getting healthy takes a lot of work in a lot of different areas and especially if you're me and you have 100 pounds to lose, procrastinating makes a ton of sense. It's a huge thing to accomplish! (Andrea: Procrastination makes 100 pounds of sense!)

If a particular day inspires more difficulty than others-- weekends and holidays are great examples-- it makes sense that people might say "I'll start my diet on Monday." Andrea just read that people who start diets Monday or Tuesday fail more than people who start midweek or on weekends! Thank goodness I started this process on a Wednesday! So let's talk about the holiday season. 

For sure, I''ll go on a diet after I eat allll of these cookies!

It's difficult to be good when there are holidays because there's all kinds of awesome goodies to eat, it's hard to be good when it's the weekend because people are going out to eat, going out to the bar, hanging out watching movies or you know, football, I think. People watch football, yeah? Right, they sure do.  On holidays you should eat some treats. But perfectionism tells you that even ONE delicious sugar cookie mitten will RUIN EVERYTHING! So once you eat the mitten, you figure you threw out the day, and eat the cupcakes, the gingerbread house and maybe part of the plate too (Andrea: It's a REAL Plate of Sharing!).In the face of all of those things, Monday (or New Years) feels like a clean slate!

This will totally be my lunch on Monday.

And Monday lunch will probably look like that! Tuesday might too! Wednesday, though, some coworker will say "We're all going to Pizza Ranch for lunch, wanna come?" and you're all, "Well, yeah, I'm not like a social loaner face, I'm not going to sit here alone with these radishes..." So you go. And maybe you're even good, but probably the next day you'll forget to pack a lunch and get some McDonalds, and by Friday your lunch looks like this:

Andy: "Looks good! Mmm Culver's!"

After Friday, it's the weekend! Huge Pina Coladas, pizza at 3 in the morning, boneless buffalo wings (Andrea: AND endless bowls of sodium-saturated popcorn at every bar!)-- and then, it's Sunday again. And by Sunday you're going:

You mean I CAN'T eat at HuHot, Qdoba and get some Coldstone in one day?!
Damn.

What's the point of all of this? I will tell you that the point is not "DON'T EVER START ON MONDAYS!" Because, really, start whatever day you want. The danger of procrastination and perfectionism is feeling like you have to go from Onion Rings to Jicama and never ever eat onion rings again. But that's what perfectionism would tell you-- it's all or nothing! You're fat or you're thin! 

I'll NEVER have another maltshake! Not even on my Birthday!
... you guys are going to Kroll's? Well... okay... "Can I have an Oreo Malt, please?"

Again, we come back to snail pride. I'm running out of stock photos of cute, happy snails, but the danger of "I'll Start on Monday," really comes from this idea that you can't make changes TODAY that will make a difference. Saturday, you sure can go to HuHot, Qdoba and Coldstone in one day, but you can make choices there that don't destroy your body (Andrea: or your self-estreem!) 

So we'll leave you with this: 

And you can make that step on whatever day of the week you want!

<3, Liz and Andy.