Say you make the conscious decision to eat at a buffet. You know what you’re in for. Aisles and aisles of gourmet eats right at your fingertips. You may not like prime rib, but it’s there, and damn it if you didn’t just pay $19.99 or whatever, you’re having prime rib. And ham, and chicken prepared every which way possibly imagined. Then you rummage through the side dishes. Potatoes, salad, dinner rolls, fruit, vegetables and the like. Should I even mention the dessert table? You get the idea.
It gets a little out of control in the end. You may not feel great about gorging, but you made the decision to go all-you-can-eat and you came, saw and conquered. Maybe it was a special occasion? Maybe you just ran a long race? Maybe this is your usual Saturday go-to, I’m not here to judge.
It’s not an everyday occurrence after all. Live and let live, right?
Say you get up in the morning and say to yourself, “today is the day, that I drink juice all day and detox.” Good for you! Once committed, it all starts out fairly innocent. For breakfast you drink a green concoction filled with kale, celery, apple juice and a plant-based protein for good measure. You chase that down with water a little later and then someone comes and tempts you with a carbohydrate, but you remain strong–until you’re about half-way through your smoothie of berries and beets at lunch.
Will power is a muscle and you know what happens to muscles when they get strained. The more tension and stress placed upon it, the more likely it is to break down and after sustaining a liquid diet for seventy-five percent of the day, your will power is up against “likelihood of winning the power ball” type odds.
So you say one bite of a granola bar will not deter me from my liquid diet. Then one bite becomes the entire bar. One granola bar becomes a bite of a chicken strip. That bite turns into gorging on whatever remains of the strip and really, since the whole detox has gone to crap, why not just have a side of fries? You can start again tomorrow.
There’s always tomorrow.
Maybe you’re familiar with CJ Wilson. If not, here’s a brief description. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim pitcher, idiosyncratic, married to one of those swimsuit models, overly obsessed with being left-handed and a generally so-so pitcher for the majority of his career.
Wilson has had his hey-day. His peak is likely behind him, but none of that matters in relation to what I’m about to say.
CJ Wilson’s greatest obstacle has always and will always be his own self.
As a starting pitcher for the Angels, Wilson has not been either particularly stellar or terrible. However, when he gets into trouble by way of walked batters, hittable pitches and quick homeruns he completely loses his composure and one hit snowballs into a 4-run inning for the opposing team.
I’ll spew out some stats in a second, but you can use a simple eye test to see what’s going on. He gets down in a pitch count and instead of just relying on the fundamentals of pitching mechanics or muscle memory, he over-thinks it—loses control and just mentally checks out.
In 2014, Wilson experienced his worst year as a starting pitcher. He had a 13-10 win/loss record, 4.51 earned run average with 151 strikeouts, 85 walked batters in about 176 innings pitched. In layman’s terms, he sucked. He’d give up a couple of quick hits and couldn’t recover—he just tried too hard, and ended up complicating things on the mound, when really he should’ve just stuck to the basics.
** Yes, this is a ridiculously small sample size and no, I don’t care.
Wilson averaged 17.7 pitches per inning in 2014. To start his 2015 season he told the Los Angeles Times, “Low pitch counts are totally predicated on the hitting approach of the other team.” Just so we’re clear, placing blame on someone/something else is classic Wilson. It’s like saying, “Eating in moderation at a buffet is totally contingent on the product that’s being placed under the heat lamps.” Clearly, binging at the buffet was clearly the buffet’s fault! How many buffets have you been to where the food was sub-par, yet you still came out of there feeling like somewhat of a rhinoceros?
Yeah, exactly. He’s just as guilty of having a bad, lack-luster inning as the other team is to being guilty of taking advantage of a Wilson Inning.
Does having the food-equivalent of a Wilson Inning mean dooms-day for your waistline? Well that depends on you. If you have a propensity for over-eating, it’s likely that just a single bite of a chocolate chip cookie could completely derail your concerted effort to eat cleanly.
If there were only a way to discipline yourself to the point where rejecting that second, or third, fourth, fifth, (you get it) bites were automatic—brain muscle memory, if you will, then we’d all have this keeping-your-diet thing down pat.
If I had the answer, I’d be filthy rich, because everyone wants their diet to succeed. No one really wants to fail. When diet fails do happen, understand that while picking yourself up and starting all over again is admirable, it’s not effective in the long run. At some point the cycle of counter-productive dieting has to stop, but at what point does it your focus shift from quasi-engaged to fully committed to shrinking body mass?
Will you still ultimately lose weight, even if you have a few cheat meals? Sure. Did CJ Wilson lose all of his games? No. He won quite a few, but the habit of checking-out at the mere whiff of a failed-inning, stayed with him throughout the season. Would you rather have consistently good eating habits or consistent cheat meals? The choice is yours.
As craptastic as Wilson has been for the Angels since last year (worth noting, those years being on the higher spectrum of his salary), his decline in production could be attributed to nagging bone spurs in his elbow. Bone spurs, mind you, that probably formed as his body tried to repair itself by building extra bone in response to pressure and stress over time from overuse. Those spurs were surgically removed in August and as of this blurb’s publication—he’s feeling great and should be ready to go come Spring 2016.
Greeeeaaaat.
If you take nothing else from this, take this. Think of every binge-fest as a notch on your belt. You may not feel it the next day, but it becomes a pattern—a habit that’ll become increasingly harder to break. Wilson Innings happen to the best of us. They happen to me all the time. Understand when it’s happening and nip it in the butt. Or don’t and learn to live with the results.
Feast or Fumble 