Dealing with the Worst of Winter

[Credit: jonrawlinson]

I’m well aware that there are quite a few Wage Slave Rebel readers who live in the southern hemisphere. I wish a good summer to every last one of you lucky bastards!

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been having to deal with the absolute worst winter has to offer. I’m not talking about any dangerous conditions outside (although there’s been plenty of snowy, slushy, icy goodness to be tackled) and I’m not talking about the unmerciful, intolerable cold. I’m talking about everything that comes with it. Everything gets slower, everyone wants to eat more and do less. It makes sense I suppose. It would make more sense if I was a bear.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were completely unproductive. My hours were divided between sleeping, eating and playing Risk. Even now, I’m only getting around to writing this post at 12:40am on Monday morning despite the fact I’ve had the post in mind since Saturday morning. This laying around and feeling like a lazy bum needs to stop now! Here are some strategies I’m trying to develop for beating these winter blues.

Head Toward The Equator

Of course, plenty of people beat the cold slowness of winter months by moving to places mostly unaffected by them. It’s not a wholly unreasonable idea either, considering all the folks around WSR who are interested in location independent living and my own interest in traveling the world. This is my ultimate goal for beating winter. I’m not quite able to make the jump yet, but you better believe I’m working toward it.

Get a Gym Membership

You wouldn’t believe how fat and worthless I feel. I was exercising at least every other day by going on outdoor runs during the spring, summer and fall. It’s one of the few exercises I have any amount of fun doing. But when the temperature starts to drop running outside gets a lot less reasonable and, then, when the snow and ice come it just gets outright dangerous. I do have a treadmill, but it’s not the same. It’s boring as hell.

My only solution for exercising over the winter? A gym membership. While not as scenic as an outdoor run, at least I’m not confronted with the absolute boredom of staring at a television screen and walking in place. Getting a gym membership also provides the opportunity to enjoy exercises you might not be able to at home. Weight machines, lap pools, indoor cycling, basketball courts and a mix of group classes such as martial arts and yoga give all the variety I need to not get bored.

Once you get moving and start feeling light and healthy, it’s hard not to be productive.

Stay Away From Holiday Goodness (and Other Winter Garbage)

I don’t know what it is about winter months that makes me want to eat pure crap. Ben and Jerry’s, Christmas cookies, frozen pizza, Hawaiian Punch. All of the things I mostly avoid during the rest of the year reappear in the winter months as staples of my diet. All the holiday celebrations don’t make things easy either. I’m a sucker for anything homemade and being from the south I’ve, on more than one occasion in the last week, run into Macaroni and Cheese, Turkey and (my all-time favorite) mashed potatoes.

Clearly all this sugary, fatty, salty food contributes a lot to my sluggishness. Beating this is simple and difficult all at once. All it takes is saying no certain parties and politely declining anything you know to be unhealthy. This takes some willpower though. I’ve found that instead of removing certain things from your diet, you should replace them. For example, I love mashed potatoes, but did you know you can make a dish almost identical to mashed potatoes (almost the same texture and taste) but with significantly less calories by mashing boiled cauliflower instead of potatoes? It’s true! And I love it.

(GASP!) Use an Alarm Clock

Some people don’t need alarm clocks. I hate alarm clocks. In the last few days, however, I’ve kind of started to believe I need one to beat this season. The days are shorter and it feels like as soon as I get started it’s dark again. Instead of waking up at that 9am or 10am that worked in the summer, I’m contemplating whether or not I should start waking up at, say, 7am. I’m a morning person (or at least an “as-soon-as-I-wake-up” person) so it’s not much of a problem. What’s frustrating for me is that I hate an alarm waking me up.

I’ve thought about solving this with an iPhone app called the Sleep Cycle alarm clock. It was just 99 cents in the app store the last time I checked. How it works is you tell the app when you want to wake up. It won’t wake you up exactly at that time, though. It will wake you up within a 30 minute window of that time. You place your iPhone under your pillow with the app running and, utilizing the iPhone’s accelerometer, the app measure your movements and analyzes your sleep pattern in order to wake you up in the lightest stage of your sleep. I’ve heard that it works about 70% to 80% of the time and it has great reviews. I think that’s probably the best way to deal with it.

So, clearly I need help! How are you beating winter? What advice do you have for a poor sap like me? If you are experiencing warm, beautiful weather… how about you don’t mention that.

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