Find & Replace

It's not too late to make sustainable changes for your body & mind.

TW: Of or relating to food, dieting, mental health, exercise

Heading into 2024 I have been detoxing from several “harmful substances”.

• Serotonin derived from social media

• Energy and joy derived from sugar

• Comfort derived from eating unhealthy foods

First, the daily social media serotonin hits are REAL. I have been posting every day on Instagram for 8 years. Sometimes multiple times a day. My brain is rewired to accept the serotonin hits that come with likes, follows, and engagement. Over the last 8 years, my reach has grown across multiple platforms. The notifications never stop coming in. Picking up my phone and managing incoming messages and comments is a habitual, almost chronic part of my daily life. I will be thoroughly invested in a good book, get to the end of a chapter, and realize I haven’t looked at my phone in an hour which immediately gives me a rush to see what I’ve missed. Waiting in a line? Phone. Park the car to go into a store? Phone first. Commercial break during a TV show? Phone. And all of this was totally fine, completely normal until suddenly, it wasn’t.

This year, 2023, feels like my most active on social media with the promotion of my book and I realized how many hours of my day I waste online. As soon as I saw it, and looked back on my day to assess and account for every minute, every hour, I knew it was time to make some big changes. DESPITE what book industry people tell you, the truth is:

No. You do not have to be everything, everywhere, all at once.

Twitter was the first platform to go with zero effort trying to regulate that shit. There is no halfway engagement. There’s no ‘post-and-go’. You see shit. You know shit. It just had to go, the whole thing. It is a massive waste of time. The feed scroll is like the worst kind of casual voyeurism. Remember the Walk of Shame episode of Game of Thrones? The ugliness of the people in the crowd? The hostile tone of that episode? That’s Twitter.

Next, daily content on Instagram is over. Every day? EVERY DAY?? I cannot stress to you how it felt when I realized how long I have been posting every single day. Now that I’m fully aware of the level of time commitment, I can’t go back. But the detox is rough.

Brain: “No likes today. No comments” = Feels Bad.

Brain: “People will unfollow me if I don’t post every day.” = Feels Bad.

Brain: “Am I making a mistake and ruining a platform I took 8 years to build?”= ANXIETY

Giving up sugar a month ago was easier than the Instagram detox. I don’t put sugar in my coffee anymore, I don’t eat sweets, I haven’t had a soda in over a month, and the only sugar I have is from fruits or veggies. I’ve been clean eating all year. I *gave up red meat years ago

*occasional hamburger or ground beef for tacos

I focus on getting as much fruit, veggies, and protein as possible. All of this is to regulate perimenopausal symptoms (if you know, you know). I wish I would have done this sooner. Because I feel better, now.

A dietician said, “Our 40s and 50s are spent correcting all the bad habits and damage we did in our 20s and 30s.”

This hit home for me. If I had known then, what I know now.

But better late than never. And all these changes feel really good. Noticeable changes. Just like I have made healthier dietary replacements and formed new habits that benefit the body, I am replacing social media with more reading and writing, and the mental health benefits are life-changing—and mood-altering. Sustainable. It just takes a while for the change to become a habit and the habit to be normal life.

Reading, writing, exercising, and eating good food are the new serotonin hits.

And this is me using my journey to maybe encourage yours. We can do good things for ourselves anytime. We don’t have to make New Year’s Resolutions, we can do those things now. Anytime, Anywhere, All at Once.