How are you supposed to do life? The question seems an overly simple one, yet it appears to have many of us quite stumped in 2025. How the fuck do you do life? What do you eat? Where do you go? How do you behave?
Well, I'm not gonna tackle all that, just a couple points, like what do you eat and how do you move.
With intention, hopefully, as is sometimes said in yoga.
I don't think the problem is remembering to get up from your desk occasionally. I think it's finding things to do away from it that seem to provide meaning. It seems to me that's something our modern world is struggling with at present and fails to recognize - it's not that I enjoy spending so much time behind a screen, but that I'm somebody when I do. I do things at the keyboard that infuse my life with purpose, whereas increasingly, the things I do away from the keyboard are being stripped of theirs. There's an unevenness there, for sure.
Social interaction's become wonky, working out and being present in our bodies has become a routine task to fulfill in order to look a certain way, entertainment is easily accessible from a seating position and continuous, so as to keep us from tearing out our own eyes in this senseless existence. Even those tasks that were once natural and expected in a human life have been reduced to chores. Unpleasant, something we could do away with, something we can't post about and that doesn't indulge our desperate hedonism, so really, what's even the point of vacuuming of going for groceries?
What are the hacks or exercises you do to reduce sedentary challenges?
Would it be pretentious if I said I look for meaning? I do, desperately. I've never been a big fan of gyms or all that fitness culture that's prevalent today because it also seems to lack deeper meaning. I "work out" through dance and yoga, which provide me with freedom and with a place of quiet. So far, there hasn't been a funk, illness, stiffness or sorrow that wasn't temporarily improved through yoga for me.
I do yoga like it's running away and coming home both at once and it's weird, but it works. It saves me. When I can be saved.
The other thing I do is I walk. A lot. I don't like public transport much, so I try to go by foot where I need to go. It creates some interesting economics for me in choosing where I go. I tend to choose (because sometimes you can, with shops that have multiple locations for example) based on how feasible it is for me to walk there. Walking helps me think. Walking is also running away. Or rather, walking away :)
I go away a lot.
But aside from these, I don't really have hacks to combat my sedentary lifestyle. Get up and move about when your back starts acting up. It's that easy.
What are your eating habits like? Do you have favourite self-care recipes? And do you tend to eat whatever you crave for?
Our culture, I think, has turned eating well into this complicated issue when it's really not. It doesn't need to be some big project or super-strict diet. It doesn't need to be 7-ingredient super-smoothies unless you like them. It doesn't need to be bland, tasteless food that you hate but force yourself to eat because "it's good for you".
In his book "Genius Foods", nutrition expert and journalist Max Lugavere advises that the best diet for you is the one you can keep reasonably easy and well. That means not having to force it or feeling like shit while doing it.
So, if you ask me, the ideal diet should be largely self-care recipes... within reason. Because I do think if you're not using eating as some sort of cushion or crutch, self-care recipes will be good, healthy ones that appeal to you naturally, not those sugary, caloric treats that our culture typically uses to replace love, sex and meaning in one's life.
I find it fairly easy to resist "cravings" because I don't have them much, normally. I'm not one to lust over a donut or a Big Mac. It's only when I try to use diet as a replacement for order, love or other absences that I start experiencing uncontrollable cravings.
So I think it's not so much about resisting that donut - it's figuring out what the donut stands for that makes it so hard to resist. (Which isn't to deny the very real addictiveness of sugar, but you know what I mean.)
The diet I've found is best for me and that I've returned to now is a natural one. It's close in ways to a paleo diet, I guess, though not taken to extremes. Mainly I try to eat the foods I enjoy (which are mainly meats, eggs, some dairy, as well as a lot of veggies, some fruit like berries, grapefruit, etc.). I love dark chocolate naturally which is fortunate because most of these diets seem to agree it's good for you. Coffee. Whiskey. I go back and forth on the healthiness of milk, but don't consume that much anyway, so it doesn't matter. Tonight, for instance, I think I'm gonna go for chicken and avocado. I could eat chicken and avocado to the end of my days happily. Salmon. Bell peppers. Walnuts.
I don't think eating well needs to be hard. I think you can get hooked on ultra-processed and ultra-sugary shit quite easily, but I think you can also unhook yourself and that once you do, eating well becomes exponentially easier. Fake food that comes in a box and has infinite shelf life starts tasting like shit once you wean yourself off the idea that fruit and veg are goody-two-shoes foods that automatically taste like shit. Or that indulging yourself automatically needs to mean deep-fried and ultra-processed.
As you might've guessed, this is in response to this week's Ladies of Hive prompt, both of them actually.
Amen.
Couldn't agree more.
I'm trying cut added sugar as much as possible currently. I'm still having natural sugar through fruits and honey, but anything that has sugar as an added ingredient, I am trying to avoid, even just for a few days a week. I've also been trying to avoid bread, so eggs by themselves without the usual toast. Also salads for lunch. Doing it even two days a week would be a win.
Another thing I do a few days a week is intermittent fasting, last food at 8pm and breakfast the following day at midday. That equates to a 16 hour fast and a break for my body's digestive system.
I feel better in myself when I do this, especially Monday to Friday and then at the weekend, I'm less strict.