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sidpah · 5 years

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Unsigned

5:22 pm 11/29/2009

For the record, it’s currently, tonight, November 29th, 2009. Shall I continue to prolong the inevitable? I’ve already shuffled to my bedside, kicking off slippers for the last time. They’re torn open around the big toes, and the cushioning has been beaten into flat nonexistence by years of my feet on the cellar stairs, and pacing these narrow confines like a chimpanzee in research cell… They’ve served me well, the slippers have.

I sit on the edge of my mattress, bare feet flat against dirty hardwood floor. Black curls of shed hair, loose clouds of clotted dust cling to mattress and ring the base of the walls. In my left hand is a small brown bottle of laudanum – my five-flavored tea. I’ve not yet tasted it. Initially, I’d planned to use sleeping pills. The old standby. Two Ambien every four hours to help me coast steadily through. I’ve never taken either, the pills or the laudanum, but dissuaded by Zolpidem Tartrate’s more egregious reported side effects: lack of dreams, nightmares and sleepwalking, (along with the more distressing variants: sleep-eating, -driving and -phone calling) all of these wholly defeating my purpose, I felt laudanum to be the more reasonable option. Clearly, I’m not concerned about developing a tolerance or dependency. This leaves me free to increase the dosage should I, at some unearthly narcoleptic point, feel the need has arisen. Carefully though; someone of my size and meager narcotic history could overdose on as little as a few teaspoons, and that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m not aiming to poison myself. I just want a slow steady dream that will fade into oblivion.

One of laudanum’s many benefits to this end is that it should relieve the pain and soreness I’m virtually guaranteed to experience from remaining in bed so long. Another is that it promises to increase oneiric activity rather than squelch it. And I want to be there, I just don’t want to be here. To fill those vacant forms awaiting animation...

Originally, to swallow the Ambien I’d allotted myself two eight-ounce bottles of water. I’d rather not linger on for weeks. I wasn’t sure how much I would need to drink to get the pills down, but I was not about to rely on my own willpower when the thirst hits, as it will, inevitably. I envisioned myself sleep-drinking, guzzling down case after case, entirely oblivious to my error. Four bottles instead of two could have prolonged my survival by one more day. I’m not a fat man, but I’ve read that the body can last for four to six weeks without food. The thought of bedsores and cannibalized muscles doesn’t interest me in the least. Again, this is where laudanum becomes the obvious choice. Already a liquid preparation, there’s no need to consume additional water, which again shortens my life expectancy while downsizing the likelihood of needing a bathroom break, (aided further by the fortuitous disclaimer that laudanum may cause constipation). I know that in my final seconds I will soil the bed like an infant, and I’m okay with that. I simply want that nothing should impede my comfortable retreat. This is a vacation after all, not capital punishment.

I unscrew the dropper and place three drops on my tongue. This will only get easier. I set the bottle of laudanum next to four others, all with tops mostly unscrewed, droppers canted delicately in their necks so I won’t need to wake for more than a second or two to administer another dose. (I won’t mention how much this little gathering cost me, suffice it to say, my meager bank account has already accrued more in daily fines due to its failing to maintain the minimum balance than it actually contained to begin with; there clearly is no stepping back from this precipice. I will not disclose my source for the drug as, as I’m sure anyone reading this is aware, it’s a regulated Schedule II narcotic and obviously not easy to come by through legal means, especially in such quantity. I am not about to indicate complicity on the part of anyone kind enough to aid me on this journey.)

While the subject has been broached, I do have to laugh a little at myself for having opted so quickly for this obscure drug. Aside from its apposite elegance in all the ways already mentioned, my motivation here is terribly transparent. Perhaps it’s my emulation’s greatest work. It possesses a certain mythic sophistication, laudanum does. I can lie back on these stale sheets and easily imagine myself not blanketed under the watchful disapproving gaze of my pale childhood walls, breathing in the complete stygian darkness and faint phantom breath of old burned incense embedded in altar cloth and curtains, but rather in a hazy opium den, a hidden basement off a rubbish-strewn alleyway in late 1800s Europe. I’m lacking only an absinthe chaser. If not a renowned novelist or libertine, then at least a taste of a life I never could have lived in this flesh...

I am going to be as rigorous about this journey as I would a transcontinental road trip. Albeit, one on which I have made no prior reservations and plan to seek out the night’s shelter and morning’s sustenance on the off-chance that those needs should arise. Though I intend to limit my ingestion so as not to overdose, I can’t bear to leave my clock plugged in, red numbers at eye level, visible without sitting or fully waking as they have been for decades. I trust that I can be careful without documenting every dose. I gladly unplug the clock. Fuck you, Alarms, Schedules, and Planners, I’m sleeping in from here on out.

A second layer of curtains have been hung over the already thick blue polyester drapery. I must keep the room as dark and timeless as possible. As much as I love sleep, I’ve always had difficulty napping during the day. Even when, as a child, I was kept home from school (as I so frequently was) by tonsillitis and strep throat and ear infections and bronchitis, often two or more of these occurring at the same time, lying in bed, uncomforted, watching trashy daytime television game shows for the elderly and unemployed. A tonic of voyeuristic hope that was apparently lost in my youthful ennui… An unease about the stomach and shoulder blades, pressure in the upper rear quadrant of the skull, a tension through the back of my neck I’m sure the laudanum will alleviate should those feelings that come with the combination of warm sheets and daylight rear their heads one ultimate time.

The thermostat has been set at a cool 60 degrees. I’ve never been able to sleep when the air is hot. (I sound so fickle… so fragile, and yet sleep has been the paramount activity of the last eight years of my life…) I will wrap myself in five layers of blankets, throws, and handed-down afghans, and curl up, content and fetal. At that temperature I could still survive for up to ten days without any water. This strikes me as too long, but the laudanum is an unknown. There will be no food in my stomach to impede its effects and I haven’t read any studies on cases such as mine.

Driven by decades of unrequited longing… A pitiful creature filled with a hot broth of misery and sorrow that rises to overwhelm the dam of her self-control, and before she can fortify it with sandbags of antipsychotic medication, she’s swept away in her own emotions’ tidal flood… A middle aged man so repentant about one of his many past indiscretions that he deems himself beyond redemption, unrehabilitatable, and so concludes that the only object powerful enough to surmount his guilty memories of that lone infraction is a single .452 inch long hunk of lead sent careening through both hemispheres of his brain almost simultaneously… Ridiculous, asinine clichéd attributes of the suicidal mind as it’s all too often portrayed in popular media. This is where I separate from the pack. I am not miserable or despondent. I am not calling a hotline because I’m lonely or starved for attention. I am not shaking in a corner with a butter knife pressed against my wrist. I am rational and cool. I am tired, but I am content. This body has fulfilled its use, transcended its purpose and is now an empty canister ready to be discarded. A building in natural collapse. Let those old movies play on one last time before the theater closes its doors!

My mother died recently, but I’m not at all depressed. It would sound terrible to say I’m relieved, so I won’t. Not that that would be quite accurate either. It’s a relief from that tense ever-present Not Knowing. Eight years of that queasy, prickly hum, gone… Wondering when it was going to happen, if it would be today, tomorrow, in another twenty years… Not Knowing can break a man. That said, I’ve always had a knack for adjustment, for living with what I have. It feels as though most of my adult life has been one of servitude, caring for her as if, without prior consent of mother or child, our roles had been irrevocably reversed...

Not that I ever longed for more traditional action. Writers mustn’t live busy lives – Eventful, but not busy. If you think something of relative value (there isn’t, in truth, any value in these pages, but we’ll pretend like there’s a crumb or two so we can play our respective roles of writer and consumer for one last day…) it must be caught immediately, with that metaphysical butterfly net, and pinned squirming to the page while the energy is still vibrant and sharp. No one’s going to feel them or love them if they get stale – Words get stale too, just like saltine crackers and three-day worn underwear…

It seems the laudanum is already taking hold… That was quicker than I expected. But then, how much do I really expect?

I’ve just turned thirty, surpassing the natural life expectancy for most figures in human history. This is nothing more than my early retirement. Why submit to thirty more years, early-to-bed and early-to-rising only to loathe my job, my rut, my loneliness or, gods-help-me, my wife, and be forced into suffering the ravages of old age, illness, disease and paranoia of a hastily approaching death? I’d much rather greet death on my own terms. Here I am, ye olde red-handed bastard! Serving myself up on a silver platter for your grim dim black toothless maw!

I’ve never needed to support myself by employment and I have no interest in starting now. My mother received a decent pension from her years working at the plant. It was plenty for our meager means. But there wasn’t enough left in our savings to sustain me for more than a few years eating crunchy rice and beans in a cold house with no electricity to cook them. And now, thanks mostly to her prodigious medical bills and co-pays, even most of that’s gone. In truth, I feel rather guilty living off of that ill-gotten blood money any longer. Fed by those poor brainwashed souls… Of course I feel equally sick at the prospect of having to work a day job or, more likely, a night job, for the next thirty to forty years. I don’t feel that the world owes me a living; I just don’t feel I owe it to the world to live.

My name will die along with me, and I’m perfectly fine with that reality. I have no siblings and no young men in the family bear this surname. Perfect annihilation. Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!

In a second I will pull the chain to switch off the lamp, the last light these eyes will ever register, set the pen next to this little pad and this large stack of collected papers, and then wait to discover with joy and the baited thrill of adventure to which strange lands my dreams will deliver me…

To whomever reads this note, know only that you’ve found the remnants of a profoundly satisfied man, a man untroubled by the tribulations of his world. And that he is even more so, untroubled, now, having been irreversibly freed of his bodily restraints, devious calculating mental formations, and purged of his seemingly endless memories.

With great love and optimism…[1]

[1] Unsigned

#fiction #depression #suicide note #sleep

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gabriellakirtonblog · 5 years

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How to Become an Online Nutrition Coach

I didn’t set out to be an online nutrition coach. And I sure didn’t set out to launch an entire company like Stronger U Nutrition.

At the time I got my first client, I was the human-resources manager at a company with no connection to the fitness industry. I had no idea what to charge, how to deliver meal plans, or how to turn my passion for helping people into a business.

I left my job a year later. By then I had 350 clients. Today Stronger U has 69 coaches who’ve worked with more than 30,000 total members. Our coaches include 23 registered dietitians. One has a PhD in nutrition and exercise science. Many others started out as personal trainers. And about half of them started out as members.

What they all have in common: They know people need help with their diets, and they want to help them.

If that describes you, and you think you can be an effective nutrition coach, either part- or full-time, here’s the best advice I can offer.

READ ALSO: Five Mistakes Trainers Make When Offering Nutrition Advice

Step 1: Define your market as a nutrition coach

Long before anyone paid me for nutrition coaching, I was “that guy” on Facebook. I wanted to help people, and I shared advice anywhere and everywhere. There was no strategy to it. It was just something I felt compelled to do.

As I said in this article, I had ideas about nutrition I thought people weren’t getting from other sources. So I leaned in. I engaged with people and encouraged them. And instead of focusing exclusively on how to solve problems, I talked about how to head those problems off.

What I didn’t do was target a particular type of client. As I saw it, most of them had the same general goals: Lose some fat. Look better. Feel better.

People’s issues are pretty much the same. Same cravings, same life events, same confusion about what’s healthy and what’s not. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 65-year-old guy, a 25-year-old woman, or anyone in between.

So that’s my first piece of advice: Don’t narrow your market.

Don’t put out a message that turns anyone away. Don’t promote yourself as a coach who’s only interested in helping one type of client achieve one type of goal.

However, you also have to consider how you’re going to convince those clients to do enough to get results. You’ll be more effective with some clients than with others. Their success may eventually narrow your market to people who look at before-and-after pictures of those clients and see themselves.

But it’s usually a bad idea to narrow your market before you know for certain who’s interested in your coaching, and who’ll have the best results.

READ ALSO: How to Find Your Target Market for Personal Training

Step 2: Earn nutrition coaching credentials

You don’t need any education or credentials to get started as a nutrition coach, just as you can become a personal trainer without studying anatomy or physiology, or even earning a personal training certification.

But why wouldn’t you want to? Why wouldn’t you want to know the fundamentals of human metabolism and energy balance? And why would clients trust you if you didn’t take the time to earn some kind of credential?

I got my first nutrition-coaching certification from NASM. It didn’t offer a lot of guidance on how to coach, but it gave me a solid foundation in nutrition science.

You can pass some online courses in a weekend, but you’re doing yourself a disservice if you do. Take your time and absorb the material. Give yourself several months with a self-guided course like Precision Nutrition Level 1, which I’ve taken, as have most of our Stronger U coaches.

READ ALSO: Do Trainers Need a College Degree to Be Successful?

Step 3: Build credibility as a nutrition coach on social media

You can’t just wake up one morning and announce, “Okay, I’m certified. Who wants my help?”

I mean, you could, but you can guess how well it would work.

So while you’re working on your certification, you also need to earn credibility and trust. There’s no single way to do it. Some advocate for a specific diet or system, like Paleo or keto or intermittent fasting or whatever people are interested in at the moment. I went a different direction, with no fixed or branded diet.

Your first step is to figure out where your potential clients are. They probably aren’t on TikTok or Snapchat. And they probably are on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is best for building communities, and Instagram is best for getting exposure and expanding your reach (for now, anyway).

Participate in communities where people can get to know you, and where you can be genuinely helpful. People want to work with coaches they know and like. You never want to be an intruder who pops in to offer unsolicited advice or hawk your services.

READ ALSO: How to Build an Online Following from Scratch

Give advice that gets the right kind of attention

How you present yourself matters. Nutrition knowledge isn’t visible. At least not the way people can look at your pictures and videos and see how strong you are, or how much muscle you have.

Maybe some people will give you more credibility if you’re jacked, especially if you’re offering advice on how to get the result you’ve already achieved. Same with someone who’s lost a lot of weight and is trying to help people do the same.

But for most of us, it’s not that simple. You need to look like someone who follows your own advice (because you do follow your own advice), but your biggest advantage will come from how you share information and offer help.

A few suggestions:

Be prepared for negativity

No matter what platform you’re on, or what community you’re in, one thing is guaranteed: You’ll get pushback on just about everything you say. The people you’re trying to help have heard it all before.

Moreover, the best advice you can offer tends to be simple, but your potential clients don’t trust simple advice. They think they have complex problems that require complicated interventions. You’ll see the same issues over and over again, and almost every time, the person you’re trying to help believes his or her problem is uniquely difficult. But you can’t come straight out and say that.

Speak to the individual as well as the group

Talk to people like you’re in the same room with them. Don’t lecture or cut and paste study abstracts to make your points.

At the same time, remember that you aren’t alone in the room. You aren’t just talking to the person who asked a question or requested your advice. You’re talking to everyone on the thread, everyone in the group, and everyone who will ever see that post. It could be hundreds or even thousands of people over the following days, weeks, and months.

Stay out of food fights

Don’t engage in conversations to score points or put someone down. You aren’t helping anyone reach their goals, and you aren’t helping yourself.

And don’t let other posters pull you into those conversations. Block, mute, or unfollow people who start pointless arguments or get rude or belligerent.

Avoid imposter syndrome

For many new coaches, your biggest fear is that an expert will jump in, tear your answer to shreds, and humiliate you in front of the entire group, including all your potential clients.

Three ways to avoid getting big-footed:

Don’t offer answers that would be easy for an expert to tear apart

Avoid black-and-white assertions, and never present your opinions as fact or your anecdotes as data.

Show humility and empathy

If you come off as an arrogant know-it-all, others will jump at any opportunity to knock you down.

Let the Wookiee win

If you’re afraid your reasonable, well-intentioned advice will be savaged by the group’s resident bully, find another group.

Some groups are set up to be a specific expert’s forum, or to advocate for one type of diet, and if you’re at odds with that person or that diet, you don’t belong there.

If it’s just some rando who’s dominating a group or an expert’s comment threads, and there’s no way to avoid interacting with him or her, you can report the person, or just find another place to share your knowledge and advice.

READ ALSO: How to Get Over Feeling Like a Fraud and Boost Your Confidence

Build an archive

When you write a great post, or give someone a helpful, detailed answer in a comment, save the link in a spreadsheet, arranged by subject.

Subjects can include weight loss, body composition, macros, supplements, fasting, fad diets, and dozens of others.

Since you aren’t sharing this archive with anyone else right now (although that could change down the road, if you hire an assistant or bring in another coach), you can organize it any way that makes sense for you.

Just make sure you understand it, because the more your business grows, the more valuable this content becomes. Your archive not only provides you with a trove of answers to common questions, which you can update as you learn more and refine your approach. It also gives you a database of topics for future content for your articles, posts, newsletters, and podcasts.

READ ALSO: Can Personal Trainers Give Diet and Nutrition Advice to Clients?

Step 3a: Set up your nutrition coaching business

Everything I’ve discussed so far sets you up to coach clients when you’re ready. But sometimes, as I learned, clients come to you before you’re ready for them.

If you’re already working independently as a personal trainer, online or in person, this part is easy. Just add nutrition coaching to the services on your website, and make sure your insurance policy covers your new venture.

But if this is a new business for you, you need to do four things before you accept money from your first client.

READ ALSO: Create a Personal Trainer Business Plan in Six Steps

File any paperwork you need to get started

If you don’t know what paperwork you need to file in your state or province, contact a local business lawyer, or look for help online from a service like LegalZoom.

Open a business bank account, if you don’t already have one

And if you don’t have a good accountant to help with your finances, find one. Don’t wait until your taxes are due!

Get liability insurance

You can usually get it through a professional group or certifying organization. Or, like me, you can go through a local insurance broker.

Set up a website

The current Stronger U site has hundreds of articles and gets 100,000 visitors a month. But I started with a simple, cheap Wix site, which I set up myself.

Your site needs to tell potential clients four things:

Who you are, with a short bio and a simple, friendly photo

What you offer, and how much you charge for it

Where they can follow you on social media

How to get in touch with you

That last one is the most important. It should be super-easy to get in touch with you. And when someone does, you need to respond super-fast.