Surviving The Mombie Apocalypse

Last summer, when some crackhead decided to eat the face off of another guy, everyone was wondering if this incident was the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. Since then, I have not seen a widespread outbreak of face-eating or reanimation of the dead, so I think it’s safe to assume that is not the case. However, there is another apocalypse upon us that is just as devastating, if not as drastic or newsworthy – the one I like to call The Mombie Apocalypse.

All across America, hordes of lifeless women are shuffling aimlessly through Wal-Mart in sweat pants and flip-flops, with muffin tops protruding from under their worn T-shirts and remnants of dried-up oatmeal or Cheerios in their hair. Their hollow eyes still hold a faint glimmer of the life that was before, but their muddled minds cannot grasp the magnitude of what once was, and so they shuffle onward, aisle by aisle. They trudge home, back to the demands of housework, jobs, children, and a thousand other mundane tasks that drain the life out of them, drop by drop. Then they do it again, day after day, year after year.

Somehow, through the haze of my Mombie brain, I realized that I had joined the horde. I was one of them. While waiting for my daughter in a department store, I caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. Pale skin, stringy hair, hollow eyes. It was like a scene from The Walking Dead. But it was real, it was me.

The mind-numbing routines of domestic life coupled with a few years of unrelenting tragedies and stresses had taken their toll. I was drained. Lifeless. Soulless. I existed, but I was not living. Day in and day out, I somehow managed to keep the laundry clean, the children fed and the bills paid. I was functional but not alive. Life was nothing more than a neverending to-do list. My health, mental and physical, was in the toilet. I was in my late thirties, depressed and overweight. Not hugely obese, I was in no danger of needing a scooter to get around Wal-Mart, but packing an extra 30-40 pounds of  blubber and misery.

One day, just before my 39^th  birthday in January, I decided I was sick of being life’s punching bag and I made up my mind to fight back. Life was short, I was pushing 40 and it was time for this Mombie to come back to life. I wasn’t going to eat any brains, just reclaim mine. So, I joined a gym. I started running. I signed up for a Spartan Race in March.

In those two months, I learned some things. I learned that running and swinging a kettlebell (NOT at the same time) are great ways to relieve stress. I learned that although there were many things in life I could not control, my health was not one of them. That was entirely up to me. I read The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf and learned that everything I had ever been told about nutrition was wrong. I followed his advice and realized that when I ate better, I felt better.  When I quit putting crap into my body, my body quit feeling like crap. My mood improved tremendously, I had energy and finally, I was alive again. I had survived the Mombie Apocalypse.