I was at a recent personal training session and went to adjust my hearing aid.

But I pulled it out of my ear too quickly and with too much force (it doesn’t take much 😂), and I felt the little rubber tip on the very end come off in my ear canal.

Crap, I thought. 

Reminding myself to stay calm and not panic, I tried to carefully dig it out between exercises.

But it was SO far down in there that I couldn’t reach it with just my finger.

As my training session progressed, the whole right side of my head, including my face, started to throb with eye-watering pain (because that rubber tip was too close to my eardrum, and my eardrum was freaking out).

Driving home after my session, I kept reminding myself to stay calm instead of panic…because if I panicked, I knew I’d do something stupid and have to go to the ER.

“You know how to get this thing out of your ear, Cristy. Your audiologist taught you how. You’ve done it before. You’ll be okay,” I said to myself.

The instant I walked through the door of my condo, I headed for the bathroom, grabbed my tweezers, and slowly and gently slid them in my ear canal.

I felt it when they touched the rubber tip, and used them to delicately grip it.

It took me a couple of tries, but I safely got the tip out of my ear.

And then I breathed a massive sigh of relief. 😂

Knowing there’s something that deep inside your ear is scarier than you might think – so much so that your first impulse is to panic and desperately try to claw it out any way you can.

But nine times out of ten, panic and desperation only make things worse.

I actually see this a lot with people trying to lose weight.

Something happens with their weight – or maybe their health – to trigger panic, and they overcorrect into some wild, extreme method to try and fix it…

Stuff like GLP-1, weight loss surgery, starving themselves, inducing themselves to throw up (or letting Ozempic do that for them).

But all that stuff does is make things WORSE…

Not because you won’t lose any weight (you probably will), but because none of those extreme (and often dangerous) methods are a long-term fix.

None of them address the root cause of your weight problem.

And when the panic and desperation die down, you’re left with a huge mess you don’t know what to do with…

Along with another trip around the weight loss mountain that’ll probably end with you quitting again because it’s too hard to care.

If your weight’s out of control or your health is in a scary place, then yeah, for sure do something about it. Use the desperation you feel to fuel you.

Just don’t overcorrect and do something wild and dangerous that you’ll end up regretting (just like I would have regretted panicking about that piece of my hearing aid and ending up in the ER – or worse, puncturing my eardrum).

Look at the long-term consequences of something you’re considering doing.

Will you wake up in five years and be thrilled that you got your insides mutilated? Or that you damaged your digestion by paralyzing it?

If the answer is even something like, “I might,” or even, “I don’t know,” then it’s not the right solution.

So pick something sustainable, like Code Red, which is real food, water, sleep, and a few simple rules. It doesn’t get more sustainable than that, and it’s pretty unlikely you’ll wake up in five years and go, “Gosh, I sure wish I hadn’t eaten real food, drank water, and slept.”

Bottom line: If you’re feeling desperate, use it. Just recognize that you ARE feeling desperate, and use that recognition to guide you to something safe and sustainable instead of something wild and extreme that you’ll end up regretting.