DOPAMINE and ADD

(I need to write, and I need it to be somewhat public to keep myself on track, but I don't want to hog your whole board here, so I'll just reply to myself instead of starting new threads. Read, or ignore, comment, or don't, it's all cool to me. It's going to be a little like public journalling, I guess. Sorry if it's intrusive or annoying. But I seem to really, really need to do this.)

Part of the process I have laid out for myself is to examine one smallish aspect of my effed-up-ness every day, and see what I might learn from it.

Today, I'm looking at other ways in which my addictive behavior has manifested itself over the years, and after giving it some thought, I realize there's quite a few. One in particular has a clear parallel to my food addiction.

I'd have a definite problem with money, if I actually had any. It's probably fortunate that I don't. I have these late night Amazon binges, which are fortunately pretty much confined to used books or CDs. I could get those things from a library, and save the money - and I need to do that, my credit card is never paid off. We're not talking lose-the-house kind of debt here, but it's more than I'd like to have. But here's the relevant thing: I get the same little dopamine / endorphin high with these purchases that I do from those first bites of potato chips. It's that same warm rush.

I looked up dopamine, to make sure I was using the word correctly, and read the Google entries that a non-medically trained person can understand. And I was right, it's the chemical produced in your brain associated with pleasure. Like endorphins.

Reading further, I learned that it's deficient in some people with attention deficit disorders. Well, hold the phone here! Flash of recognition, because, that's ME. I'm too old to have been diagnosed as a kid, but the clues are there. I wasn't the bouncing off the walls kind of kid - mine manifests itself inside my brain, not so much in my body. My brain never stops, never, ever. My family doctor says yes, this is a reasonable conclusion to draw, and he pointed out another aspect of ADD that's relevant: hyperfocus. That's a topic for another time, but let's focus, no pun intended, on this dopamine / endorphin thing for a bit.

Maybe my attention-deficit brain is missing something chemical, something soothing, something that sort of flows in other people's brains. See where I'm going with this? Maybe I'm not the world's most terrible person, maybe I'm not fatally flawed, maybe I'm not doomed to a life spent with my face in the foodbag eating mindlessly. Maybe when I hide in the cold room (it's a farm thing) and binge eat chocolate, it's because I'm craving something other than the food itself - I've always, always known my food problem was not about hunger.

This will sound like a stretch, but I swear it's connected: it's the same reason I always push the edge with the gas tank, waiting until the last minute to fill it, putting it off for just one more errand. I thought it was because I suck at adulting. But now I'm wondering about that little rush of adrenaline I get when I'm trying to make those last five miles to the gas station when the dashboard says it's dead empty. I'm thinking about the 'rush' I get when I'll pull the car up to the pump, having managed to just roll in on fumes. Honestly, it's the same feeling as those first bites of pizza.

I am craving / binging on food (or occasionally used books, or shoes if I had enough money) and I'm taking risks (just the gas tank, I'm not that adventurous) because something else is lacking or unresolved in my life. It's connected to my cold mother and my father's addiction issues and my own eccentricity as a child and my feeling of being not wanted. It's connected to my complicated marital situation now. And maybe it's also just something out of balance in my brain chemistry.

These are the things I'm going to sort out. Ultimately, of course, it's my own responsibility. I'm looking for a personal understanding of the problem, not an excuse for it: I simply want to learn how to begin the process of repairing myself.

But maybe a first step is to remove the idea that it's a character flaw and I'm a terrible human being. I don't know if anyone's going to read this. It doesn't seem like an active board, and I do ramble on. But if you are, I'm willing to bet you're struggling with the same "I'm a terrible person" issue that I have. It seems to permeate all the posts on this board. You know? We might not be so terrible after all. We might just be looking for something we need.......but in the wrong place.

I have, literally, eighteen months to the day until I turn 60 and embrace the last trimester of my life. I will not do it without figuring this out. I will not carry this emotional and physical weight around for the rest of my life. I'm going to be a kick-ass old lady, but there's a tremendous amount of work to do between now and then.

HYPNOTHERAPY SESSION #1

My first actual session was yesterday afternoon; it was preceded by two sessions of just talking. It's too soon to have any sense of how helpful this is going to be But, I do feel encouraged, for several reasons.

First, I was totally honest with the therapist in the preliminary sessions. I figured the more she understood about how messed up I am about food, the better, so, I didn't hold anything back. And that's unusual, because let's face it, addicts lie. And I am the Queen of Deception, when it comes to food. So, one point to me, for laying it all out there for her to see.

Second, I think I picked the right person. (Totally accidentally, just a blind pick off of Google.) About a year ago, I made an appointment with a psychotherapist I had met at the farmer's market where I'm a vendor. I looked at hereand thought hey, that's - that's who I want to be someday. She's maybe five years older than me, she's fit and healthy looking, she hikes and kayaks, she clearly doesn't have any food issues........she can fix me.

So, I went. I was medium-level honest, not the full spill, but enough that anyone would understand that I'm self-destructive. Her advice, basically, was to 'stop doing that." I mean, she fluffed that up a bit by saying things like "thoughts don't have to become actions' and so on, but the bottom line, she just plain didn't get it. She's a lovely person. She's probably very good at what she does. But we didn't click.

But the woman I'm working with now gets it. She has her own issues, she's overweight, she's struggling with a dissolving marriage. Maybe the magic here is that she's not 'perfect' like I thought the psychotherapist was. Maybe it takes a flawed person to understand a flawed person, I don't know.

Third, I have put so damn much money into this that I'm predisposed to make it work. I am, truly, at rock bottom to begin with, and when you add the credit card charge I took on for this, well, there is no way that I will do anything other than throw myself into the process wholeheartedly. This is going to work because this HAS to work.

In case this is something you've ever considered, I can tell you a few things that might help you decide - but only from the very beginning stage, because that's where I am. I'll comment more when I get further into it.

The hypnosis process is not creepy, especially with a good therapist. She literally showed me the script whe would read in my first session. She showed me the point in the script where she thought I would probably 'go under'. (I thought yeah, right, this will never work.) She records the entire session and gives you a CD when you leave, so you can listen to it if you choose to, and reassure yourself that nothing happened or was said that you'd find uncomfortable.

I settled onto her reclining couch, thinking that I wanted this to work but wondering if my hyperactive brain would ever calm down enough, reminding myself how much I'd spent on the session, fidgeting because my arthritic bones couldn't get comfy, and - as always - allowing my logical brain to overanalyze every word she was saying. She led me through a relaxation process, and I was trying, I really was, but she'd say 'your feet are totally relaxed, now your calf muscles are loosening......." and all I could think was "oh, shit, my sinuses are starting to feel weird, am I going to start coughing? what kind of fish are in that aquarium? did I defrost chicken for dinner tonight?" I mean, I was in full ADD mode.

And then......I wasn't. Then she woke me up, and it was 45 minutes later.

During that time, she talked to my subconscious, she told me things that we'd agreed I needed to know. It's okay to enjoy food, but it's primarily fuel for my body, and I want my body to be strong and healthy. I can do this, I can achieve this goal.

The premise behind this process is that your logical brain might know exactly what you should do, but there's stuff going on in your subconscious brain that's interfering with you reaching your goals. Sound familiar? Like, maybe, shoving potato chips into your face while you're crying because you can't stop? So, yes, this process seemed like a good fit for me.

She talked about some childhood memories I'd shared with her that I felt were pertinent to my food abuse. She talked about affection having been withheld from me as a child, and how I turned to food, privately, secretly, for solace. She told me that it was okay to let go of the hurt and anger. She said I could keep those memories but give up the power they still had over me.

And here I'm going to wrap up only because there is, literally, a sheep baaing right outside my office window, which means the girls have breached the fence again, and I have some work to do. But just to summarize - it wasn't weird, it wasn't icky, it's too soon to truly know how helpful it will be. I will have seven more sessions. The purpose of the first one was to simply lay some groundwork for the ones that follow. I'm really looking forward to what comes next.

Oh, as one little interesting thing - she told me that she'd implanted the idea in my head that the color red was a reminder, a reset button, sort of, to help me stay on track. And darned if I'm not having little mental 'pop' every time I see something red.

All I have to say at this point is that I'm 59 years old with 7 months til 60. Ur story is almost identical to my life. But I've been diagnosed with everything but ADD! Lol. Been on psych meds for years because of racing uncontrollable thoughts. I'm a great nurse with a Bachelors Degree in Speech Therapy, Binge eating covers the gamut of all education levels, ages, race, spiritual level, etc.
I recently hired a tremendous Christian personal trainer. (I'm an avid believer in Jesus). Since then I've binged almost every day since.
Never considered hypnosis. PLEASE let me know how this therapy works.
I'm sooooooo uncomfortable with myself. Is it expensive? Bottom line: I want to kayak for my birthday but I can't fit in the kayak!!!!!

Oh, Fruitful - are you my long lost twin or something? I actually have a 'kayak jar' where I'm stuffing the occasional dollar bill in the hopes or purchasing one.......but then, there's that problem of getting my butt into it. We live near a beautiful river, and my dream is to explore it someday.

Yes, the hypnosis is expensive. I see no need to pretend otherwise or be anything other than totally upfront - I paid almost $800, and that will cover eight sessions. The first session was well over ninety minutes altogether. There were two preliminary sessions, just for talking about things, each of which was almost two hours, that were included in the package. And based on what my therapist showed me at the session on Monday, I'm guessing she spends well over an hour preparing for each session. I mean, she wrote out a script to use during the session that was tailor made to my experience, based on our two earlier conversations - she must have pored over pages and pages of notes.

In the part of my life that isn't farming, I'm a professional musician. I'm guessing I actually make more per hour than she does, in my musician-life; I just don't have that many hours a week of paid work in that field. So, the $800 is an enormous amount for someone like me who buys clothes secondhand. But I understand that it's fair compensation for her.

Also, it's not a magic wand. I still have an enormous amount of work to do. The premise is that my conscious and subconscious mind aren't operating on the same page. My subconscious mind is 'protecting' me from something with these self destructive behaviors because it is somehow convinced that this is what's necessary for survival. My logical mind knows better, but the subconscious mind will win every time I drive by Wendy's. So we've got to build a bridge between the two. And to access that subconscious part, I have to get to that half-awake half-asleep stage we sometimes reach on our own, where suddenly a great truth becomes apparent to you just as you drift off to sleep. I'm paraphrasing my therapist here and probably not doing such a great job of it, so, any lack of clarity in this paragraph is on me, not a reflection of the hypnotherapy process.

And, this is the last thing. You know what I mean? This is what is going to work. Besides, if I cut out what I spent on secret fast food runs every week, I can cover that amount within a relatively short time.

I'd like to offer a comment for you but preface it by saying there's no criticism or intent to start an argument or anything here - I'm a sort of non-religious Christian, personally, and I have nothing but respect for your religious beliefs. I hope your faith doesn't complicate the journey you and I are on right now. I have noticed that friends who identify very strongly with one faith and are also struggling with an addiction often have an extra helping of guilt about their addiction. I've had both Christian and Muslim friends confide that they feel that if their faith was stronger, they wouldn't have this problem. You're trained in a medical field, so my hope for you is that you don't add that extra complication to your struggle, because you understand that brain chemistry and past experiences and all sorts of things factor into this. I hope that your faith is a source of strength for you.

So, let's get ourselves to sixty in good shape, shall we? And by the way, if you haven't kayaked before...........there are closed ones and open ones. (Those are my descriptions, I'm sure there's a more accurate term.) There's the kind you have to sort of slide your legs into like you're threading a needle, and then there's a more open design that allows a wide arthritic load such as myself to lumber in, with room for an enormous dog. The getting-in and getting-out part can be worthy of one of those funny-video shows, but what the heck, we're almost sixty and we have great self-confidence and we're open to new experiences, right? Call the rental place ahead of time, if that's how you're getting the kayak, and lay your concerns on the line - I bet they'll be helpful. I'm always amazed at how cool people are when you give them a chance.

We've got this, Fruitful.

TOSSING THE GUILT

I'm in purge mode. I'm getting rid of things that aren't helping me anymore. The size-in-my-dreams clothes are going to Goodwill, because they make me feel bad. The yarn stash is going to a friend, because I know now that the damage from my rheumatoid arthritis is for keeps. I don't need twelve shelves full of cookbooks. (That's not an exaggeration.) I'm gently loosening connections with some toxic people. I'm taking a good hard look at the husband.

But the biggest and most toxic thing I'm dumping is the guilt. You might understand - no one else does, but the people here might get it, because you are my people. I feel guilty about the money I've wasted on junk food. I feel guilty that my lovely Goodwill wardrobe is covered with foodstains, because I don't take bites when I binge, I just shove it in my mouth, but sometimes I miss. Yep. Gross. I feel guilty about being gross. I feel guilty about the guilt that has damaged my marriage. (Guilty about guilt? what a cycle.) I feel guilty that children go to bed hungry in this world every night while I'm double-fisting Oreos. I feel guilty that I haven't been a better role model in this area for my kids and grands.

And what has that guilt done for me? Nothing. No, that's wrong. "Nothing" sounds neutral. This guilt-stone isn't neutral. This is dragging me down, making me think I deserve to be this way, making me think I'm worthless - probably the very thoughts that drive me to abuse food originally.

Now I know better. This isn't my fault. What I do going forward is my own responsibility, sure. I mean, I could ignore it and just plod on until I drop dead of a heart attack with clogged everything, or I can do the hard work now and start to turn this around. So of course I have some genuine choices here. But I never chose to be addicted to food.

I am not a bad person because I have this addiction. Everyone eats food. Something about it just triggers the wrong things in my brain. It's not that different from any other addiction. Let's think about alcohol for a minute. I can knock back two beers and stop. My best friend can't stop. He just can't. That doesn't make me feel like I'm a better person than he is, it just makes me feel that I wish he'd get some help..........but it's not his fault. It's the same two beers, and they're find for me, and they set him off into a weeklong binge.

In this journey I've just begun, I expect a lot of hardships, and I'm going to be pretty tough on myself: I have to do this, I don't have any more do-overs left in me at this point.

But at the same time, I promise that I will be as kind to myself as I am to my wonderful loving, completely messed up alcoholic best friend. That's the metric I'm using from this point forward: would I treat him this way? Would I ever say to him "You ass, there's children dying of diseases every day and you could contribute the money you're spending on vodka to curing them?" Of course I wouldn't.

And that means I'm tossing the guilt. There's enough literal weight on me already. I don't need that guilt-stone, that albatross around my neck. Let's start over right this minute without it, and see how it feels.

SMALL INSIGHTS

Listen to what I told the dog yesterday: "No, honey, you can't have a bite of this candy. It's not good for you. It won't make you strong and healthy. It won't make your coat glow. You need your dog food because that's got everything you need to be a strong lovely dog."

Then I popped the candy in my mouth.

But even before I swallowed it, it hit me: what the heck? Did I really just tell my dog that he was so important to me that I wouldn't let him eat crap? And then I ATE IT?

There is a clear clue here about my sense of self-worth, isn't there.

REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

Only a complete twit would expect a miracle in the first twenty four hours after vowing to make a complete life turnaround and having one hypnotherapy session. But, naturally, I jumped on the scale and was disappointed that there hadn't been a change.

Which is ridiculous.

So, today my goal is to find that fine, fine line between setting goals that challenge me and lead to great things, and setting the bar so high that I'm doomed to fail.

My mother once told me that the secret to happiness was low expectations. Think about that for a little bit, because there's a lot to chew on there. It's easy to just laugh it off, but you can get into it pretty deeply. Are the people who truly change the world unhappy and unsatisfied on some level, in the sense that they can see what improvement is needed and are always striving for it? Is ignorance really bliss? Where's the balance?

If I set the bar too low, I can achieve the goals I set, without question. But, is that really good thing?

So it's time for me to articulate some goals that are genuinely achievable. I'd love to lose weight - I'm about 220 right now at 5'7", this is not a good place to be. I don't want to be thinking in terms of a number on the scale exclusively, but the truth is that number is at least an objective things that I actually can measure. "Strong and healthy" and "not completely effed up about food" are my real goals, but how do you measure that kind of thing? My recent diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis has taught me that 'healthy' isn't one hundred percent in my control anyway. (I know, "duh", but seriously, it hits you hard when it happens to you.)

It's time for me to set goals, and you can't put up the goalpost without first figuring out where it's supposed to BE. Today's challenge is to examine my spectacularly messed up head and make sure that I'm being realistic. The career as a supermodel is never gonna happen, you know? This post-baby-belly is never going to flatten out. It's impossible and self-defeating to say I'll never eat a potato chip again, or stop at McDonald's for french fries.

So I'm working on my mission statement today. I want something concrete that will aim this 220 pound ship in the right direction. It's one heck of a long journey ahead. In the meantime, I'm going to make today be a good day. Carry on, friends. We can do this.

SAILBOATING

Tough weekend, I slipped up. I'm trying hard not to let this start the usual cycle of recrimination + more binge eating. I'm trying to think about this eighteen months as a sailboat journey. If I understand it right, sailboats rarely go in a truly straight line. They move forward with the wind, note the path, make a correction, and sort of zigzag back and forth a bit as necessary...........but they get where they're going. I'm a sailboat. Time for a course correction.

LEARNING TO LIKE MYSELF

I would not treat anyone the way I treat myself. Certainly not a friend. Definitely not a stranger. Probably not even a neo-Nazi, although I reserve the right to change my mind on that one.

I would never tell someone else that they're a hopeless loser, but I look in the mirror sometimes and think that. I would never tell someone they might as well give up when their first attempts at saving their life didn't work. I would never think less of someone because of their weight, but I put myself down for it all the time. I would never work one of my employees so hard that they developed strained muscles and other physical symptoms, but I do that to myself. I would never tell my alcoholic friend that it's all his fault and just in his head and if he only tried harder he could beat it. So many, many things.

I certainly wouldn't prepare a meal for a friend and ask them to stand at the kitchen counter and double-fist cheese puffs into their mouth as fast as possible.

In that Christian faith, there's the verse about "Do unto others as you would do unto yourself", sometimes translated as "......as you would have done unto you." Most faiths have something similar, as I recall from my days of speed-dating religions. I think sometimes we miss an important part of that and focus only on the outward part - which is very important, but it is not the whole story.

My goal for today is to work on this. It will be a long term effort, but I'll start by just being aware of those moments of self-sabotage.

ACTING THE PART

I left home for college in the middle of my senior year in high school. At high school, I was very shy and socially introverted. I felt invisible.

It was mid January, and I was allowed to take the family station wagon to drive the 30 miles to the college campus, with my belongings. My parents would drive down the next day in another car to pick the station wagon up.

On the drive down, I pondered the complexities of shyness vs. popularity. Two girls had moved into our school and joined the senior class that year. One was almost immediately accepted as popular, and one was instantly considered an outcast.

It occurred to me that they actually looked very similar - same build, same hairstyle, nice facial features. what made the difference? It must have been something inside them, something they believed about themselves, that transmitted their identity to everyone else. In other words, something about they way they presented themselves triggered the reaction from my fellow students.

I was going to place where no one knew me at all, and i would spend three and a half years there.

It hit me so hard that I pulled off the side of the road to think. To think hard. I pulled a yellow legal pad out of my suitcase and started writing.

Because I'd just realized this: if I showed up at college and acted like I was a person worthy of knowing, someone likable - I'd be treated that way.

I literally wrote down a description of the person I wanted to be seen as (pardon the grammar) and decided that I would act that way, I would fake it, and hopefully once I was treated as is those things were true, it would reinforce the feelings, and I could maybe actually BE that confident person.

I remember writing things down like "self-deprecating humor = OK, but don't overdo or = pathetic." And, "eye contact good, but not staring". I was, truly, like an alien trying to assimilate into a new culture.

The damn thing is, it worked. I held my head up and smiled. I didn't wit in my room alone, hoping someone would take pity on me and ask if I'd go to the cafeteria with them. I sailed into the caf that first night and found a table of smiling, laughing 'cool' people and walked up and said "hey, i'm new, I don't know a soul here and this first dinner feels weird, mind if I join you tonight?" Old Me would have died before doing that.

I really never looked back, in so many ways. It was a classic case of 'fake it until you make it'.

that's what I'm working on today. I can't actually write anything today because of the work load here. But I'm going to craft it in my head.

I'm going to create a character who is me, but who isn't addicted to food, and I'm going to think about how she acts. I'm going to think about how she shops for food, what dinner time is like, whether she ever eats in her car, all the things. I'm going to write a script, and I'm going to be an actor, following the directions, for a little while, until it kicks in for real. When I feel the urge to binge, I'll remind myself that I already have a script to follow, and my subconscious brain can just shut the hell up.

We can do this.

THIRTY DAYS TO ESTABLISH NEW HABITS

But, how long to break old ones?

A good friend is going to AA for help with his alcohol abuse. I was reading over their ten steps, and one caught my eye - the idea of making reparations or asking forgiveness from those you've hurt because of your addiction.

The same good friend has hurt ME a good deal over the years - I get that alcohol and drugs can alter your behavior. With food addiction, it's harder to see the direct link, but I think it's there.

I'm not far enough along here yet to address it myself - I mean, I'm barely past denial here. Reparations have to come later. But I'm still thinking about the idea.

Until very recently, I drank a lot of diet Coke. You might think oh, what, two a day? Um, no. We're taking six or seven. We're talking a totally addicted behavior. Whether the substance itself is addictive, I'll leave that to scientists. But the behavior itself absolutely, definitely was. I am talking a thirty year period here. I am talking about driving out in a snowstorm to stock up in case we got snowed in. I am talking about seeing a commercial on TV and immediately going to the fridge, without even thinking. I'm taking about seeing five empty cans on the kitchen counter at noon and not really remembering having consumed it. I'm taking about planning restaurant excursions based on who sold Coke products. I'm talking about seriously worrying about an overseas trip I looked forward to - worrying that I would not be able to find diet Coke. Oh, and I'd squish up the cans and tuck them under other things so the trash guys wouldn't see them in the recycle bin. Yep.

So, lots of parallels to our food addiction, right?

And now I don't drink it. At all. What made the difference? Reading the first peer-reviewed scientific article linking it to Alzheimer's, and thinking about my beautiful daughter in law, whose mother has severe early onset Alzheimer's and no longer recognizes her or the grandkids. This woman will probably live another twenty years, and she is in hell; she is angry and scared and non-verbal and it's just awful. And my daughter in law must deal with it.

I can't put my daughter in law, or my sons, or anyone through that. Obviously I can't control everything, I could be in a car accident today and be left with brain damage or something, sure. But I can't knowingly behave in a way that increases the chances that my children will have to deal with that kind of pain.

It was literally a light switch kind of thing: seven cans one day, none the next, or since.

So, I can do it. I can do what I need to do with food. I have to tap into that love for my kids, which apparently is one of the good things I can count on in my life. I can do this. We can do this.

JUST THE NEXT STEP

I think I've mentioned that I tend to overdo things, if I do them at all. There is no regular housecleaning here; there's either utter squalor or there's a cyclone of intense cleaning followed by being a crazy woman who swoops down to pick up dust specks for a day or two. There's no consistent exercise, but a few years ago, determined to change that, I signed up for a marathon. Yes. A fat middle aged person who could not run a mile signed up for a full marathon. In the Adirondacks, because you know, doing a flat one was for sissies.

There may - MAY - be positive things to be said about this kind of approach. Perhaps if my first goal had been a one-mile fun run, I wouldn't have even followed through on it. I don't know. I do know that the thought of having completed that marathon (I walked most of it) still gives me strength to this day. So, there's that.

But, as a result of walking / jogging a full marathon at nearly 220 pounds with cheap shoes, I developed some physical problems that still plague me years later. (I was also in the earliest stages of a big autoimmune disease, which wasn't diagnosed until much later, but I'm sure that it didn't help that situation at all.)

In short, I had a nail to drive in, but I chose such a big hammer that I hurt myself lifting it.

Right now, I'm looking at goals for the next 17.5 months that are overwhelming. I mean, my list is like the solar eclipse: you can't look right at it without burning your retinas. You have to sneak oblique glances with protective eyewear. I am sitting here at the 'puter feeling overwhelmed by the scope of it. Reorganize my life (household, farm, business, body, spirit, mind) with each of those things broken down into many, many subcategories. I just looked at one line item on this list and realized it will literally take six weeks, just this one thing.

But I can't just sit here. This is a valid list. I actually do need to do those things. They're not silly or superfluous. It really IS overwhelming, I've dug myself into a 220-pound hole here.

My focus for right now, for this minute, 2:10 pm on Fri Sept 1 2017, is to stand up and take the first step. And then the second. (I'm heading for the clothes dryer to flip a load of laundry, but right now even that seems awfully hard.) But I only need to take the first step, and then the next and the next, and then I'll have one thing on that list crossed off. It doesn't matter how many more there are, because I only need to look at the next step.

I can't get my head around the weight I need to lose or the dietary changes I have to make or the emotional work I have to do to unscrew my head. but, I CAN plan the next thing I eat. I CAN (after I flip the laundry, 'cause this is item #2) go prep a whole lot of veg that can become a big salad or stir-fry for dinner that takes awhile to eat and leaves me feeling really full, in the hopes that this soothes the savage beast this evening.

Just one step.

CONFLICTING VALUES: WASTE VS. WAIST

If you were raised by a mother who was one of seven kids during the Depression, you've had the idea that wasting food is a terrible sin drummed into your head since birth.

Let's face it, the world's food supply is a complicated, messy, unbalanced thing, and a lot of people go to bed hungry every night while a percentage of us let food rot in our fridges.

As a farmer, I understand that wasted food isn't just wasting the food itself, it's all the resources that went into producing it.

So now I'm trying to revamp the way I look at food entirely, and trying to learn to use it as fuel for my body, and, well, you know all the things, you're trying too.

Got up this morning and had a half a bagel with a little bit of butter (as opposed to, basically, equal amounts. I love butter.) Had my glass of water, had a coffee, had some blackberries.

And then I saw the damned avocados on the counter.

I bought six of them earlier this week. In retrospect that was the first mistake, of course. Six. The husband won't eat them. It's just me.......and six avocados.

So here's where I am: I bought six avocados because we live pretty far from stores and I didn't want to waste gas making multiple trips and they were on sale, so I was being frugal. Frugal is good. Avocados have healthy fats and lots of vitamins, so I was making a healthy choice. Healthy is good. But they're ripening faster than I expected, so I should eat them soon, because waste is bad. I should eat the dead-ripe on right now. But I'm not hungry. Eating when I'm not hungry is bad. I should preserve them somehow instead. Found a recipe for freezing the mashed-up pulp, mixed with a little lemon juice. So I'm going to do that, but the reality is that once those bags are tossed in the freezer I will never be able to find them again. I ought to reorganize the freezer. It should be defrosted, too. But if I do that, I'm going to need to clear the work table in the basement so there's room to sort everything out. that means I should finish the quilt that's on it. but I can't do that yet because I need to buy more fabric. But I'm trying not to spend money, because I'm trying to be frugal.

Sigh. It is any wonder I'm so screwed up? This is the mental rollercoaster inspired by six avocados.

but It does illustrate why I have to get my shit together, and how everything is intertwined.

CLUES ARE DROPPING ON MY HEAD

Friends, that word salad I wrote yesterday? That's a perfect example of my brain on overdrive. I can't do x because y, and I can't take care of y because z.........I should have actually started this at the beginning of the alphabet because honey, I can easily come up with at least 26 detours when I'm trying to get something done.

Native Americans believed that the antidote for a problem was always growing near its cause (I'm simplifying horribly.) One example is a plant called jewelweed, which immediately soothes a poison ivy rash, and which is often found very close to the poison ivy vine.

I love this idea that answers are out there if we just look. Yesterday, one fell on my head.

Literally. I was in a bookstore, I was reaching up high for something, and another book fell and hit me on the head. The title is "When Too Much Isn't Enough". Based on the title, the fact that it 'chose' me, and the price (it's a used bookstore where I once worked, so I get a big discount) I bought it without even looking at the inside cover.

Turns out, the author (Wendy Richardson) wrote a book about me. About my brain. And maybe yours. It's a book about addictive behavior and the connection to attention deficit disorder, which does NOT always mean being hyperactive; there's several manifestations of it, and several layers, and many of us have more than one. Inability to slow your brain down enough so you can actually accomplish something is one way in which it can manifest.......even though you might simultaneously be fixated on something else to the point where you can't put it down.

There's some behavior checklists in the book, and - this is the bane of the used book budget life - someone had written in it, which I normally hate. Someone had checked off the behaviors that they saw in themselves. And I'm reading this book, and the checklist, and I'm noticing which things are checked, and all I can think of is 'oh, that poor person, I hope whoever checked these things off has gotten help'. And then of course I realize that I could actually check off nearly all of the same things, and this feeling of random kindness I was sending out ot the unknown checker-offer-person now needs to be bestowed on my own personal self.

I read nearly all of the book last night. (Because, hyperfocus, which is an AD/HD thing.) Perhaps weirdly, I stopped right before the final section, which is the part that tells you what to do about it. I think I figured I'd need a couple cups of coffee in me, and a new legal pad to take notes, before I started that part. But the first three quarters of the book describe what has been going on in my head regarding food, and some of the other things that I can approach in an addictive way (don't even talk to me about Tetris). Instead of feeling bad when i read it, I felt great - someone gets it! Someone else knows what this is like!

I'm not doing it justice here, I'm simply trying to get it into one sentence: my brain is constantly overloading, and that causes stress, even if it's from good things, and food gives me a rush of the same chemical that normal brains would have been using all along to regulate that overload.

I'm not suggesting you buy this book. maybe I'm the only food addict it would speak to, I don't know. But I am I saying this: there are answers and clues out there, just waiting for us to see them. Our behavior, this problem we have, is more far-reaching than just being specifically about food. We're looking for something, we're trying to soothe some kind of pain, meet some kind of loss. It needn't be a big tragic childhood event, I don't think. But whatever it is, we're using food for the wrong reason. And we may - I now accept for sure that I do, since the book was so spot on - we may have some brain wiring that's a little skewed.

I have much more to learn, and none of it means a thing it I can't transfer the knowledge to some kind of action that will change my behavior. But for right now, just for this morning, it's enough to know that I have a nice purple bruise on my forehead to mark where the book chose me. I sort of hope it doesn't fade too fast. I feel a bit like Harry Potter at the moment.

MEASURING SUCCESS

Some days I feel like I can measure success in terms of hours. I can, sometimes, say things like "I have not overeaten for four hours."

Today, it seems more like I'm measuring minutes. I'm trying to distract myself from food minute by minute today, and it's hard. I'm working in the field farthest from the house today, doing a project I really actually love, and I'm trying hard to only come down and eat at times I've planned in advance, and to eat healthy food when I do. And I'm up there, I swear, looking at my phone every two minutes. Yesterday wasn't terribly hard. Today is excruciating.

And you know what just SUCKS? If I'm successful for twice as long as I was yesterday but I still binge at the end of the day, I haven't really succeeded in any way that makes a difference.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I'm feeling sorry for myself today, and I'm letting that spill out here.

I need to be able to look at it differently. Distracting myself from overeating, making good choices for longer periods of each day...........these are genuinely accomplishments.

If I was learning to ride a bike, and the first day I fell off right away and every day I stayed on for another minute, would I say "I'm a failure because I'm still falling off the bike every day?" No, I'd probably recognize that I was getting a little better at it every day.

But I'd still have bruises. And right now, I'm feeling bruised.