IT WON'T JUST HAPPEN

When I write the book that I fully intend will be the summation of this journey, I expect to see scathing reviews that will be along these lines: "How obvious can it be? Why was this process so hard? How stupid is this woman?"

That's the reaction we get a lot, isn't it? "Just use portion control." "Distract yourself." "Learn what foods are good for you."

Well, duh. We actually know all that stuff already.

Today's thought is along those same lines - the sort of thing that I suspect healthy people actually intrinsically understand, but which, for you and I, involves a steeper learning curve.

What I'm going to share here is the exact sort of thing that normal people assume is completely obvious. For someone like me, and perhaps for you, it is not.

To set the stage, I am, of course, a total fuckup when it comes to food, hence the addiction. But I'm also a fuckup in other ways in my life.

Now, I'm not a fuckup overall. In fact, there are areas in which I exceed expectations, you know? This isn't bad-ego speaking; this is just a truly healthy and honest evaluation. There are things I do well. There are things I don't. I'd like to make the bad ones better without sacrificing the good ones.

Because i'm going to lay bare the bad ones, I feel I need to list a few good ones first, so, you know, I don't totally feel like crap at the end of this writing session.

I rock at creative things. I rock at problem solving, especially when it involves thinking so far outside the box that you might as well be on a different planet. I can brainstorm ideas for situations for which I actually have very little technical knowledge, because I'm really good at seeing the big picture and seeing the connections.

But I can't get my shit together.

I'm always stressed by situations I could have prevented. I'm always improvising a solution to a problem that I caused, usually through negligence. A large part of my creative skills actually come from compensating for my poor organizational skills. I am one hell of an improviser......because I didn't plan ahead. I am a great last-minute throw-it-together cook.........because I forget to thaw something out ahead of time, or I forget to take the grocery list and buy the ingredients the recipe actually requires so I have to wing it. I can BS my way through a presentation, because I usually forget to prepare it.

I never have clean laundry. My house is really messy. There is no 'right place' for things, so I'm always wasting time hunting something I need. The infrastructure here is wrong, in terms of storage and organization. I have a huge pantry, but it's full of stuff I bought years ago that I don't really want or need, and thus the things I actually use are sort of piled on the floor.

When I need use tools, I generally have to try to figure out where and when that tool might have been used most recently, because I don't put things away. I don't put things away, partly, because there's no good set-up here, really, for organizing tools, just a dark corner of the basement with a few tables and boxes.

I'm late paying bills sometimes because I don't have a good system for doing so. I don't have the 'right place' for paper bills that arrive in the mail. i don't have the patience to set up automated payments, and besides, I keep meaning to switch my bank account to a different kind. But I never do so, because when i stop at the bank I'm always in too much of a hurry.

i could go on. (I generally do, don't I? Sigh.) And I have gone on - I've been pretty honest about the list. But it's too long to repeat them all here. Think of what I wrote above at the greatest hits.

Now, does this connect to a food addiction? Well, for me, it does. For you, maybe not. And I genuinely care about you - I mean that - but this one of those failing airplane situations where you've got to put your own oxygen mask on first or you can't help anyone else. So I'm focusing on me, right now. If it helps you, great. If it doesn't, perhaps at least you can derive some pleasure from knowing someone's more fucked up than you are.

The connection has to do with the logistical side of dealing with the food addiction, and also the enormous effort it's taking to lose the weight that I gained while in the deepest grips of it.

The first part manifests itself in the food choices I have available at home, and the planning that i do (or, more accurately, don't do) for keeping myself out of temptation. You know what I mean: not allowing myself to get too hungry so I snap. Packing the protein snack for the six hour rehearsal. Eating a decent breakfast. Staying hydrated (because I often mistake thirst for hunger.)

The second part manifests itself in this way: I will get to the end of the day and realize - is if this is NEWS, as if this is a SURPRISE - that omigod I didn't exercise today.

And that's where today's what-upside-the-head moment came from. I'm driving back here from this morning's rehearsal, listening to NPR. There's an interview with an author who's talking about how he's raising his kids, and the man says "I've taught them to be aggressive about getting what they want. Not in a bad, pushy sense. More along these lines: if you want a bike, you need a plan, You need to figure out a plan for how you're going to earn that money, and then you need to make that happen, and that takes some serious perseverance. It won't just happen."

And WHAM, there I am on the highway, literally smacking myself on the side of the head. One of my many "Katie, you dumb shit!" moments.

IT WON'T JUST HAPPEN.

Now, see why I figure a critic will rip this one to shreds? Because duh, right? Of course it won't just happen. I mean, that's a lesson I learned a long time ago. I remember one particular time the lesson was driven home (because lessons often require repetition). I was staring at the ungodly explosion a four month old baby had created in a diaper (and the onesie, and the changing table, and amazingly, the wall and curtains) and I realized this: there is no Poop Fairy. There is literally no entity in this entire world that's going to come deal with this. The universe has tagged me "It." This is what makes adults - dealing with shit.

I know that.

But, somehow......somehow I fall into magical thinking with my incompetence issues, which, as I said, I feel are tied into my addiction fight.

Somehow I think that if I decide to exercise every day, and perhaps even make up some delicious little spreadsheet to track doing so, that this is somehow enough. And then I'm surprised, genuinely surprised, that this isn't working. What do you mean the scale hasn't moved? Did I not just create a fabulous spreadsheet? Did I not just order a new pair of sneakers? how on earth is it possible that this isn't working?

Somehow I think that if I simply decide to eat better, and possibly do some thoughtful math figuring out how to ration calories throughout the day, I'll lose weight and overcome the binging. Because, math! Right? I've made a decision! Look at me!

I think I've been forgetting something.

I think I've been overlooking the part where I actually have to DO something.

Things don't just happen. My goals will not just happen. It doesn't matter how spectacular the 4x8 foot whiteboard is beside my desk (you should SEE it! Nine different colors, four Venn diagrams, so many lists, in teeny tiny handwriting!) actually is - and I'm telling you, it is specTACular - if I don't actually DO the things on that whiteboard, it's just wasted time.

So that's where we are today. Today, I stretch out of my comfort zone (literally, because it's 95 freaking degrees out there and humid as a swamp) and start doing more DOING, and less PLANNING.

Duh. Right?

SUCCESS

Look, I know this sounds nuts, but I am convinced that there is some magical entity in my car radio that sends me words of wisdom in a timely manner. I'm kind of serious here. I'd said before that the universe is full of answers once you start asking questions, and that those answers can come in unexpected ways. You just have to be open to them.

Maybe these l'il nuggets of wisdom are there all the time and I just miss them. Maybe I'm more receptive when I'm driving. Or maybe someone at NPR is doling these tidbits out for me. You know, like a Bureau of Helping Katie. I'd prefer to believe the latter - who wouldn't?

Here's today's, courtesy of Winston Churchill: Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

I suppose he meant military success, and I suppose there's people who would read those words and find them to be inspirational as they relate to, say, acquiring material wealth.

But you and I know that those words are our North Star, right? We've just got to keep going. Keep believing. If I were pop-culture-literate, I'd make a reference to the movie Dory right now. But I didn't actually see it, and would thus probably get it wrong, so you get Churchill instead. Carry on.

THERE"S A WORD FOR IT

....and here I thought the only word for it was 'fuck-up'. You guys. There's a word. Akrasia. It means acting against one's self interest, There's some cool stuff showing up when i google that word. I haven't enough time today to delve into it and I honestly feel that I need to share the word with you immediately, because you might research it and find something helpful, and maybe a 24 hour head start would matter.

FOOD ABDUCTION

That's what you think you see when you click on the link for this group before you've had your morning coffee.

But it's not that far off, is it? It's certainly abducted my brain. And my life.

THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

It's summer theater season, and i've been spending my evenings behind a curtain in a local community theater, covering the horn book for Once Upon a Mattress. You know the basic story, right? The mean queen puts each prospective bride for her son to a test to determine eligibility, and rigs each test to ensure failure. Princess Winifred - loud, boisterous, and confident - manages, with the help of the sympathetic court, to triumph.

Actually the storyline doesn't matter at all. Here's what absolutely blew me away:

The Princess is a big woman. I do not wish to phrase this in any way that is disparaging to her, but it's necessary for the purpose of my post today that you are clear on this: the Princess is significantly obese. I am guessing she weighs at least a hundred pounds more than I do - perhaps even double that.

And.

It doesn't seem to make one freaking bit of difference.

Her voice is amazing. Her personality shines through every moment she's on stage. She is not doing what many women do when we perceive ourselves to be overweight on in some other way less-than, that thing where we try to hide, to not draw attention to ourselves. She holds herself in away that makes it clear that she's the star of the show, even in scenes where she's not speaking. She's in costume for these rehearsals, but for the very first one she was in her own clothes, and she made choices that were obviously comfortable, but which were not the typical camouflage muu-muu kind of thing. Observing the cast members on breaks, it looks like she's as confident and relaxed in person as she is in character.

She is vindication for every little girl who's been told that she can't have a lead part in a show because she doesn't look the part.

Now, I'm not writing about the fat acceptance movement here. I'm not writing about any one person's individual choices. And I'm not, really, writing about this particular young woman, whose full story I obviously don't know. She may have medical issues, she may be unhappy and covering it up well in public, who knows - that's not at all my point. Whatever her story is, i wish her well.

No, I'm writing about me, and peripherally, about you. Because here's my thing: I spend a lot of time thinking of myself as less-than. When I see photos of myself from two or three decades ago, I think whoa. I look GOOD. But at the time? At the time I thought I was a hideous cow, you see. I dressed in don't-look-at-me clothes. I stood in the back for group photos. I skipped the class reunions. I looked in the mirror and cringed - every time.

We're here to talk about food addiction and that doesn't always translate to being overweight, but for me, it does. And there's an important connection here. My weight has gone up and down over the years, but what's remained consistent is the self-loathing. From observing other people who carry that same burden, I now know that this mindset leaves a reek that is unmistakable to other people. I haven't always been open about my food addiction, but there's been no hiding the self-disgust.

And what has that cost me over the years, I wonder?

Has it stopped me from reaching out to new people and making friends? has it stopped me from trying new things? Has it stopped me from wearing something fun that would otherwise make me happy? Has it forced me to put things on the back burner for 'when I'm thin"?

Has it stopped me from sitting down with the husband and saying hey, this is not really working, is it? I mean, it's not actively hostile or anything, but it's certainly boring, and don't we deserve a little better?

have I waited to have that conversation because I'm thinking oh, but I'm so.......squishy.........surely this will go better if I can get myself into shape.

I play horn, it's a different skill set than singing, I actually don't have a good singing voice at all. but if I did.......would I have tried out for that lead role? And yet this remarkable woman, who might weigh twice what I do, did so.....and is rocking it.

i'm not advocating that I (we) give up and just say okay, hey, whatever I weigh is just fine, no need to work on this food addiction at all. Because we wouldn't be here if we didn't want to get out from its grasp. We know this about far more than the weight (if the weight is even an issue for you.)

But there is something to be said for going ahead and living your life while you're in progress, you know? There's something to be said for coming out of hiding and embracing all that life has to offer, even if you're doing it in XXXL sweatpants.

We cannot tie our sense of self worth to our waistline.

And even more to the point, I suspect that isolating ourselves socially and cringing when we look in the mirror is NOT helping our recovery.

There is something you've wanted to do but put off because of your weight. There's someone with whom you've wished to reconnect. There's a color you want to wear. There's a audition you want to go for. Friends.......it's time to start doing those things. It doesn't mean we've given up. It just means we know we're worth the effort.

PIGWEED, ROAD MAPS AND UNICORN FARTS

On a friend's Facebook page today, in an article about scientific thinking:

"Don't set goals. Set systems."

Whoa.

I've been doing this wrong. I get up in the morning and I think oh, oh, oh, I want to weigh 160 by my 60th birthday, and today I'm going to try hard. I mean, literally, I have this thought every single day.

And then, I think I'm done. Because, you know, I've stated my goal and thought something affirming.

And much to my recurring surprise every time I get on the scale, it isn't working all that well. I've made some real progress with the food addiction thing, but I've still got this mess of a body to clean up now. And it's not going well, as far as reaching that goal.

But...........when you get right down to it, I'm expending 90% of my energy on thinking about the goal and only 10% on thinking about how to reach it. I don't have a SYSTEM.

This applies to every other aspect of my life as well.

I have a goal of having an organized, decluttered, clean and welcoming house, and I stab at it periodically - but without a system. I make lists. Oh, my lists. My beautiful lists. But, I don't have a routine for the most basic things. I don't have a storage area where the supplies live. I don't have the right kind of vacuum for a house with a long-haired dog. So I get behind on the easy things, and I can't find the mop, and i spend more time unclogging the vacuum than I do using it.

I have a goal of being a better farmer. I buy supplies and I make the beautiful lists, and I make stunning diagrams of succession plantings. But i don't have a system. I don't routinely run the cultivator one week after planting seeds, to disrupt the pre-emergent weeds. That's what good farmers do. So, I end up with waist high pigweed with root systems that go down nine feet (that's not an exaggeration).

This repeats itself all though my life: my music, my writing, my exercise program or lack of same, my food-management.

It is NOT a lack of hard work. I work a lot. I am not lazy. I go out and attack that pigweed - let's use the pigweed as the metaphor for all failings here - with determination and vigor and I stay outside in 94 degree humid weather battling it until I can't move any more. Yay, me.

But, if I had that system in the first place, it wouldn't have reached that point. Cultivating that row earlier, and doing do on a schedule, would have kept the whole thing weed free. Or, more realistically, there might have been a few weeds to tackle, but they wouldn't have exhausted me.

If I can take the incredible energy and focus I have on triage and apply it to prevention, I can do great things.

But it's all about developing a system. And that starts with a serious mindset change. My 'goal' can no longer be reaching a certain weight on a certain day. My goal now must be to put a system in place - starting TODAY - to manage my weight.

My goal can't be to 'eat healthy food', it has to be to organize my fridge, pantry and freezers, and change my shopping and meal-planning habits, starting right now.

My goal can't be to 'get something published'. It has to be 'contact four agents every week' or something much, much more specific.

I've been going about this all wrong. I've been thinking about reaching a cross country destination, but didn't bother to actually buy a train ticket or buy a car, so instead, I've been walking. I'm walking as fast and as long as i can every day, but I don't necessarily have a good map, either.

You see how this problem compounds? Not only am I not reaching any kind of goal, I'm exhausting myself, and I'm eroding any confidence I might have in myself, and contributing to the self-loathing.

Here's how it hits us, my friend: the part where we think omigod, this is truly rock bottom, I hate myself, I have to make big changes, I can't live like this, I've got to fix this? And then the dramatic proclamation of how I'm going to do better, I'm going to be so good now? And then, sometimes, the ridiculous and unrealistic things like saying I'm going to live on air and water and unicorn farts for the next three months? And then.....it lasts, maybe, three days. Because the unicorn fart diet, well, that's not sustainable.

We need a system. And we need to put more effort into developing that system, and less effort into looking in the bathroom mirror issuing tearful proclamations. Systems, people. Good habits. Routines. Road maps. Reliable transportation. It's not as sexy as unicorn farts, but it's a much, much more realistic approach.

FLOODING

"A bad system will beat a good person every time"
W. Edwards Deming

Well, W. Edwards Deming sure has my number.

My intentions are great. My outcomes have been less than that. And now I'm seeing it for what it is: bad systems.

See, artist-types like me with ADD thrown into the mix really balk at systems. We either see them as stifling, or we get distracted and forget to implement them, or both.

But good systems - ones that are thought-out, ones that meet a specific need - are anything but stifling. In fact, they're liberating.

I wish I could post some pictures here. Videos, actually, that would show you what's going on in my world right now.

We're in a flood. Our part of PA is just a massive series of little creeks that link into the Susquehanna, and we've had 12" of rain here at the farm int he last few days. Some areas have had more, some less. but it all goes downstream anyway, so we're all dealing with it.

For us, it's relatively minor: we get running water in the cellar that's pretty significant, but so far it's going right down the drain. There's more damage in the barn where we have a roof leak (contractor was supposed to come April 20 to fix it, sigh). There's some crop damage. If it gets windy, and trees fall, we'll lose power. Our road is currently passable but it's starting to rain again and this system is supposed to stall over us for hours, so the two of us take turns being off the property just in case the road closes, sot aht someone's here to take care of the animals.

but for some neighbors, it's catastrophic.

But, we're talking about systems. And the flooding has given me an amazing visual. A good friend posted a video from his hillside property. It's two valleys over from us, but similar terrain. Over the course of forty-four years, his father has singlehandedly installed brick-lined culverts that route water away from the house and buildings on their farm. He built a raised holding pond, and then installed a system of run-off pipes near the top of the pond that each divert water onto another system of culverts. He studied the layout of the land for decades at this was in progress. He bought a truckload of loose bricks every few weeks and puttered around with this when he had some time. He had no outside help other than occasionally snagging a family member to move a wheelbarrow full of bricks or to help him dig out a big tree root.

As a result, their house and outbuildings are dry. Their livestock are safe. Their access road is passable.

My friend's father also keeps trees pruned around power lines, and builds gabians - the wire-encased rock piles - to stop erosion around the stream beds.

Most people haven't taken these steps. The sound of sump pumps is echoing through our valley. When the power inevitable goes, that will be replaced with generators. Our precious topsoil is rushing down the creek and into the river bed. It's a mess here.

There's nothing sexy about systems. There's no best-seller material there. If someone puts effort into a water rescue or helping someone bail out a basement, they're a hero (and rightly so) but nobody makes a fuss over the guy who comes home from work every day, eats dinner and has a beer, and then goes outside to chisel out one more foot of a drainage system.

But systems work. And they are not limiting - exactly the opposite. My friend's family is free, right now, of the problems that most of the rest of us have.

I binge eat when I feel overwhelmed. And I most often feel overwhelmed when it is my own lack of planning or preparation that has caused a problem. The tumbleweeds of dog hair everywhere drive me to the chips, but if i'd just brush the dog routinely, and if I'd vacuum occasionally, it wouldn't get so bad. I get disgusted, then depressed, then eat when I see the still-unpaid bill that's sitting on the counter - which I'd have paid except I'd forgotten i ran out of checks and didn't order more - and I'd misplaced the bill itself for a few days - and so on.

I need systems. i'm going to use my friend's father as my role model. I'm not going to try to right all wrongs immediately.I've learned the hard way how quickly that leads to failure. But i'm trying to buy one load of bricks at a time. metaphorically. I not have all of my clothing sorted out by size and season, and it's stored out of sight. (Previously, there has just been piles. ic old find everything, but it messed up my head.) I'm doing things like attacking the backlog of outdated over the counter meds (there's a local safe-drop this weekend) and finding forever homes for various appliances and tools. One thing at a time. It's helping.

And I'm working on systems that are more closely connected to my eating disorder and my overweight issues. i've figured out a twice-monthly shopping list, with a lot of sideways options (one head of broccoli, but I can swap that out for cabbage or cauliflower or kale). I now check that against the farm produce and then just go buy those things, without second-guessing or angst. Sure, that means I'm eating a lot fo the same things over and over, but who cares? I can make the system less onerous as i get better at it.

I need structure right now, and a lot of it. I've fought having structure for most of my life because I thought of myself as a free spirit. I saw unhappy parents trapped in rigid roles, and determined I'd never do that.

This is all well and good. Perhaps it was even necessary. Maybe it has made me more creative.

But sometimes you just need to find a pair or clean matching socks.

There's a balance. I'm going to find it. Right after I get that basement dried out.

ONE FINGERNAIL AT A TIME

I've just learned a great life lesson from my granddaughter.

It applies to my journey here, because for me personally, the food addiction is tied to the low self esteem which is linked to the depressive issues that result in a lack of organization, and the ADD which contributes to difficulty focusing, and so on. A lot of threads to follow.

But, I've painstakingly traced all those threads back to their origin points, and I genuinely feel I have a handle on the 'why' part of this now, and have turned my attention to fixing it.

To do that, I've started to really, really focus on the infrastructure in my world; on the systems, on the routines. I'm realizing what a massive domino line is built up in my world, and how I need to stop certain behaviors before they cause a massive spill, and so on.

How do fingernails fit in to this?

Well, my lovely plan with new routines and systems and infrastructure changes is working, and I understand it, and I'm sticking with it. but it can be overwhelming. There's just so much to fix.

My granddaughter is eight, and life, for her, is fairly straightforward. She's also working on a self-improvement goal. Specifically, she's decided to stop biting her fingernails.

But, she explained, stopping all ten at once seemed like it was going to be pretty hard. So she decided to stop biting ONE nail. And, on her own, she came up with this plan: after each 'happy thing' in her life, she'd stop biting one more. that way, she explained, she'd have the dance recital or the zoo trip or the arrival of the BFF's new baby sibling to look forward to, and that would, in her mind, offset the extra stress of the challenge of biting one less nail. Also, she explained, at any point in this process,s he'd only be making one finger's worth of changes. Because ten would be hard. But one is no big deal. And maintaining what she's already accomplished wouldn't be that hard.

And, she pointed out, it's good to appreciate one piece of yourself at a time. That's a direct quote. She's appreciating her left pinkie this week. Giving it extra love when she washes her hands. Putting sparkly polish on it, because she's eight.

She's got this figured out far better than I have.

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

That's a terrible title to have chosen. It sums up what I want to talk about today perfectly. But it's also the title of a song from a musical (Oliver) that can be a real earworm, and now I have it stuck in my head.

But I thought it might be a good time to put things on the table and take a good look at them. My recent posts have been non-specific, in terms of how I, personally, am doing with all of this. It's been about a year since I began posting here. I have about six months to go before I hit 60 next February, which had been my target for getting my shit together.

Bad news first: the sort-of goal of weighing 160 by my 60th birthday is impossible. I'm now stretching that out a bit - I genuinely think I can get there before I turn 61. And that's okay. That number had always been something just pulled out of thin air, no pun intended. I have actually not weighed 160 for nearly thirty years. I'm not sure it was a reasonable goal.

And the reason I won't make the goal, unreasonableness aside, is that it took me nearly nine months of hard work to get to the point where I could start losing weight.

What went wrong in those nine months? Nothing.

Nothing, because apparently that's what I needed. I genuinely needed nine months of gnashing my teeth, visiting two therapists a total of six times, writing insane amounts of words, getting medical checkups, reading books, reading articles, talking to myself, writing manifestos and declarations and creating exercise and calorie spreadsheets.

I apparently really needed to purge unwanted clothes and throw out old socks and donate half my beloved books and give away Mother's sewing machine.

I needed to learn to say no for the first time in my life. No, I can't be on the board, no, I can't take on that extra responsibility, no, I'm not going to invest in that interesting new hobby. This was a huge step for me, especially as I stare down impending old age, because sometimes, now, these 'no's' are for keeps; sometimes they're genuinely permanently closed doors now. that took some getting used to, but i think it was necessary to confront it.

I needed to rework the business plan for my farm. I needed to simplify operations here and reduce some expectations. I needed to address the husband's overwhelming fears about not having enough money for retirement, and my own instinctive reaction of pushing myself harder - which was exacerbating my autoimmune disease.

I needed to come to terms with that disease, which, barring a car accident or something like that, will kill me, but hopefully not for a very long time. But during the time I have left, I will lose some abilities and mobilities. I just don't know which ones. And I had to come to terms with that.

So, yes, for the first nine months of so since I made my initial post, I really didn't lose any weight at all. But the weight loss, I had already suspected, would not happen until I started getting my shit together. The weight loss was a symptom. I had to root out the cause.

And that, of course, was the addictive behavior.

And that.....of course...........involved so, so many things. A perceived lack of affection in childhood. A feeling of having been second-best in my own family. Being the weird musician-kid in a sports-oriented school and culture. Being the youngest one in my class (I graduated college at 20) and being socially awkward (maybe I would have been anyway, but the age gap didn't help). Somewhat psychotic parents with a host of issues of their own. Marrying someone who is emotionally closed off, for reasons I understand (both his and mine) but never having really addressed it. Dealing with undiagnosed ADD most of my life, and thinking I was just some kind of nut case. Inherited tendencies toward addiction. Horrendous role models for some aspects of grownup life. Having been too protected as a child to develop some important survival skills. Struggles with low self-esteem and hints of depression. A tendency to wallow in clutter and avoid organization. A lot of procrastination. A need for immediate gratification. Using food as a substitute for love. A fear that I am not good enough. Fear of both failure and success.

See, that pretty much kept me busy for the first nine months. I've got to tell you, when you're slogging through all of THAT shit, you're really not all that motivated to look up whether cherries or cantaloupe have more calories per cup, you know what I'm saying? I had work to do. I had rocks to turn over, so I could examine the ugly things underneath. There were things to sort out, there was baggage to jettison. There were bridges to burn, and some to mend.

But, then. Then.

Then! After the bulk of that work was done (it's still ongoing and perhaps will always be), something freaking amazing started to happen.

There was suddenly room in my brain for the caloric count of cantaloupe. There was room in my life for scheduling walks. I could, suddenly, get my head around mindful grocery shopping.

And more importantly, I gradually embraced the idea that it was okay to be physically hungry. I don't mean starving. I just mean that I can now, at four pm, think oh, I'm kind of hungry.....but dinner's in two hours, so I don't need to eat anything right now. I want to, but I don't need to. So I won't.

Do you have any idea what kind of sea change THAT is?

One day I realized that I could look at all the tempting foods as if they were old friends I'd once loved, and now wouldn't mind visiting once in awhile, but I didn't absolutely need to let them control my life anymore. I remember being at the grocery checkout, where once upon a time I'd routinely buy myself a candybar to reward myself for having completed the shopping, and telling the peanut butter cups that I'd pass today, but maybe another time. I did this out loud, and got some weird looks, but I don't care about that anymore.

I used to scrounge around for eight or nine bucks every time I left the house for any errands at all, in case I decided to stop for fast food - which of course I'd decided the minute I looked for that cash. I was treating myself, in my mind. I don't do that anymore. I just don't.

They still enters my mind, the horrible thoughts that used to control me. Late at night, I'll still find myself standing in front of the open pantry door surveying the options. But now I just sort of acknowledge the feelings, and close the door, and go do something else. Feelings, I have finally learned, are not commands.

I have not binged for four months.

I still make some bad choices from time to time, from the perspective of someone who is now actively trying to lose weight. Last night I had a few cookies. I should probably have just had one. But that's not an addictive behavior. Normal people eat three cookies instead of one, sometimes.

I now believe that in the throes of the addiction, I felt I didn't DESERVE to be healthy, to lose weight, to (potentially) look good. I see now that I was acting in a way that on some terrible level I thought I deserved. I realized that the day that I wouldn't give the dog something he was begging for because it wasn't good for him and I adore him and wouldn't give him unhealthy food, and then ate it myself, and then had this huge WTF moment. It didn't turn around that day. But that moment planted the seed.

Purging massive amounts of crap from my house forced me to think about who I really am and what I really want. Lessening the clutter calmed my brain. But it also focused me on important things. Mother's sewing machine was an albatross. She was always so disappointed that I didn't have her passion or skill for intricate sewing. I kept the machine, I think, because on some level I still wanted her approval. Getting rid of it was so freeing. It isn't just the two square feet of storage space that I gained. I also gained my OWN approval: it's okay to not be able to do everything. It's okay to suck at certain things. It's okay to choose what I want to work on.

Coming to terms with my illness has been amazing. Yes, some dreams had to die. But you know what happened? That made room for new ones.

Coming to terms with my mortality means that I will not spend my remaining years fearing death, because death and I have already made our peace. Instead of mourning every loss now, I can focus on celebrating what I do have as long as I still have it.

Restructuring the farm business allowed me to establish actual work hours, and gave me free time. That meant I could exercise or hang out with friends or just rest without guilt. But to do that, I had to figure out what mattered to me. Once I realize that Things didn't matter, the rest fell into place readily.

Coming to terms with my weight - when I thought maybe I never would lose any - helped me love myself for who I am, not what I weigh. And I truly think I couldn't move forward with healthy behaviors until I reached that point.

And so, now, I'm actually losing weight. I'm making good food choices, both in terms of what I eat, and how much. I'm finding ways to fill that deep hole in myself that I thought only butter and sugar and french fries could fill. I can make eye contact with myself in the mirror and hold my gaze - and smile.

I can honestly say, with no qualifiers, that I am a recovering food addict, as opposed to a food addict. This is no longer an active addiction, and I have not replaced it with another one. All this introspection and writing and thinking and digging around in my psyche has worked. I AM NOT A FOOD ADDICT ANY MORE. I am a recovering one, and that's no small thing, it still takes a ton of work.

But this is not just a matter of semantics. This is a big, big deal.

My road is not your road. If you're just starting out on this journey, or coming back to it after a few fails, unfortunately you can't recreate exactly what i've done and get the same results. But who knows? You may be able to get to a good place far faster than I did. (If you're younger, I suspect that this might be the case.)

I do think that several parts of my roadmap are universal. I don't see, for instance, anyone succeeding in this fight without uncompromising honesty with yourself. But that needn't be public, as mine has been. I don't see real success happening without understanding how you got to this point (although modifying bad behaviors can start immediately). But that understanding can come from multiple sources, and it won't be the same for everyone. I believe that addressing issues in your life other than specific food issues is key, but some people might have only one or two things to look at, and some of us have many. I feel that healing happens in community, because we draw strength and knowledge from those who went before us, and in turn offer those things to those who come after. But I do get that this reflects my overall life philosophy and may not be applicable to everyone else.

But what do I know, really? That's only my experience and yours will differ. There is only one thing of which I am certain, and it is perhaps the only one that really matters:

THIS IS BEATABLE.

DESIGN AND REGULATION

I've mentioned before that I genuinely believe the universe is full of clues, and it's our job to be receptive to them. Yesterday I was hit with a toolbox full of them.

I hosted a clinic here at the farm. A two-day event about small engine repair and maintenance and safety. There's this guy who travels around the country teaching this topic, and he is amazing. He's a great person, he knows his subject, and he has the ability to teach regardless of the student's level of background or understanding. So, a state organization that supports women in farming hired him to come here, and accepted eight registrants for the program.

My farm was a perfect choice because I don't know crap about engines and I'm not good with maintenance. I do send my stuff out regularly to be serviced, but that's a big expense. So I was looking forward to learning a few things that could cut down on my service bills. I was looking forward to learning the language so I could better communicate with my repair guys. And by the end of the clinic, the twelve power tools / tractors / mowers I'd lined up were going to be serviced and running. That's huge.

What I didn't expect was a massive life lesson that was perfectly aligned with where I am right now in my healing journey. I feel that I've clawed my way out of the worst of the addiction and my focus now is rebuilding my life to be one that supports my new 'food sobriety'. And since I know that, for me, clutter and disorganization and inefficiency are linked to my overeating, well, then I need to address those things. These next few months, from now until spring, are a serious reboot time for me.

The first thing the Shane did was to write this quote on a whiteboard:

"Design is the first signal of human intent"

and then

"Regulation is a symptom of design failure"

(William McDonough)

Oh my God. (I mean, that, literally, as apreayer and not a blasphemy, in case you're wondering.) Oh, my God.

In the context of the workshop, design signalling intent means that the choices we make early on sho0w what our intentions really are: did we buy good tools or cheap ones, did we set up a clean and organized work area, do we incorporate maintenance into our day routinely to avoid larger problems later?

He spoke of the frustration gap, which he defined as the difference between expectations and reality - but he stressed that thoughtful design is the key to bridging that gap.

And I sat there and thought yes, yes, I get this. I get what he means in the context of the class: yes, if I'd have cleaned the air filter on the big riding mower regularly, I'd have avoided a big repair bill. Yes, if I'd slow down and take an afternoon and collect all the manuals and tools and get them organized, I'd save huge amounts of time and frustration. And so on.

But it also applies to my addiction. Buying a big bag of chips signals intent to eat them. My bad choices begin long before I stick my hand in the bag in the pantry, you see?

If I create a healthy diet for myself, by researching and planning and coming up with a reasonable, sustainable program, I will not need to constantly make adjustments, or regulations - because I'll have a good system in place.

I am bogging myself down in regulations (you can only eat twelve potato chips) because I haven't designed a good system (only buy the single serving size of chips once a week). As a recovering addict, I need that kind of boundary.

I'm simplifying it enormously by making it be about potato chips. But I genuinely think this applies to all of my life, which in turn have influenced my eating disorder all these years.

I am designing the rest of my life. And so are you, of course, even if you don't think of it quite that way. The choices I make every day ideally support that overall design. If not, they end up needing a lot of regulation.

I want a life that flows naturally. I don't expect it to be without hurdles. But I want to do my part of the design thoughtfully, so that I can control those things that are within my scope of influence.

TEARS ON MY BILL-O

I'm having a coffee and a bit of a sniffle this morning - getting very emotional over writing a check. Not just any check - this is the check that pays off my credit card. Zero balance, for the first time in many years.

I will acknowledge that online bill paying is easier and that's what I usually do, but this is an Occasion, and it seems that writing an actual check - which I can sniffle over - is somehow more ceremonial.

What's this have to do with food addiction?

I have never spent lavish amounts of money. but the same inner turmoil that drove me to abuse food as a way to comfort myself also encouraged me to 'treat' myself regularly to small things which added up. Books (nearly always used), gifts, tools (you know, the things that will turn your life around and suddenly make it all clean and organized simply by virtue of having purchased the object) and items to support the Great Idea of the Month. And, of course, fast food or other food bought outside the house for comfort. And the Diet Coke from my other (former) addiction. And alcohol. Not a lot. But starting to edge into the moderate' instead of 'light' category.

My addiction was exacerbated by my inability to think long-term. I was all about short term gratification. if those cookies would taste good now, that overrode the fact that they'd take up residence on my hips permanently. I think there was some depression involved in that: it just didn't matter, the part about 'later'. I just couldn't visualize it and figured I might as well be happy now.

Plus, I sucked at recordkeeping, Not because of an inability to actually do it, but because I didn't want to be accountable. It's the same reason I avoided mirrors and the scale for a long time. If I couldn't see it, it wasn't happening. Magical thinking, just like a four year old will do.

So, the settled debt is actually pretty important, because it represents progress in all those areas.

I am settling into three meals a day, no snacks, which is my best approach (but not necessarily yours). I am enjoying what I eat. I'm planning gorgeous dinners or lunches, sometimes - but no longer making every time I eat be indulgent. I have six or seven staple lunch-or-dinners that i can make quickly at home which keep me full until the next meal. They aren't necessarily exciting. So I'm looking past food for excitement and stimulation and comfort now, and learning new ways to find them.

I'm downsizing all of my possessions, and thus when I want to buy a new book, I think a lot harder than I once did. (Our public libraries are great, and I have to get back into that habit, but they're inconveniently located for me, and so far I haven't re-started that wonderful habit.)

My rheumatoid arthritis is progressing slowly, thankfully, but it's enough to make me less likely to buy supplies for projects. This was always a problem. There is a pile in the living room, of upholstery fabric and assorted tools, for the rocking chairs I was going to reupholster. In 2015. I see this leaping from unfinished project to unfinished project as another symptom of the things that were lacking in my life. And also, a sign of my insecurity. I didn't need the rocking chairs. I needed, I think, to be the kind of wonderful creative amazing person who could teach herself to reupholster furniture, because that sort of fit the image I wanted to project........it's complicated. but trust me when I say it's connected.

I'd do the magical thinking thing by just ignoring bills or writing down expenses or filing receipts. I had a college roommate who used to drive me crazy because she was failing every course, and refused to do any work. "Later", she'd say. "I don't want to think about that now." Well, I sort of turned into that, in certain areas. Not proud of it.

When I began to tackle my food addiction I knew that my other self-defeating behaviors were factors which must be addressed. I started keeping records. I started filing receipts. I started putting money into envelopes for the next week's projected expenses, and using cash as much as possible to make it seem more real.

I stopped drinking six diet Cokes a day and put the money I'd have spent on it aside. I stopped automatically going to fast food places every time I ran errands. I stopped buying the snacky foods I was regularly eating before bed. I stopped drinking (and eventually restarted with a one drink a week limit.)

I stopped trying to fill the great empty holes in myself with impulse purchases of books, CD's, makeup I'd never wear anyway, and cheap jewelry.

I made a game of knowing my exact credit card balance, checking online every few days to see if I was right. I realize normal people actually do that all the time. I never had.

And now the credit card is paid in full. Now, without the debt, keeping on top of things will be that much easier.

It is not a coincidence that this is happening at the same time that I'm starting to lose weight, and at a time when the addictive behaviors are no longer a daily (hourly, minute-y) struggle.

This is all connected. The areas in which my life was effed up all fed into my food addiction. This was never about the potato chips. It was always about pain, and loneliness, and self-loathing. When I focused solely on how many calories to ingest and whether I should transfer the quart of ice cream into a nice bowl or eat it out of the carton, I was treating a symptom and not the disease.

I'm on the right track now. Food addiction sucks. But I - we - can overcome it.

SOME OF US JUST TAKE LONGER

I'm concerned that some of the readers here might be feeling a little overwhelmed and frustrated due to a post on this site. There's a recent thread in which a young woman posted for 21 days about her efforts to combat a food addiction, at the end of which time she declared herself successful.

I am not commenting on her addiction. It may have been lighter or more severe than mine or yours. That's not my business. An addiction is a powerful thing and I empathize with anyone in its grip.

I am not commenting on the likelihood of her success long term. She may have achieved wonderful lifelong changes during her intense effort. I hope so.

What I am saying, and saying LOUDLY, is that it doesn't work that way for everyone.

I kept reading things like "it takes 45 days to break a habit" (there were variations on the actual number) and wondered what was behind that, because nowadays, you can put a meme on facebook and in three days the world thinks it's the truth. It looks like there are some behavioral studies about breaking habits, but the scientists involved are quick to say there's some real limitations when it comes to drawing conclusions. And let's face it - 'breaking' a habit doesn't mean it's a lifetime change. It takes maintenance work, too.

Your habit isn't my habit, your pain is not my pain - we know this. But we do fall into the trap, don't we, of comparing our progress to someone else's? And then we either discount their work ("Oh, it must not have been a REAL addiction") or we berate ourselves ("Omigod, she's completely cured in three weeks? What the hell is WRONG with me?")

I'm here to be the voice of reason for the moment: your fight is yours. Your issues are yours. Your progress is yours. This is not a competition. We are all trying to claw our way out of the abyss. We can learn from each other ("Hey, there's a safe foothold here") and we can be inspired by each other ("Wow, he really, really had the deck stacked against him and he just never gave up.")

But we do not,my friends, beat ourselves over the head because we aren't recovering as fast as someone else.

You cannot make significant choices that affect anyone's recovery but your own. I added 'significant' to that sentence only because someone could point out that they could choose to serve someone's trigger food when that person is visiting - okay, sure, you can quibble about semantics here. But you know what I mean. The only addiction you can really impact is your own. And it's not the same as the next person's.

So if you fell into that trap, give yourself a break. I did. I'll admit it. I had a few moment of kicking myself. Dear God, I've been posting here several times a week for a whole year? And this girl whips this thing in a few days? Then I slipped into the self-pity thing: she's able to do these intense targeted workouts and I'm dying trying to walk a few miles in this heat and humidity?

Oh, yeah, I went there. It's human nature. But I got over it pretty quickly. And so can you. Nothing matters except being headed in the right direction and having the guts to take the next step. We're cool. We've got this.

AND THEN THERE'S THE BAD DAYS

Today I jettisoned a toxic person from my life. And that' sounds cold and businesslike, but of course it was anything but. This was difficult, and the ultimatum came after many 'second chances' until I finally said no, this is enough.

Honestly, I felt like Charlie Brown looking at Lucy holding htat football, only this time I had absolutely no faith whatsoever that things would change.

So. It's done, and it was the right thing to do.

But now I'm alone in the house (and i need to point out, the toxic person was NOT the husband - it's a coincidence that I'm alone, he's at a ball game with some family members) and I am aware of every freaking molecule of food in the house (or within a five minute drive) because it is all calling me.

But it's almost 7 pm and I've eaten enough for today. I am NOT going to pacify myself with nachos, I'm NOT going to soothe my frazzled nerves with popcorn, I'm NOT getting over my frustration by making a BLT. I'm NOT numbing myself with whiskey. Damn it, I've worked too hard to get this far.

In two hours or so I can go to bed and sleep, I'm exhausted, so I've got to hold on for that long. It's not like I'm starving or anything. Hell, I'm not truly even hungry. I just want, once again, to comfort myself with food.

The difference is that this time I'm not going to do it.

MY REFRIGERATOR IS MOCKING ME

I decided it's time to really clean my house.

So I went out and bought things, because this is what I do when I made sweeping proclamations. It's often office supplies. Sometimes it's exercise equipment. Today, it was sponges and bottles of things that smell of lemon. It was clear glass containers that will stack neatly and will let me see the contents.

I decided to start with the refrigerator, because it is where hope and light go to die in my house.

There are bottles of things on the door shelves that are older than my grandchildren. There is an overturned jar of jelly - with the lid off - that is permanently fused to the glass shelf.

It does not help that the vegetable drawers have broken tracks and don't slide easily. There are raisins in the bottom of one drawer. They were grapes when I put them in there.

It's bad. It's really bad.

So, I just spent three hours scrubbing, chiselling (literally), cussing, and otherwise coaxing the cement formerly known as strawberry jelly from one fridge shelf. I pulled everything off of the shelf. I gave the slightly slimy cantaloupe half to the sheep. I gave the slightly whiffy cream to the barn cats. I cut the bad parts off a block of cheddar and re-wrapped it. I cleaned out four jars of frightening things and put them in the recycles. I scoured mold off the side of the shelf. I removed the shelf and soaked it in the sink and polished it with a dry cloth. With toothpicks, I cleaned scummy stuff from the track which held the shelf before replacing it. I took the new glass containers and filled one with cut up carrots and celery, and one with cubed cantaloupe (they're ripening now, there's plenty) and pulled a quart of chicken soup from the freezer and put it on the shelf to defrost for dinner.

I stood back and looked at it and nearly burst into tears.

Because my whole damn house is that messy. Three hours of hard work earned me one shelf. One shelf. Three hours, a chipped fingernail, and $20 for the glass containers and the cleaning supplies (which, in fairness, I'll use for a long time.)

No one walking into my house will notice. No one will say omigodthisiswonerfullookat whatyou'vedone. No one.

The rest of my fridge is mocking me. The practically liquid celery in the veg drawer, the strange bottles of fish sauce and the block of tamarind paste that may be lethal at this point, how could I tell? I can't. I just can't.

So I poured a cup of coffee and thought about this.

It's a perfect metaphor for where I am in my journey right now. I've made the decisions, I've set the systems in place. I've done some hard work. but, no one's going to notice it yet.

The rest of the work is so huge and overwhelming that at times it seems like I just want to give up

but I can't make decisions about what is right and what is wrong based on whether or not other people notice. The rightness of my journey does not hinge on outside affirmation, much as I'd love some.

It does not even hinge on completion, but rather simply on a wholehearted, determined, educated and focused attempt.

I can be proud of the four pounds I've lost in the last three weeks, even if I have fifty more to go. I can appreciate the clean shelf in the fridge, with the healthy food prepped for later, even though there's five loads of clean laundry piled in the next room waiting to be sorted and folded.

Life is a mess. Life is a clean shelf in a disgusting fridge, it's four pounds lost through hard work that no one notices. It's okay. It's okay.

ONE YEAR

Today is the end of one year since I began to post here.

I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge just how annoying my posts are to some people.

I know that reading my posts helps some folks, because you send me messages, and that's awesome.

But I also know that there's people who open up this board from time to time and think omigod, this woman just won't stop blabbering, she must have some weird need for attention, or an obsession with having the top post, and for God's sake isn't she better already, she's just making the same mistakes over and over, and doesn't she have anything else to do, and how self-absorbed can one person be? Does she think she's God's gift to the forum?(And probably a lot of other criticism.)

You know how I know this, for sure? how I know that I'm annoying someone?

Because I'd be annoyed, I think, if I weren't the one doing the posting. If I were coming here for ideas and support and the top post nearly all the time was from the same person, I think it would irritate me. I might not even have a good reason for the irritation. It would just bug me.

So, if that person is you, I genuinely apologize. It's why I've never started another thread - it seems like that would be too much taking over the whole forum. It's why I respond once to most new posters - it seems really selfish to just post in my own thread and ignore all the heart-wrenching new posts. It's why I don't follow up too much in those posts - that, again, seems like too much bossiness, or something. I really am trying to be as thoughtful as i can be, given the volume of posts on this thread.

I would never, ever, go to a real-life OA meeting and dominate the conversation. I'm not even sure I'd talk at all. This is actually pretty far out of character for me. There is literally no one in my real-life world, including family, who has the slightest clue what I've gone through in this past year. I have possibly used the phrase "food addiction" with two or three friends, but never discussed it in any depth.

I tried private journaling for awhile but it honestly didn't motivate me the way writing here does. There is something about knowing that someone might read it, but that the person is anonymous to me..........it's safe, but at the same time I feel almost responsible to keep up with it. Writing regularly here has truly helped me. This has been a remarkable year, and I have so much more hope than I did one year ago.

If you're a person who reads this and finds this helpful, I'm truly happy for that. What we're doing here is hard, hard work. I'm posting for about six more months. Once I hit 60, in February of 2019, I'm moving on. That was the deal I made with myself when I started posting here a year ago tomorrow.

If you're a person who wishes I'd just stop already, I honestly understand that, and I'm sorry - I really do know how irritating something like this can be. And I know that while you might tell yourself to ignore it, that's hard to do. (I have that conversation with myself every time I check the local news online - I chant "do not read the comments, do not, do not" but inevitably I do. So yeah, I get it, and I'm sorry for it, but I'm sticking to my plan, because it's working. And as stated above, it still stop next February!

And hey. Step up to the plate. Post your own thoughts and ideas. Post something supportive. Welcome a new person or check up on someone who hasn't posted for awhile. My posts wouldn't be at the top nearly every day if more people posted regularly.

And just remember if a messed up person like me can turn this addiction around, anyone can.