TWO HUNDRED DECISIONS

Some behavioral scientists have determined that the average American makes 200 food-related decisions every day.

Ever since I read that, i've been trying notice how many choices I make a day, since that number seems really high.

As it turns out, it's probably pretty close. Let's take the toast I'm eating for breakfast right now: I decided to have toast. I decided on the more thinly sliced oatmeal bread instead of the thicker whole wheat. I decided to have two slices, and I decided to toast them. decided to put butter on it, and I decided how much. I decided to add peanut butter, and chose crunchy vs. smooth. I decided how much.

I suppose I also decided NOT to have fruit or cereal instead, and I DID decide to have coffee, and I decided not to have cream in it, and so on.

So yes, I think it's reasonable to say that I make 200 choices a day that affect my food intake in some way. If we factor in grocery store trips, then absolutely yes.

So three things come to mind:

1) we are so blessed to have this many options when much of the world is food-insecure. I'm not rich by American standards. I'm lower middle class. And I have multiple options every time I eat - which I can do regularly. So all addiction woes aside, I want to take a moment to be grateful for that.

2) That's two hundred opportunities to screw up. Holy choices, Batman. No wonder this is so effing hard.

3) it's also two hundred opportunities to do better. We do not need to subsist on wild edible from our lawns and well water. We do not need to fast for days, or buy expensive meal replacements. We need to make a larger percentage of those daily 200 choices better ones. That's it.

Even if you are at rock bottom in re the food addiction, you can make one better choice today.

FOOD FANTASIES AND POOP REALITIES

The scene: driving home after the farmer's market, exhausted and seriously hungry (it had been too busy to take a planned break). I realized that tint he 62 miles I would drive to get home, I would pass at least 18 temptation spots: fast food restaurants, grocery stores with great ready made food sections, two delis, two Indian takeout places, and a corner store or two.

My first thought was to try to distract myself. I knew that a jar of good soup was waiting for me in the fridge at home.

But I tried a different approach. It worked. It worked once - I have no idea if this is something that will work in the future. I don't know if it will work for you.

What I DO know is that the following text may trigger you if you're particularly susceptible to reading about food, okay? If that's you, hit the back button and skip this one.

Instead of trying to force the idea of food out of my mind, I thought about each successive spot on my drive home and decided what i'd get to eat there, if I were to stop. I planned menus. I chose appetizers, drinks, main courses, everything. I 'asked' for sour cream on that imaginary baked potato, I said what the hell and 'ordered' an Irish coffee to finish up. The next stop was a corner store and I decided on peanut-butter-filled pretzels and a soda, and a candy bar. Then I drove past the uberYuppie grocery store where you can get amazingly good sushi and calzones and General Tso's chicken, so i thought for a few miles about how nice that would be.

I kept this up nearly the whole way home but about six miles from the last turn off the highway, I realized my brain had shifted to another topic entirely.

I honestly think I was 'full'. Or at least, I was bored.

I know a guy. I know a guy who lost 60 pounds and took up marathon running and truly has made a remarkable turnaround. His earlier behavior sounded to me like addiction - I didn't know him then. He won't call it that, largely because he's an alcoholic and he feels that the term should be reserved for that, in his life, at least. I get that.

But when he was actively losing weight, he had a group of online friends for support, and he told me they would fantasize about the meals they would have after they finished the first marathon they were all working towards. He said they'd amuse themselves by sending each other photos of perfect burgers or pizza or whatever, and they'd actually talk about how the fat would drip down their chin, or the melted cheese would be all stringy, or whatever,

My reaction, at the time, was to threaten my friend with dismemberment if he ever, EVER, did that to me. I told him I was trying not to think about food, that I was avoiding my previously beloved cooking magazines and websites, and trying as hard as possible to avoid temptation. He shrugged and said sure, whatever works for you.

Now, based on that one experience - a terrible sample size for any conclusion, obviously - I wonder. Since we can't avoid food the way a drug addict or alcoholic can avoid their triggers, maybe a more matter of fact approach would be effective.

I'm trying that today. I woke up, knowing that the plan was to eat a toasted bagel with sliced turkey and cheese. I thought about bacon. I thought about how much I adore bacon. I thought about the nine pounds in my freezer (this is the curse of being a farmer) and how perfect it would be. Two slices.....no, four. I could just taste it. Then I reminded myself it would just be poop by tomorrow. Poop and an extra pound or two. I'd love to have that bacon. doesn't mean I have to have it. The happiness it would bring me would last about four minutes. The grief, much longer.

So we'll see how this goes.

Thanks for the sharing, Katie. Ito helping others to read about your struggle.

TAKING CARE OF OURSELVES

I haven't any extra money. So when I decided to make a list of ways in which I might treat or pamper or reward myself, I realized that some of the cliched feminine standbys weren't going to make the list. No matter how well I follow my plan, or how much weight I lose, or how many miles I walk or run, there will be no champagne, no jewelry, no day at the spa, no trip to NYC to catch the latest show.

Sigh.

'S okay,

Didn't want that stuff anyway. Right? Says the fox, watching the out of reach grapes. :)

Seriously, though. I've been compiling a list of things I can actually do for myself that are low or no cost. I've been trying to take better care of myself, trying to teach myself to see this aging and lumpy body as a truly valuable vessel, trying to honor it.

And in the process I've been thinking a lot about what really constitutes self care.

What it really ought to be is giving yourself space, and time, and lowering your stress. It should be learning, and becoming healthy.

It's not buying yourself a full bag of candy and going face-first into it, only coming up for air when there's nothing but crumbs, and if I sound as if I speak from experience, well, I'm not proud. Yes, I've been there.

It's more about sitting on your front porch with one perfect apple, listening to the cicadas, smelling fresh cut grass. Or at least it should be. It's nearly 100 degrees here and humid, and there's terrible mosquitoes this year, and that cut grass is making me sneeze, but you get my drift, right?

It's not knocking back four beers at the end of the day. It's a perfect pot of tea brewed in the ancestral teapot and served in the few china cups that survived the flooding a few years ago, on a tray, with a small vase of flowers. Or at least it should be. The ancestral china's in a box somewhere in the cellar. I don't like decaf tea and the husband can't have caffeinated, so one pot never works and it's a pain to make two. But, again, you get my drift.

It's about making do with what we have, and frankly, I fall pretty short on this.

I'll never be able to afford high-count sheets and pillowcases, but, you know, I really could put clean sheets on the bed more often, frankly.

I can't afford beautiful art for my walls, but if I put a little more effort into it, I could have fresh flowers in one or two rooms of the house at all times, I mean for crying out loud, I have a greenhouse on a farm. I just don't take the time to pick flowers for myself, and I should.

I can't afford new clothes, and generally buy secondhand things. But I could still put more effort into making more flattering choices. At this time of year, looking towards fall, I usually go buy a few pairs of jeans and some long sleeve t-shirts in solid colors. I'm in and out of the store in fifteen minutes, and I don't try anything on. It's pretty boring. I could do better.

I can't afford fancy spa treatments. But you know, I've got a closet shelf full of lotions and things that I've bought and then barely use. I could choose a few and incorporate them into my daily routine. I've got a soft brush I bought when a friend told me she was hooked on 'dry-brushing', which is actually extraordinarily relaxing, and certainly inexpensive. (Look it up, I won't take time to explain it here.)

I have a gym membership I rarely use. We have some outstanding trails here along the river and in the mountains. I own a decent bicycle, it just needs air in the tires. There's an assortment of small exercise equipment around here - free weights, an ab roller, a yoga mat. I'm pretty sure there's a yoga DVD.

And I can reduce my stress levels by continuing to organize things around here. I can't express the difference it made in my life when I recently threw out all of my socks. I didn't have to spend too much because I watched for sales. I now have four kinds of socks, and i have each on quantity: white socks, black socks, really heavy winter work socks, and some beige ones. the important part is, all the white ones are now exactly the same, al the black ones are the same, and so on. There is no more fumbling or matching or morning rummaging. I have de-stressed socks. okay, it's a small thing. But this stuff adds up. I have dreams, now, of tossing all the mismatched tupperware-like stuff and buying just one brand. Imagine never hunting for a lid again, and imagine being able to stack them all.

How is this relevant to food addiction? Because, my friends, a messed up life will bite you in the ass while you're trying to work on your addiction. And we're messed up. I have met a lot of people with a food addiction in the last year. And you know what we all have in common? Yep. Hot messes, the lot of us. Some of us function well and some of us seem to be having a private audition for Jerry Springer, some of us have solid relationships and some not, and our employment histories and other accomplishments are all over the spectrum as well. But our commonality is a degree of self-loathing that inhibits us from truly caring for ourselves, even though many of care well for other people in our lives.

So let's work on this list. I started by brainstorming everything i could think of that might make me happy, either short of long term. Then I eliminated the ones I couldn't afford or made substitutions (goodbye, motorboat, but maybe a kayak?) and scaled back the ones that gave me liberal-weenie-bleeding-heart guilt (not going to buy a lot of expensive jewelry, but I really would like one nice bracelet, and I can make a donation to the food bank). Can't go out and buy all all of my remembered favorite music from my youth on CD's, but i could finally set up one of the internet music sources. Etc.

++++

Later

I set this post aside for a few hours but thought about it as i went through the day's work list, and I found some time to touch on some of the things mentioned here. Here's what I've accomplished:

I have fresh flowers on the kitchen counter and in the room where I practice.

I made an appointment for a long-overdue haircut.

I sat on the front porch, in the shade, to eat lunch, and did not look at my phone. I ate off of a plate, with utensils. Slowly.

I took the dog for a walk in the woods, just for about 20 minutes - he's a very fuzzy guy and it's stinking hot today. That wasn't quite the spiritual connection with nature for which I'd hoped, since he ate a dead toad and barfed it up. Can't win them all I guess.

There's clean sheets on the bed.

I will take 45 minutes tonight for a long tub soak with Epsom salts and a bit of the essential oil someone gave me for Christmas.

There's a hand held roller massage thing I remember getting from a physical therapist several aches ago. I'm going to spend some time tonight working out a few kinks in my shoulder with it.

These things don't sound like a lot, I suppose. But I have always skewed towards measuring my worth in terms of verifiable output. Hard work, not necessarily financial reward, just hard work. The idea of just relaxing and genuinely caring for myself is not an easy one. The idea that by being a better ME I might genuinely be of more service to the people I love is one that I struggle to accept. I'll try this. I'll try to make grace a habit. I truly believe it will help.

YESTERDAY"S STRATEGY........ER, YESTERDAY"S BATTLE PLAN...........No.........

Well, damn. It was a great quote, and I can't remember it. Here's the gist of it: the fact that you kicked ass yesterday will not guarantee that you will succeed today.

So it wouldn't have started out 'yesterday's strategy', because yesterday's strategy may in fact be exactly what you need to do today.

Maybe it was "yesterday's battle won't win today's war."

that still doesn't feel right.

Amazingly, even though I can't remember it, I do remember the aha! feeling I had when I heard it.

It's especially relevant for me right now. I'm at a terribly dangerous place, my friends. I've had some success. And the danger, when you have some success, is that you begin to think you've succeeded. And then you get overconfident, and you drop your guard, and suddenly the dog is blissing out because his favorite human is suddenly liberally sprinkled with delicious potato chip crumbs.

Ask me how I know this. :(

I have had some success, but I have not succeeded. This battle is one that I suspect will not end until the day I die. I don't mean to be morbid. I don't mean that I do not fully intend to have more success. But what I am learning, the hard way (ALways the freaking hard way) is that I cannot be complacent.

So yes, I still have to wake up every morning and remind myself that I need to stay vigilant, and need to make good choices, and I need to think long-term instead of short-term gratification, and all of the other things I've learned thus far. I need to have that talk with myself every morning.

And here's the analogy that is helping me stick to this: when my boys were little, I understood that a responsible parent had to be vigilant. I never helicopter-parented them as they got older, but when they were tinies and so very vulnerable, yes, I kept my head in the game. i couldn't wake up one day and say oh, I don't feel like parenting today.

My new self still needs to be parented actively. I still need supervision. The weirdness comes, of course, because I'm playing both roles here. But the truth is that when I stay aware, I do well. When I don't, I relapse. So I can't relax just yet. (Too bad I can't get a babysitter........)

but you see my point. This emerging self, the one that was inside all along, is still a toddler and still needs some support.

So, I stay aware, I remain mindful.

PLANNING

I leave in two days for a nine day vacation, so I won't be able to post for awhile. It's interesting, staring at the dining room table, which is now piled with various foodstuffs that will be going with us. I am trying to figure out what's in my best interest here, but I'm also planning for the rest of the family, so it's a challenge.

It's an extended family group of seven total; four adults and three littles.

I'm the only one who doesn't instinctively eat healthy foods and naturally stop eating when I'm full. They all seem to be normal people without food issues. The other adults will indulge in treats occasionally but seem to adjust their activity levels appropriately so that they don't end up gaining weight. I have seen each of them close a not-yet-empty bag of, say, Reese's peanut butter cups and put it back in the pantry. I'm not sure I have ever been able to do that in my entire life. The children enjoy the occasional treat but eat a wide range of healthy foods, and apparently burn thousands and thousands of calories a day because if they're not snuggled up reading they're in constant motion.

We are a food-oriented family, and the idea of spending an afternoon in a remote cabin in northern Ontario cooking a butternut risotto is something that my son and I eagerly anticipate. We have exchanged three emails on the subject of spices alone - who's bringing curry, and will be it be sweet or spicy, or should we bring both? Because you know the idea of a vacation without the necessary spices is pretty traumatic. I mean, one email was titled "mediterranean spices" because you've got to cover all the categories. Small countries have been invaded with less planning than my son and I have applied to stocking a kitchen for nine days.

So this vacation will involve a lot of very sensual, beautiful cooking. There will be long dinners with several bottles of wine and there will be afternoon tea at the dock with cookies just out of the oven and lumberjack-worthy breakfasts.

This is a challenge for me. I can't and won't ask that the entire group change these long standing traditions just for my benefit. These are all good things. I want to be part of the real world, after all, and not just live in a bubble with ziploc bags full of exactly 100 calories of celery for my afternoon snack.

On a previous trip, I thought I'd try to mimic one healthy person a day - I'd be active when they were active. Because they're all a healthy weight, so if I just sort of kept up with them, I could eat what they ate, right? Isn't that brilliant?
Omigod I thought I'd die. My daughter in law runs like a gazelle. My son can row or kayak for hours. The grandchildren can climb trees like bear cubs. This plan ended up with me rubbing liberal amounts of painkilling lotion on various aching parts of my body, and sleeping for twelve hours.

While I enjoy long walks up there, and will haul out the communal bicycle and totter around a bit on back roads, my idea of a great vacation there involves a lot of time spent hanging suspended in an inner tube in the lake, reading a book, and drinking a beer (simultaneously). Naps are required. The fact is that my 59 year old body has an autoimmune disease which means it's constantly attacking itself, and I need to manage my fatigue levels in ways that younger healthier people do not.

So I can't 'be' someone else or follow their patterns for a day. I have to forge this path on my own.

And here's my plan: i'm going to do all the things. I'm going to drink all the things, and eat all the things.

But not in the quantity that I would like. I need to accept that if there is fresh pike from the lake panfried in butter, I'm going to eat a smaller portion than anyone else. When the chocolate chip cookies come out of the oven, I'll enjoy a half a cookie and put the other half aside for later, instead of eating four immediately. I will go for walks, but not double digit miles on the same day. When my daughter in law sets up the amazing apparatus she uses for workouts - it's three initials, I've forgotten what they are, but it's heavy bands with handgrips, and you work with your own weight - anyway, i'll do a bit of it, but I won't do too much. I'll swim. I'll kayak. but not to the point of exhaustion. If my son makes bourbon milkshakes after the kids go to bed, I'll have mine in a smaller glass.

75%. That's my plan.

I'm going to have a wonderful vacation. I'm going to practice my horn a lot (yes, this is bliss - no phone ringing, no pressing farm chores. no need to look at the clock, just sit there until i can rip through those wicked licks in American In Paris for an upcoming fall concert? Yes. Bliss.) I'm going to do a jigsaw puzzle, and read a lot of books, and nap. I'm going to exercise, but not to the point of pain or exhaustion - I'll learn a little bit more about what the 2018 edition of the failing body can and can't do. I'll eat wonderful things in reasonable amounts. I'll enjoy everything I eat, but I'll not eat mindlessly. I'll hold my grandlovies and tell them stories and we'll take walks in the woods to see if we can figure out where fairies might live. The husband and I will hopefully have a much overdue conversation about some serious things during the long drive there. (We travel separately from the kids for the first ten hours of the drive.) I hope to come back a better person.

(On a side note: I'm also very much aware of the people I love, and people I don't know yet, and perhaps some of you, who are in the path of Hurricane Florence here on the East Coast of the US, or perhaps in harm's way from some other natural or man-made threat. I'm very much aware that I'm obsessing over packing spices and wondering if I have the willpower to eat a three-quarter portion of something wonderful when there's people who are packing up their belongings and fleeing to shelters and great uncertainty about food and everything else. This, for me, has always been the added burden of a food addiction, the guilt of being over-sated in a world in which the vast majority of people are food-insecure. So, I'm taking a mason jar and index cards with me, and I'm going to try, very hard, to assign a $ amount to all of the things I do NOT eat on this vacation, and then donate that to hurricane relief when I get back home. It's going to be pretty subjective of course, but I still think it will motivate me to put a slip of paper in the jar every few hours with a number on it..........we'll see how this goes.)

FINAL COUNTDOWN

I am so, so sorry I wrote those two words as a title, although they accurately reflect where I am right now: post-vacation, ready to hit the final stretch of my 18-month introspection.

But yeah, now the song's in my head, and I apologize if I've done that to you, too.

So how ya been, kids? I missed you. The very nature of this thread makes it hideously all-about-me, but for what it's worth, I genuinely worry about all of you and hope you're making progress.

It was a wonderful vacation, an excellent opportunity to clear my mind, slow it down a little, practice being more mindful. I'm working very hard to keep those lessons intact now that I'm home. (It's been less than 12 hours, some of which I spent sleeping. The dog, back from the kennel, is very needy. The kitchen light fixtures (on different fuses which are not blown) have all stopped working. All of the cat food that was stored in garage is gone, and there is a shredded bag and a pile of bear shit in its place. Plus some pissed off cats. The greenhouse irrigation is clogged up. Welcome home!)

I had one stellar slip up, but we're talking nine days hre, so that's actually not too bad. I made restaurant choices en route, and ate healthy portions while I was there. And I moved. I swam a lot, walked, generally just kept in motion.

I wish I could swim here. But it wouldn't be the same. I just spent nine days swimming in a very cold, extremely clean and quiet lake. Going to the local Y and swimming in crowded, highly chlorinated warm water is not the same experience at all.

Here's what I learned:

I did not overeat or binge-snack because I wasn't bored.
Deliberateness is good, and I need more of it.
Routines were good for me.
Eating 75% of what I think I want is actually enough.
I've got to spend less time on this computer.
I can do a TRX workout that's effective. I just ordered my own straps for it.
Drinking more water is worth the effort and side effects.

So, it's time to look forward. I have just a bit less than five months left here. I have a list of goals and have chosen some areas on which to focus in this coming week. I can do this. You can do this. We can do this.

I'M NOT TIRED, BUT.......

But I'm saving this thought for later, when I inevitably will be. I don't mean end of day tired, I mean bone-draining, soul-sucking exhaustion, specifically with all the work involved in getting past the addiction.

"If you get tired
learn to rest
not quit"
Banksy

Pretty simple, isn't it? But let me ask you something: how many times have you started to address your addiction, got overwhelmed, and quit?

Let's think about resting, when we need to.

Let's actually define what it looks like.

For me, my recent vacation worked well as a rest. I did NOT write in a journal about my addiction, I did NOT spend the day constantly looking for ways to make better decisions. I turned off the part of my brain that's constantly analyzing, trying to figure out why I'm eating, if I'm really hungry, do I feel full yet, what need is the bagel really filling?

I moved a lot but did not have an exercise 'plan' per se. I'd only packed comfy clothes and did not have the stress of the slightly-too-tight pants to remind me of my issues. I did not weigh myself. I really did try to make good choices, but I didn't go crazy weighing portions or anything like that.

So that's what my rest looks like. It's not turning everything upside down and eating non stop. I don't think, really, that I needed to drive 750 miles one way to do it, either. I think it was just like hitting the pause button.

I need to do this the next time - or ideally, slightly before the next time happens - the next time that I get to the point where I'm about to give up.

When you want to give up........just rest. This is not a sprint; it's a marathon.

STRESSORS AND SYSTEMS

Building on yesterday's thoughts - rests and vacations and so on are great, they're important, they're necessary, they can be lifesavers.

But, they won't change a damn thing unless you address the underlying issues.

If you were a drug addict and went to a detox center for six months and came out clean, but returned to your original environment, what do you think the odds are of remaining clean? Probably not very good. The very things that drove you to your substance in the first place would still be there.

Yes, the skeptic might say, but those stressors don't drive everyone to substance abuse. It's all about character and determination and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps etc. and no one's to blame but the addict for their behavior.

Here's the thing, loves: we can argue that point until we're blue in the face and no one's likely to change their minds......and while we're doing so, the addict in question is floundering. And when the addict in question is you, or me, then it becomes and life or death scenario.

I've come to believe that the extremely self-righteous canard espoused above is a load of bullshit with a grain of truth buried in it......but, more importantly, that to a very large extent it does not matter one whit. Figuring out who to blame is a nice parlor game for addicts, and one which can provide some insight, but in the meantime, we need something far more immediate: a new system.

Rightly or wrongly, the situation in which we find ourselves has influenced our addiction. Relationship stress, financial woes, medical problems, boredom, overwork, family strife, whatever. Sure, some people don't turn to cookies or hamburgers to deal with these things. Well, good for them. We do. And we have to fix that from both ends, do you see? Simply saying "I won't eat nachos anymore" isn't enough. Regulating your calories, writing a journal, going paleo to curb cravings - these can all be helpful. But if you're staying in the same toxic swamp that drove you to addictive behavior in the first place, you're going to slip up, fast, and hard.

To be clear: yes, I am ultimately responsible for my addiction. But that responsibility means I have the right to change things in my life that are having an impact on it.

Let's talk kitchen sinks for a second. This is a non-food, non-addiction anecdote that will center my point.

On vacation, I live in a hundred and fifty year old house with a massive porcelain sink in the kitchen. It is six inches deep, and four feet long, and the depth of a normal kitchen counter. You cannot find one like it anywhere. I know, because I've tried for years.

The four feet of actual sink space allows for space for stacking scraped dishes, a plastic rectangular tub,for hot soapy water for soaking, a second tub of clean water for a first rinse, and room under the faucet for a final rinse. There is a dish drainer on the counter, with shims under it to elevate one end so it drains well. There is a little holder thing attached to the wall to hold the scouring pad so it dries quickly. There is a long rod attached to the wall above the sink to dry the washcloth and towel. When the dishes are done, you flip the plastic tubs and wipe them, and wipe the sink. Done.

As a result, the dishes get done quickly. Things do not pile up. You do not walk into the kitchen and feel your joy being sucked out of your soul.

Now, contrast that with my house.

I also have a porcelain sink, but it's very small. No room for a soaking tub. No place to stack scraped dishes. This morning, I finished my bagel and coffee and carried the dishes into the kitchen. There's no room in the sink, I can't find the scouring pad, as there is no designated place to keep it - so wherever it is, it's gross. There's no room on the counter, because it's full of bags of cat food, which can't go outside because bears have breached the garage door (long story) and also the mail's all stacked there, because in 35 years living here we have yet to figure out a better place to dump incoming mail.

That's only describing a tenth of the mess and chaos, but can you see my point? We don't get the dishes done here because the whole system is a mess. I went on vacation, noticed the stress-lowering that came from having a better system in place, and vowed.........now, HERE, friends, is the key: what did I vow?

Before, i would have made a solemn promise to do a better job washing dishes at home. Probably written three journal pages about it and developed a spreadsheet too, because that's me. (Sigh).

BUT. I know better now. I'm not making any promises about doing the dishes. What I WILL do is fix the system.

I've ordered a wire basket to hold the scouring pad, and figured out where to install it (the porcelain sink has a high and impenetrable backsplash, so that's actually a challenge.) I'm reworking the whole counter top to accommodate a tub for soaking dirty dishes, on its own drainer, which means that the coffeemaker needs a new home, which in turn starts a whole domino effect of rearrangement, but it's worth it.

I will make no sweeping promises about washing dishes. Instead, I'll improve the whole system so that it's easier to do so.

Because promises don't mean shit if you can't find the dishcloth.

Now, that was about dishes, and we have to talk addiction, but do you see? It's the same thing.

I did well with food on vacation because I stayed busy in a good way, because I was able to put a lot of financial and business tress out of my head, because meals were planned thoughtfully and purchases were coordinated to ensure as little waste as possible, and so on. All the elements that led to my making good choices were in place. I had success, and vowed..........here we go, with this vow thing.

I did NOT vow to 'keep up the great work once I get home!!!' with attendant exclamation points. I have vowed to do just that for probably, oh, the last thirty vacations to the cabin.

No, this time I'm smarter. What I've vowed to do is to FIX THE SYSTEMS that are out of whack here at home. The food-hoarding over-buying prep-for-armageddon mentality that has resulted in two adults living in a home with four freezers? Got to rethink that. (In fairness, though, one is for business only, and we DO live on a farm and raise meat animals. These freezers could be used economically and logically and not just be stuffed full of frozen pierogies from the local Polish Catholic Church's annual sale.)

The idea of buying food on sale and then figuring out meal plans after? There's some merit to that, except that I buy ALL the food that's on sale and then end up wasting a good bit. Time to recalculate.

My beloved breaks at the computer, one of which I'm indulging in at the moment? Need a big change here. I'm spending far too much time on my ample ass. I found a wind-up kitchen timer, and from now on there's a time limit. And I'll look, again, into a stand-up computer, or one with a treadmill.

On the rare occasion when the two of us are both home for an evening, the pattern is to collapse into our respective comfy chairs and read while the TV is droning, generally with snacks. I can't spend less time with my husband than I already do, but spending our 'together' time in this way is not to our benefit. We talked, a little bit, about this on the drive home last weekend. Tonight is our only evening both at home, and we're still tired from driving 750 miles straight on Saturday, and all the catching-up work we've had to do at home, and it's raining. I might not be able to make a lot of progress on this one quickly.

Friends, it's all about systems. Systems help us find the starting point, the root of the problem. Promises mean nothing if you don't have the system in place. In fact, they're worse than nothing, because when they're inevitably broken, you've added guilt and self-loathing, and that's a strong link in the chain around our necks, isn't it?

Toxic people can't always be removed, but they can be contained. One of the smartest things I ever did was give myself permission, on my 25th anniversary, to stop trying to get my inlaws to like -approve of me. As soon as I said to hell with that, I found that was able to treat them with complete and total respect - and keep them at an emotional distance. Their sharp little needles can't actually reach very far. I'd been trying for so many years to deflect them. All I had to do was step further away.

Toxic situations can be as easy to fix as installing a holder for a scouring pad over the sink, or as complicated as repairing a not-hostime but stale marriage. They can be obviously related to food addiciton, like restructuring the pantry or rethinking the weekly food purchases, or they can be seemingly unrelated, like organizing the sock drawer.........but having that clean pair of seamless-toe socks in the right place when it's time to go for a long walk can be the difference between success and failure of your exercise program that helps your metabolism and mood and distracts you from overeating.

The timer just rang. I have to end this or type standing up. Time to go wash dishes. Hang in there with me, friends.

OKAY, IT'S JUST A DIFFERENT SYSTEM

Stopped at Target yesterday to buy the thingie that would hold the scouring pad for my kitchen sink, as per yesterday's post.

I am never sure how this happens at Target and it's usually not quite this extreme but I left with eight towels, four notebooks, and a vacuum cleaner.

But no thingie.

In my defense, our towels are so old they're shredding every time they go through the wash. And the vacuum half-died before Christmas last year, it's literally taken four or five times the time and effort to vacuum since then. We only have one rug in the house, so it's not like this was a big deal. But - systems, right? This vacuum can do the hardwood floors too. Surely this is going to save me time, and make the house more pleasant. A new vacuum had been on the list for months, and they had one in a mangled box that was marked down significantly, right next to an identical one in a non-mangled box at the normal price.

Now, here's how it goes: I'd also, literally hours before going out on errands, recommitted myself to frugality. Oct-Nov's projected expenses are higher than projected income. One rainy market day (like today) can really set me back. So I'd decided to stick to absolute necessities. that would not, technically, have included a replacement vacuum. The old one worked if you sort of raked up the dog hair first and went slowwwwwly and went over everything multiple times.

Now, this is a forum to discuss food addiction and here I am going on about vacuum cleaners. But there's an underlying principle that crosses over here.

Plans, as Winston Churchill said, are useless. Planning is everything, but plans are useless.

I had a reasonable plan - no spending - but when confronted with a particular situation (extremely low price on a vacuum that can deal with dog hair) I made a different choice.

This was not irresponsible. This was not retail therapy. This was not me getting some kind of high from spending. It's a a tool I needed that will provide a service that's measurably better than what I had before (better performance, less time) which was available for a lower cost than I'd expected to pay at a later date.

Not buying that vacuum yesterday would have been a mistake.

Let's apply this to our addiction. We need to plan, absolutely. We need to set parameters, we need to perhaps eliminate some things, we need structure.

But at the same time, rigidity will work against us, and will keep us from making the truly best decisions. Because circumstances change. You planned to walk five miles today but there's a tornado warning. You were going to buy apples to eat with your lunch with your lunch this week but you got to the market and found that pears were in for the first time this season. You were going to eat a big lunch and small dinner but got an invitation to join friends at a pub that evening and reversed your plans.

I think we get a little freaked out sometimes when these things happen, when we deviate from our original plan. And this comes back to my recurring these lately - good systems. A good system is going to have some flexibility at the very end of it. The basic part is going to be pretty solid: you need the right tools. You need good habits, good routines. But you also need, once all that's in place, to be able to roll with the unexpected.

That base need to be solid, though. I need - back to vacuums for a sec - to have a routine, I need to decide that on, say, Mon and Thurs mornings I'll vacuum the library rug. If i had that routine in place, but needed to shift it occasionally, it would be okay. (For transparency, I'm prettys ure I vacuum that rug once a month right now, if that. I know. Ick. But, see, this is why I can't be talking about flexibility with vacuuming - I don't have any routine to flex FROM.)

Same thing with my food habits. I need that solid base. I need the right tools, buy which I mean making good decisions at the purchasing level. I need good routines: have a smoothie in place of a meal once or twice a week, have a salad with a protein as the default lunch, etc. Once I'm better at that, allowing the flexibility occasionally is going to be okay.

Now. Just have to figure out where to find the thingie for the kitchen sink.

MY KITCHEN IS FULL OF ANTS

Do not read this is you get creeped out by crawly things. Just. Do. Not.

Because the crawly things, specifically the anty kind of crawly things, are infesting my kitchen and I want to talk about it.

i do not mean the kind of infestation that you can solve with bay leaves, or peppermint oil, or cinnamon, or burning incense during a full moon.

I mean I just found a fucking golf ball sized mass of the little bastards in a drawer, with a huge mass of eggs.

See why I gave you a trigger warning?

There have been ants wandering aimlessly around the kitchen for some time. Just a few on the counter, or two or three in the pantry.

Maybe they came in on the dog, I said. Maybe the incessant rain this summer drove them inside.

i did the things. I bought non-toxic ant death. I deployed the bay leaves, the cinnamon sticks, and felt that I was doing something.

But you see, I didn't look in the drawers.

Don't know about you, but I don't use the real estate in my kitchen as efficiently as I should. There's one drawer, the drawer that will henceforth be known as the Ant Drawer, that holds nothing but canning jar rings, which is kind of silly since that's a limited-season sort of thing. I don't have the foil paper in a convenient place and I use it a lot, but I have a drawer in the kitchen island (it's really an old dresser) that's full of canning jar lids.

So I open it today, planning to can some peppers, and there it is. The mother lode (at least, I hope so) of roiling, swarming ant bastards.

I deployed all available ant death, thereby making it morally impossible to file for organic certification for the farm for the rest of my lifetime. Had there been napalm nearby, I would have used it.

And then of course, I had to clean up all the ant bastard corpses, empty all the drawers in the entire cabinet, scrub the contents, scrub the drawers, spray them, let them air dry, re-line with fresh paper. I went the basement and sprayed the ceiling underneath that area in case they were coming up from underneath. I put out new, intense ant death traps. I would have lit a smudge to purify the kitchen if I hadn't been worried that the very air was flammable at that point.

I took steps that I would not have otherwise condoned. I also ripped apart neighboring cabinets, opened boxes, searched everywhere.

Now, hours later, the kitchen smells of Murphy's Oil Soap (since I found six partial bottles during this purge) and a lingering scent of sprayable ant death. I'm still not confident about lighting the gas stove until it dissipates.

It occurs to me that, for years, I approached my addiction the way I initially approached the ants. Try a little surface solution. Pretend it's not so bad. Tell yourself it will take a little longer to show results. No need to disturb the surface.

But what I needed all along - what finally got me on the road to success - was opening the drawer and finding the hideous mass of ants and going into full Hulk mode. Flinging open doors, shining lights into crevices, scraping off layers of gunk, using chemicals that are more caustic than I would normally consider. Because this shit had to be dealt with.

It was awful. It was scary. I wasn't sure I had control of it. I thought i might make it much worse. Once I opened it up, I couldn't get the lid back on, you know? There was nowhere to go but straight ahead. I will have nightmares. I may have PTSD. And I will need to be vigilant in case it starts up again.

The paragraph above could be about ants, or the food addiction.

Look in your drawers, friends. Just have a can of Ant Death ready when you do. Problems are solvable, but not if you pretend they aren't there, or if you don't deploy appropriate measures.

Now I'm going to go shower for the fourth time today because just talking about it makes me feel crawly.

FINDING A NEW WAY TO COPE

More wisdom from our brothers and sisters who struggle with drug addiction:
We turn to (our abused substance) because it helps us cope with something that we feel we just can't cope with otherwise.

So, obviously, we need to find a new way to cope. And obviously, we need to do what we can about the Thing, about whatever it is that we need to cope with in the first place.

But here is a less obvious takeaway from the observation:

It's okay to feel the you can't cope. It's okay to feel overwhelmed. You are not less of a person, you are not unworthy, or a failure, because you can't cope with (fill in the blank.)

I am studying Buddhism, in the way that you try to learn about something that's caught your interest and you want to know more about it, as opposed to a full-blown scholarly approach. And one of the first principles is that life is full of pain and sorrow, and it's necessary to accept that. Not to accept any specific painful thing, or to look away from it, or ignore someone in need - but rather, to just accept that pain exists. There's no point railing against the universe because life isn't fair, or because terrible things happen.

Now, I got stuck on this for a bit, what with a lifetime of tilting at windmills and so on, and my current horrible obsession with politically inspired rage.

But I think I get it. There's no point in being outraged that humans are being beastly to each other (with apologies to noble beasts for the word choice) as a general concept. There IS, emphatically, a point in being outraged about any circumstance in which I have some measure of influence. But outrage against the actual existence of evil will simply exhaust us.

That's a digression from the relevant point here, which is: dear soul, it is okay to be effed up. The Thing, the Thing with which we need to cope? It's going al always exist, or be replaced by another Thing, and that's just really a part of life. We'll get some of it right, and sometimes we'll fail.

We just need, we food addicts, to find something other than ice cream to soothe us when we do.

So, here's what I suspect is crucial: a first step, like that introductory concept in Buddhism, is to simply acknowledge that we are stress exists, although we may each define it differently. It exists. It will always exist.

And we need to have coping mechanisms. Also okay. Everyone does. We just can't see all of them. We (sometimes) see the alcoholic or the drug abuser, but sometimes those things are invisible until it's too late. People cut themselves, or drive way too fast to release anger, or lash out at strangers on the internet to make themselves feel better. We won't always see the domestic abuse that results from uncontrolled rage, or the gambling, or the porn addiction. We know those are not good things, but let me suggest that the person who's emotionally totally walled off - you know some, and I think I married one - is also 'coping' by shutting feelings down. Right? I think there's plenty of coping strategies that are harmful to the cope-r, but not necessarily obviously so.

And us? We eat.

But there's healthy coping mechanisms, too, and I, personally, intend to speed-date several of them in the next few weeks. I'm making a list, because, yes, "Listo, Ergo Sum," it's what I do. I'm going to try every healthy coping mechanism I can think of, and I'm asking friends to contribute ideas. (Certainly, do so, if you'd like to hit 'respond' or pm me). Exercise, music, aimless walks in the woods, reading, kittens, grandlovey snuggling, anything I can come up with - these are things I would do anyway, but right now I'm auditioning them, I'm dating them, I'm paying close attention to see: does this relieve my anxiety? Does this really help me cope?

Anything except food. I'm' making an exception for good coffee, And I'll try again to love tea. I feel that a person who loves tea lurks inside my body but hasn't gotten out yet.

Anything that isn't unhealthy. So a bookstore trip's okay, with a previously carefully set spending limit. And visiting my good friend's new puppies is good, but bringing one home is not.

To sum up: there will always be something sucky going on, and everyone needs a blankie or some way to cope. We just have to find one that's positive.

With that in mind, I'm spending the rest of the evening gazing into the limpid brown eyes of someone large and warm and hairy. He's got a vet appointment tomorrow and gets some shots, so I want to make this evening nice and comfy for him. First encounter in the speed-dating stress relievers = one big goofy English Shepherd.

BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

Romans 7:11 "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing."

Honestly? I think that was written by someone who understood addiction.

EVERYONE IS A MESS. FULL STOP.

We worry about our food addiction and the effect it has on our relationships. We worry that no one will truly love us for who we are, that no one will see past the extra pounds, that we'll be judged as being weak because we overeat. There's a few more verses to this song, but no need for me to write them out - you can sing it along with me already.

So let me tell you about a woman I will call Lena. I have a friend, the friend who's struggling addiction who I've mentioned before. He spends a lot of time talking about Lena. They met when running a marathon years ago and stayed in touch. She's an ex-marine, owns her own business, is stunningly beautiful, is sexually adventurous, athletic, wild, sassy, etc. Well-off financially. All the things. According to my friend, who seems to worship her from a distance, she is all things perfect in a woman. He's shown me pictures, and I admit, I wondered what it would be like to look like her. He tells me about the PR she set in her most recent race, and I wish I could just run that far, never mind setting a personal record. He tells me how things are going with her most recent Adonis-like conquest, and yes, I wonder what it would be like to be that sought-after.

Last year, after hearing about the wonders of Lena for three years, I finally got to meet her. i spent an evening sitting next to her at a crowded table of people, and we fell into a conversation.

She is miserable.

She doesn't trust the men who pursue her, because they're only after her for her looks. She discounts any success her business has had, because her clients are just trying to get in her pants. She doesn't have many women friends, because they find her intimidating. She won't leave her house to get the mail out of her curbside mailbox without full makeup, because she's getting older and her skin is showing it and she has no idea who she is, or even IF she is, without 'that face'. The wild and crazy sexual antics are attempts to reassure herself that she's still got it.

I have no idea if any of this is actually true. What I do know is that she believes it is. And she's miserable.

Friends, we think we're alone in this mess. We think that our addiction has screwed us up, has screwed up relationships, made us fearful of reaching out, etc. It has. that's all true.

But here's a women who 'has it all'. Here's a size zero blonde with big blue eyes and she doesn't believe anyone can love her for who she really is, that no one sees past the makeup, that she's judged as vain and self-centered. She's hitting late middle age ad wondering how, if all she has to offer are her looks, how she'll function when that's gone?

And so I found myself at a dinner party, sitting there in my size 20 secondhand clothing store castoffs, with my hair flying around in all directions and whatever makeup I'd had on long since rubbed off, holding the perfectly manicured hand of a princess in my arthritic, chipped-nail, calloused hands, telling her that she was more than just the surface, and that she was truly beautiful without all the layers of artifice, and that she needn't be afraid to be who she was, to shine, to be true to her self.

It's the same message, with some adjustments, that I've been telling myself and trying to share here. But it was a powerful moment when I realized that we all need to hear it. And that we, food addicts, aren't alone in our insecurity. The whole world's messed up, kids. Look, we live in world where people get ahead by making us want what they're selling. And to make us want what they're selling, they have to first make us feel that we're less-than if we don't have it. If we buy it, we fall for the next thing, and want that. If we don't buy it, we feel that we're unworthy, because we don't have sparkling teeth or perky boobs or the right car.

We are all a mess. It up to each one of us to take the blinders off and see that, and stop using it as an excuse. It's up to each of us to hold the hands of the person beside us at the dinner table and look them in the eye and say "You are fine just the way you are." And then of course to look in the mirror and say the same thing to ourselves.

We are addicts, and we are getting better, but sometimes we mess up, and we are worthy of love, and able to give love. All of those things are true.

ANOTHER PARADIGM SHIFT

Old way of thinking: Why is this happening to me?
New way of thinking: What does this have to teach me?

I've been feeling resentful about my addiction - much in the way my alcoholic friend feels when someone refers to casually drinking. Why couldn't it be that easy for me? Wahh. Poor, poor ME.

I'm shifting now to asking what it is that I'm supposed to learn from it. And wow, does that ever open things up and cast them in a new light.