VISUALIZING THE GOAL

Although I'd love to and need to lose weight, I'm trying not to define this journey by a number on the scale. It's all about health, mental and physical.

Problem is...........I don't know how to define that.

If my goal were to be 160 pounds (probably, actually, the most reasonable goal I could ever hope for) I could make a little chart and tuck it inside a closet door and, you know, stick on gold stars for every pound lost, or something like that.

But my goal is to not be batshit crazy, not have addictive impulsive behaviors, slow down the brain enough to function but not so much as to lose creativity. How do I devise a gold star chart for that?

If my goal were to wear a size 10 pair of jeans, I could buy a pair of the same style jeans in every size between my current 18-20 and that 10, and work my way down, and have a nice celebration when I get too skinny for a size, and so on.

But my goal is to be a kickass old lady. How do I measure that? It's a rhetorical question; obviously, I can't, really. I want to be a force for good in this troubled world, and I feel pretty strongly that I have to get my shit together in order to do so, but of course there's nothing stopping me from doing good things in the interim. I want to be strong and healthy and able to dance at my grandchildren's weddings someday, and to not require assisted living when I'm older, but I do have a progressive, really shitty autoimmune thing going on that's attacking and deforming my joints, and a lot of how that situation plays out will depend on finding the right combination of meds to slow it down. Sheer willpower won't really have much of an effect.

Setting goals that are impossible to reach will hurt me right now. I need some kind of success.

Setting goals that are too ridiculously lame will seem patronizing and foolish. I need my successes to mean something.

I guess I need to be able to visualize that kickass old lady I want to become.

This is not easy in a culture that worships youth and fears aging.

Also, everyone's got a different definition. I have a friend whose goal is to remain a size 2 through her old age and be able to afford her Botox once every six months. I think that's pretty much her whole list. I have another friend who is younger than I am but who speaks, already, of the kind of retirement home she wants to go to someday.

I try thinking of amazing role models, women who are older than I am, and heaven knows there's no shortage. I can think of musicians, farmers, poets, activists, teachers, writers, scientists............there are so many. But where do I fit in with all that? And how would I measure it?

I really want that chart on the wall, you see. I really want something objective that I can measure. I am, literally, four feet away from an 8x4 foot whiteboard in my home office, that is currently completely blank. I can, and I will write some goals on it today, goals that I can somehow measure, to help me through the next few months. Because when I go to bed tonight, I really need to see that I've done something right.

The thing is, the steps I need to take are kind of embarrassing when written down. I have a son who has started competitive rowing, and he has goals like "row one million meters this month" and things like that. Doesn't that sound impressive? Whereas, my goal might be "chew food before swallowing." It just doesn't have the came cachet.

Maybe I'll use those objective goals like reaching a certain weight as tools, as steps to the bigger, still a bit hazy goal. And maybe it's okay to write things on the whiteboard like "ran errands without stopping for fast food". Sure, it's kind of lame compared to, say, 'run five miles". But I can't run five miles anyway, and I could do my farm deliveries today without stopping for french fries.

I guess I have to start where I am.

SHARING TAKES THE SHAME AWAY

I'm a ridiculously transparent person, as this monolithic spewing here might indicate. But I've never been honest with other people about my food addiction. How could I? I wasn't honest with myself until now.

But now I've told seven real life people (as opposed to my imaginary internet friends, as my kids used to call them) about my plan to get my shit together, and my experiences with the hypnotherapist. I didn't make a big deal about it. Just sort of matter of factly said "here is something I'm dealing with right now."

One cried and told me she thought no one else did the things she did regarding food. She is 5'10" and willow thin. I would never have guessed. We talked for two hours on her front porch while her dinner casserole burned and she didn't care. She's making an appointment tomorrow.

Two people told me I was one of the strongest people they knew and it took a lot of courage to be able to talk about it and get help.

Some asked what they could do to help. One said "how can I be a part of your team?" and suggested that I could phone her when I needed distractions. Another offered to walk a local trail with me once a week.

One said he was a recovering drug addict and that I could call him any time I felt wobbly.

There was not one person who did not have some kind of connection with the issue, or support to offer me.

So, friends, here's my takeaway on all this.

People are often much cooler than you think they're going to be. Too much time is spent worrying about what other people think, in general. When the shit hits the fan, or in my case, when it needs to get sorted out, the good people will rise.

Putting it out in the open has given me a huge sense of relief, and of strength, and of support. It's also taken some power away from the addiction. When I left the market last evening where I am a weekly vendor, I told my friend who has the next stand "I have to drive past six fast food places to get home. There is a turkey sandwich waiting for me there. I just have to drive straight home without stopping." She handed me an apple and said 'eat this right now so there's something good in your stomach, and text me when you get home. And if you find yourself pulling into a fast food parking lot, text me and wait for me to answer."

It was a lot easier to drive past the McDonald's.

If you think that your people might react differently, maybe you need to give them a chance. Or - and this is the hard part - maybe you need new people. I'm being transparent, yes, but i'm not being stupid. There is a Toxic Person in my world, and I will not be sharing any part of this journey with her, because I know she will sabotage me with passive aggressive fake kindness. I get that she probably does so because of her own insecurities - dragging someone else down probably makes her feel better in a twisted way. I get that I should feel some kind of compassion for her, and I do.......but it's the same kind of compassion I feel for a tiger in the zoo: I'm still glad there's a fence between us. I've put my Toxic Person in a cage for the time being, and I'm choosing to surround myself with love.

Had any of the people I told reacted by mocking me or anything negative, I would have learned a valuable lesson about those people. The journey we are on now is a very, very difficult one, and we cannot succeed if we give toxic people any control of us. I'm not shutting my TP out entirely; I will still have them here for Christmas dinner (it's an in-law), But from now on, I'm imagining that every word that comes out of her mouth just sort of floats above my head, almost like she's a character in a movie I'm half-watching but not really interested in.

And once you say the words "I'm an addict", the shame starts to seep away slowly. I can see why AA's first step is to say those words. I'm truly surprised at the feeling of freedom I have, knowing that those people now know who I really am and they are still rooting for me.

THIRD HYPNOTHERAPY SESSION, and DNA

I wish I could report more about this, but........I'm in some kind of dream world for most of the sessions, while C. reads her prepared script to my subconscious. It sounds so weird when I describe it, but it's all very matter-of-fact.

The changes that have happened since I started are subtle, but I can see a difference. I used to have a lot of worry about whether or not I could ever change my behavior. That's been replaced with a bit of calm (something unusual for me) and a sense that yes, this is going to happen, at a steady, sometimes slow pace. I have a sense now that I'm going to move in the right direction.

I have made some bad food choices since I started, but I notice more deliberateness about them. I haven't had one of those totally uncontrolled animalistic feeding frenzies. I've eaten at a fast food place a time or two, but I'm ordering a smaller size or just one item, and I notice that I'm chewing the food, and tasting it. (And noticing that it doesn't taste all that great really.) I left yesterday's appointment and had to drive by several fast food places, and at each one I thought "that would be good.........but it can wait."

C., the therapist, and I had agreed that planting a message in my brain that said "junk food is evil, you can only eat raw vegetables and drink water" or something equally extreme would definitely result in a quick weight loss, but it would not truly solve the problem. As an ADD person with addictive tendencies, I would simply substitute something else to get that rush that food has been giving me.

I saw that with my father's life. He had polio, and his father was a surgeon who put him on morphine, probably with the best of intentions originally. But my father became addicted to it and was able to help himself to it from the pharmacy that was part of his father's practice. I remember visiting that place just once before my grandfather died, and seeing shelves of glass jars full of pills with handwritten labels - a whole different time.

He got off the morphine by turning to alcohol and that got him through his teens and well into his thirties. My mother wouldn't marry him unless he stopped drinking, so he did, and turned to prescription drugs. With all of his other physical ailments (there were many) it didn't raise any red flags. After awhile, he started seeing multiple doctors for the same problem, so he could get different prescriptions, getting them filled at different pharmacies. back them, no one checked.

He had so many of the personality issues that I do. I realized early in life, in my own teens, that I needed to be really careful. I didn't drink, at all. I felt like it was a Pandora's box that I could not open. I didn't drink until I turned fifty. At that point I realized that my own kids were grown adults who could drink socially without any problems, so the curse hadn't passed to them. I started drinking occasionally and i find that I enjoy it, and I can walk away from it. I thought I was doing great, but I didn't realize I'd just taken those addictive tendencies and transferred them to food.

So, if I wasn't overeating, I'd possibly be abusing alcohol or something else. The path we're taking in the hypnotherapy sessions is to address the root problem, which goes deeper than just the food. The food is what I'm trying to use to quiet the problem. I need to go deeper to have a solution that will truly last.

Yesterday's session also dealt with the issues I have with 'adulting'. I need to do about six adulty things today - call the veterinarian, refill a prescription, pay a bill, find some missing paperwork, things like that. For reasons I don't understand, I find these things to be incredibly challenging to do. I'm sure it's all connected to my food and brain issues, and C. agrees, although I don't quite see how. She thinks it's the adrenaline rush I get when I manage to pull things out at the last minute, which I nearly always do. I guess that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm embarking on a day in which I genuinely believe I can reach my goals. It's a good feeling. Blessings to all of you here. We can get through today.

ONE STEP AT A TIME, UNLESS.........

....unless your pedometer also measures 'steps' when you're driving your vehicle. It might be time for new shocks.

STILL OVEREATING BUT FOR DIFFERENT REASONS. IS THIS PROGRESS?

Maybe it's the effects of the hypnotherapy process, maybe it's the positive energy that's come from boxing up a few toxic people and giving them less power over me, maybe it's exhaustion from having written so much. :) Darned if I know why, but something seismic has shifted..........sort of. Overall, I'm doing better with eating like a Normal Person and with avoiding binges. I've gotten a little more exercise, and I think that helps too, in more than just the obvious ways.

But I'm going to stop for fast food when I leave the house in a few minutes. I know what I'm going to order; it will be one of the lesser-evil choices on the menu. I think I've figured out another key: I'm just LAZY. At least, when it comes to taking gentle care of my own personal self. I don't bother making my own bed or putting my own laundry away, or making myself a real, healthy lunch with the copious amounts of fresh food I have here on the farm.

I'm much more nurturing to other people.

So now I've got to figure out how to nurture myself. I started by making my bed today. I know it sounds silly. Maybe you've done it every day of your life. Not me. Too much to do, too many things to take care of.....everything except myself. I am already smiling when I look at that nicely made-up bed.

Tomorrow when I make a lunch for the husband, maybe I'll pack one for myself too, even though I'm working from home tomorrow. Then it will be there and ready when I take a break.

And I need to pay attention to this for a few days, and see what percentage of the bad food choices stem from this.

MESSES-R-US

I went for my fourth hypno session yesterday, and the therapist told me that she wanted to have another consultation session instead of an active session, at no charge to me, because she felt - and I'm paraphrasing but only slightly - that I'm such a mess she needs more information from me before proceeding.

Now, I bring this up for two reasons: one, it's kind of funny, really, and I never mind laughing at myself.

But two, and more importantly: I do not appear to be a huge effing mess on the outside. I'm overweight, sure, but I can clean up okay. I'm a good public speaker. I do not have anti-social behaviors that mark me as a mess. And there is truly no Big Trauma in my life. There just isn't. There's the Death of a Thousand Papercuts from my late mother, and I can see how that's contributed to my food addiction issues. I bear her no ill will, but she sure eroded any self-confidence I had as a kid and teen. But there's no abuse or trauma of substance whatsoever in my life.

I mention that because during one insomnia-fueled night I read a lot of the older posts on this page, and I noticed that there are occasionally comments from one of us (because we are a team here) that say something like 'I don't understand why I do this, it's not like I was sexually abused and have body-shame issues". or some variant on that.

I am here to tell you, my friends, that you can be pretty darn screwed up from those papercuts. okay? There are a lot of layers to all of us. My therapist has asked me questions and I literally have two entirely different answers and I believe both to be true, so I clearly have a lot of work to do in order to heal.

Let's give ourselves credit for starting the journey even while we're flailing around trying to do the right thing but still messing up. And let's recognize that even if what brought us to this point is more the papercut kind of pain and not the big explosive kind, it's still pain, and it still scars us, and we can still heal.

"IT REQUIRES A WHOLE NEW LIFESTYLE"

That's a comment that made my head snap up last night while the news was on TV. I was buried in a pretty good novel, but sort of subliminally listening to the news at the same time.

The story was about using Narcan to revive opioid users who have gone into cardiac arrest. Specifically, the reporters had done a story on a recovery program for people who have been 'brought back' by the use of Narcan. There had been a story about its use in our area recently, followed by some particularly horrible "Just let them die" letters to the editor of the local paper, and our community is grappling with the hate and callousness that was exposed there,but I'm getting off topic.

The gentleman - the hero - who runs the recovery program spoke about the challenges drug addicts face when they're trying to become clean. It's not simply the drugs, he pointed out. It's friends, workplaces, routines, patterns, it's everything. So many things can be contributory, and so many things need to be addressed in order for the addict to truly move on from self-destructive behavior. "It requires a whole new lifestyle," he summed up. "These folks need to create a whole new environment for themselves."

Whoa. People. Seriously. Is that hitting you the way it did me?

We need a whole new lifestyle. Well, okay, I do, anyway.

I've been nibbling at the edges of my problem, no pun intended.

But I haven't been looking at a big enough picture.

And I still can't see it in its entirety. But since hearing that statement last night, little bits and pieces are starting to become obvious.

I get up in the morning and make an English muffin and put both butter and peanut butter on it, and carry it up to the computer, and sit and scroll through a few news sites, drink some coffee, maybe make a second muffin. I mean, I'm consuming a days' worth of calories right there.

I've been small-timing this, thinking oh, what if I just have half a muffin instead? What if I use less peanut butter?

But I need to think bigger. I need to get up in the morning and DO SOMETHING ELSE FIRST. Change the routine entirely. then, that bowl of fruit and oatmeal might actually be easier to swallow, so to speak.

The recovering drug addicts in the news story were encouraged to shake things up, even if it meant moving to a new apartment. But at the very least, shaking up the routine. Taking a different route to the bus stop to get to work, so they weren't passing their dealer's corner. Not hanging around with friends who are using.

Those of us without drug addiction issues hear those suggestions and think well, DUH. But maybe my / our food addiction issues have some solutions that are equally obvious, just not to us.

I am in a pattern which encourages my addiction. I hit the grocery store frequently (and always buy myself a treat), but there's no reason I couldn't go less often. I eat in my car (never good things, and never because I'm actually hungry) and I could clean the car out, really detail it, and try to start over with it as a no-food zone.

I hang out with people who think nothing of meeting for pizza and beer a few times a week. Need to look really hard at that. They're good people - this isn't quite the same as a drug addict avoiding their dealer. But there can surely be some kind of tweak.

My house is geared toward my addiction in ways I have yet to fully realize. The center of gravitational pull in my house is a comfy couch in the library, where I will sit and read and eat.

I own exercise equipment - you know, hand held weights and things like that - which are not easily accessible, by which I mean I last saw them during the Bush administration, and I don't mean Jr's.

I have good walking shoes with good support, but when I take the dog out for his morning tinkle, I wear slippers, and then I tell him "We won't go for a walk right now, I don't have good shoes on."

See where I'm going with this? I need to put the weights an exercise bands next to my comfy chair, I need to put my walking shoes beside my bed and put them on first thing in the morning. I need to set up my environment for success.

Yes, that's it: I need to set up three things for success. One is my out-of-house routines, one is my people, and one is my home environment.

I've been telling myself I need to drink more water, and I bought cases of bottled water (sorry, planet, I'll get to you soon) but I don't put the water in the fridge on the top shelf dead center where it's the first thing I see when I open the door. And so many of these other things are similar: I know what to do, but I haven't made it easy enough to do it. Those good walking shoes? I'm not actually sure where they even are right now. I need a spot for them. And if I can find the $, I need an identical pair that stays in the car so that if I'm fifteen minutes early for the dentist appointment, I can trot around the parking lot for a bit before I go inside.

My environment, a fair amount of which is under my control, is enabling my addiction. There are elements of it that I can change. My goal for this weekend is to identify as many of those elements as possible, and start making adjustments. To create an environment for myself that encourages a healthy lifestyle. Figure out the tools for healthy choices -t he shoes, the water, the hand-held weights - and put those suckers front and center.

PEOPLE......PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE (young people won't get the reference)

It's a really good time for me to address this. In a few days, I'll be on a short vacation with extended family, in a cabin in the bush in northern Ontario. My theory about this being similar to the need a recovering alcoholic or drug addict has for creating new patterns and habits can really, really be tested there - and hopefully, it will act as a reset button when I come home.

I've really realized in the last few days how my entire environment enables my food addiction.

So I'm looking hard at it, trying to see what might change.

Some things are not possible to change at this time. Last night's a good example: I do all the cooking here, and I do it alone. Now I've got issues regarding the husband, but this actually isn't one of them. I love to cook.

But by 'alone', I mean that Himself is generally sacked out in front of the TV when he gets home from work, and I'm two rooms away in the kitchen. (He's got a chronic illness, and he's generally exhausted when he gets home, this is not a problem, in and of itself, it's just how it plays out, as I'll describe.)

So, last night? I made two gorgeous steaks for dinner. Took a good look at them and thought you know, that's a shit ton of protein right there, that could really be two dinners. So I cut each one in half, while they were still in the cast iron pan.

And I had a little taste, because you know, the now four steaks weren't all the same size. (Like that matters? Yeesh. But that's what was going through my head.)

So a bite here, a bite there, and I now have four much smaller pieces of steak. I put one on each of our plates for dinner, with some brown rice and a salad.

Then, after dinner........I'm tidying up a bit, and I look at the remaining two pieces. They really aren't that big. I could have just a few more bites (I did) and put the last piece in the husband's lunch the next day. He leaves for a meeting, I walk the dog, I come back in....and eat the last piece. My stomach is ready to explode. I hate myself in that moment. But I kept eating. I probably ate over a pound of steak. I am horrified. That much protein would feed a family of six. The Third World is starving, my own neighbors in this country may be starving, and I'm shoving a ribeye into my face. I hate myself.

Now, clearly I have a problem. And I'm working on it, I really am. But do you see where the environmental problem comes in? If I had another person in the kitchen with me when I was cooking, I wouldn't have eaten so much. If the kitchen was even in sight of the room where the husband watches TV, I wouldn't have eaten so much. I am not making excuses for my behavior here - this is all on me. But the layout of my house makes it easy for me to eat secretly. The husband's chronic exhaustion makes him remote; he's like a character in a play who's nearly always off-stage.

The layout of my house, and the fact that I generally cook alone, is not the reason I overeat. But, it is truly one of the things I need to address as I look at my environment, and the ways in which it can contribute to my healing.

I will not overeat significantly on vacation next week. The only food there will be what we bring in. It's a drive to any store, and there will be no errands run, so I won't be casually stopping for binge-y food. I would never eat a massive amount of steak there, since, if it's in the cabin fridge, it's meant for a family meal. There are no fast food places, other than possibly while we are in transit, and I'm going to lobby hard for better choices of eating establishments en route. There will be tiny human beings Velcroed to me at all times; they will wake me up in the morning and hang with me all day. I won't shove chips into my mouth with a grandchild right there. Cooking will be collaborative with my son, and there will always be people around in the cabin.

In short, the environment itself will help me make good choices.

So, when I get home, I need to figure out what kinds of changes to make here. There is always too much food in this house; it's a by-product of being a farmer. I mean, most people buy a pound of burger at a time. I buy a cow. Most people bake a loaf of bread every now and then; I crank out cookies, breads and other things for a weekly market in a commercial kitchen on the farm. (I don't do much of the baking now but I have an employee who does.) Think about that: exquisite baked goods being prepared right under your nose. Sigh. We're harvesting figs this week - if I had another kind of lifestyle, I might eat a few every year when they're in season, but I will literally pick two thousand of them over the next month, and - if I'm not careful - I will eat six of them every day. I have an enormous pantry, and - I guess this something in my DNA passed down from a mother who lived through the Depression in difficult circumstances - I keep it jammed full of crackers and nuts and pasta and everything imaginable.

So. there's two things to address, right there. I need to have less food easily available. I need to have guests here for dinner, so someone's hanging out in the kitchen. I need to reduce opportunities for stealth eating. I need to tell the lovely woman who bakes for me to stop putting an assortment of freshly baked everything on the kitchen counter in the house before she leaves on market day. I need to get the next cow butchered differently - for the two of us, I need smaller packages in the freezer, so I'm not thawing a pound and a half of steak at a time.

I need to surround myself with people.

CAN I CHOOSE MY NEXT ADDICTION? SHOULD I?

This is my last post for about ten days, I'm heading out tomorrow for a vacation, assuming I can get everything together in time.

So, let's get to the question of the day, because I want to know what you think.

My father was an addict. His own father, a surgeon, gave him morphine after my Dad had surgeries resulting from his polio. This was in the 1920's; I guess you could do that sort of thing then. Dad kicked morphine when he turned to alcohol, then switched to prescription drugs, then gambling. We are grateful that he died before he discovered the internet, and I'm not making that up.

Thus, a person from whom I inherited half of my DNA was apparently addicted to being addicted.

Fast focus to last night. I sat at the 'puter to fill in some data on a spreadsheet before bed, and four hours later, exhausted, I was playing my 200th game of Mahjong online. I don't even like the game. I mean, come on. But there I was.

And it occurred to me, as I clicked the button to start the next game when I REALLY DIDN'T WANT TO, that it was the exact same feeling I had when I put yet another chocolate covered pretzel in my mouth. I shouldn't do this. It would be better for me if I did not do this. Any short term pleasure will be offset by tomorrow morning's fatigue and headache. I have other things that ought to get done.

And when I clicked to start the next game? I little rush. A little dopamine / adrenaline / something. Something that made it a worthwhile tradeoff.

Now.........I think I could eat less, binge less, if I gave myself permission to sit at the computer and play Mahjong or Tetris or whatever catches my fancy. I think, like my father, that I could replace one addiction with another.

So........how can I use this knowledge to my advantage? What healthy addiction could I possible substitute? Exercise comes to mind. People tell me there's an endorphin thing that can happen. I've felt it once or twice. I certainly, at my age and with my medical issues, could not physically take an exercise 'addiction' to extremes; my own body would regulate it. It's a thought.

Practicing my horn? I once spent four hours a day practicing, when I played full time. Absolutely, definitely a rush. An awesome feeling. Now, I practice.....just enough. I'm still good, but I could be better. Could I shift myself back into that mode?

(I sure wish I could have, like, three weeks' worth of cleaning-my-house addiction. I mean, I know people who ARE obsessed about their houses, and I sure as hell don't want to be one of them. But I'd like to get it back into shape.)

Or, is it a better idea to continue to pursue therapy which may rid me of addictive behavior completely?

Or (this is why I love and hate my brain....there's always at least six 'ors') could I temporarily substitute another addiction while I get off the overeating thing, then ease off of those? Much like, say, switching to decaf when you're trying to give up coffee? Sort of do it in steps?

I think there's something helpful here, and right now I can only see a tiny thread of it. But I'm going to keep grasping at it while I'm away.

I hope to spend the next few days with time for meditation, exercise, family, reading............this assumes of course that I can survive the next 24 hours of preparation. But I really, really hope that this break is the reset button for which I've hoped.

You, my silent friends, will be in my thoughts while I'm away, and I will lift you to the light. We are going to get better, you and I. We are.

Hello Katie.......Fruitful again (Lona).
I have to say I LOVE your posts. They really depict your honest, scattered, but meaningful, thought processes about your journey. You cover A LOT of heartfelt issues. I don't believe many (if anyone) could address the matters you do with such fervor and intimacy.
You're an inspiration to me. I love to ruminate on a lot of your thoughts. There are many different answers and aspects to what you put across.
Personally, I was diagnosed with Bipolar, Severe Mood Disorder, Severe Clinical Depression. All of those to say I probably do have ADD! What you describe is ME! And I never even considered it. I remember my mother making fun of my aunt cause she admitted in her 50s that she had ADD. Mother was great at belittling and making people feel like low life losers.
Oh......and I do the same thing with gas. When I was growing up with my daughters we made a game of it. I always packed pillows and blankets cause inevitably we never made it to the gas station!!
Today I'm a physically hurting, hopeful binger at 59 yo, 5'3", 250 lb. Just got rid of my toxic, free loading husband and praying that's part of the self-hating issue. I'll let you know. Lol.
Did the hypnosis help with things? I don't have the $$ to try it but I'd like to know. Maybe I'll put it on my bucket list.
And thanks for the information on the kayak. I never Googled it. I don't have any water near me. So, I'll take a day trip on my 60th - 300 lbs or not!!
Well....gotta go for now but if you post I'll be reading it!
Have a great rest of the night! OH....I NEVER LIKED AVOCADOS! LOL

Oh....just realized you're still on your retreat. Pray you're having an awesome time and contemplating the creation of your "new environment" when you get home. There's a lot of truth to that idea of addictions/addicts and changing up environments/activities. I WAS addicted to sex, alcohol, drugs and food at different stages of life. The only one that stuck around was/is food. The others the Lord actually took the taste away. And....yeah.....Christianity can be tricky. It can propel you into more guilt or like me can be a constant learning experience along with the guilt that's been there all along.
I tap away at stopping the triggers so I CAN get well when the time comes. Like getting rid of the husband. Now I don't have to see or participate in his bad habits. Minus one trigger in my environment. Yeah!
I don't think trading addictions is an answer for me. It makes me anxious. I feel the need to conquer THE BIG ONE even if it takes a lifetime. Eventually, I believe that my physical and emotional pain will help to eliminate it all together. AND I believe working towards accomplishing my dreams/visions for my life will propel this healing eventually. I've always been an idealist.
All this came while scoffing down a pack of saltines with bacon cheddar cheese ball......wow.......Lol........
Someday.....Someday

Someday starts today, Fruitful, and eventually is right now. Small steps forward are still the right direction! I thank you for your kind words, and I look forward to hearing about that kayak ride. I spent some time in one this past week, and it was a joy, skimming across the water, with my granddaughter in the kayak beside me. Absolutely glorious until the moment I had to get out of the damn thing, which was incredibly awkward, but it was worth it.

And lots, lots, LOTS of insights about this journey. I'll share one a time.

IF I CAN ASK A TODDLER TO DO IT...........

During our family vacation, I was happy to see that my sweet, loving, emotionally fragile grandson is making great progress controlling his 'meltdowns'. These have never occurred in public, only in the safety of family, and his pediatrician has confirmed that what's going on here is simply a young child sometimes overwhelmed with emotions, and that he'll outgrow it. And so far, that's been the trajectory. So, I want to talk about it, but it's important to preface this by saying that he has amazing, caring parents, and that there is no medical or psychological problem here - he's not at risk in any way.

We'd had a long day of adventures, and he was tired. Something happened which would have been insignificant normally, but when the little guy is overtired, he can melt down over the tiniest thing. I think it was a missing piece from his Lego project.

The lower lip quivered, and the eyes started to fill, and the little shoulders started to tighten. I could tell that an explosion was imminent, that the Rage Monster was about to be unleashed. My son, the child's father, was there immediately, and let me tell you, it really fills your heart to observe your grown son comforting his own son is such a beautiful way. Here's a summary of the things my son said to my grandson:

"I can tell that you're sad about your Lego and you're starting to have a meltdown. Can you take a deep breath and let it out? You can make a good choice here, or a bad choice. Let's breathe in and out for a minute while you think about your choice - because you can control this. Let's think about which choice will have the better outcome. You could ask for a grownup to help you look for your Lego. Or you could start to scream. Which way will find your Lego faster?"

And, OMIGOD, people. OMIGOD. You see it, right? We're in a cabin, I'm sitting across the room from the potential tantrum pretending to read my book but surreptitiously watching my son parent, watching a fragile five year old slowly rein in his emotions, and listening to the key phrases in what my son told my grandson: take a moment to breathe. You have choices. Some are better than others. You can ask for help. Which choice will get you closer to your goal?

The little guy calmed himself down, the Lego was found, the tantrum averted.

And I thought, for crying out loud Katie, a five year old can do the thing that YOU need to do. It was all right there in my son's excellent parenting. Breathe. Think about the choices. Think about the desired outcome.

My little grandson struggled to hold his shit together that day. He was once unable to control it at all, and now, with some guidance, he can do it, and the tantrums are now very rare. No one's shamed him or hit him or given up on him. They keep him safe, they teach him to breathe (they've made a game of a sort of meditation routine he can do when he's starting to lose it), he knows he can get loving support, and he's learning to think about the outcomes of different choices.

This happened a few days ago, and I find myself coming back to it over and over. On the way home, we stopped at a restaurant, and as I looked at the photo of a glorious, calorie laden fried platter of temptation, and thought about adding a few side dishes...........but I stopped. I thought for crying out loud, Katie, if we can ask a five year old to get his shit together, we might reasonably expect a 58 year old woman to do so.

See, in addition to binge eating, I tend to use opportunities at a restaurant as a sort of no-holds-barred feeding frenzy, with the rationale that it's a 'special occasion' or 'this place specializes in this dish, and I might never come back here again', or whatever. So, this little restaurant was a potential landmine for me.

So. I breathed. I thought about short term vs. long term gratification. I thought about how good that fried fish and chips would taste, and how big that platter was (someone at the next table had ordered it, and I'd calculate how many bites of goodness were in it as the waiter carried it past my table.) I knew I could eat the whole thing plus dessert. I knew it would be amazing. But then I thought about my goals, and I thought about how best to achieve them. I let my mind drift back to kayaking with my granddaughter, and thought about how light and free I felt on the water.

I asked for help. I asked if anyone wanted to split the platter with me, 3/4 to 1/4, I said that I really only wanted a small taste of it, and my son had planned to order it, so he agreed. I ordered a salad with a lot of veg and nuts and good things. When the food was served, we used a small plate to portion off a few bites of the fried foods, and I enjoyed them. Then I ate my salad. I gave my son a small plate of the salad. I watched my grandson playing with his bendy-straw, and I thought, my love, we can do this together, you and I. Someday when he's older, I'll tell him about this.

Breathe. Distract yourself. Think about the outcomes of our choices. Ask for help. Repeat. One meal, one binge, one missing Lego at a time.

YES, DAMNIT, A SMALL VICTORY IS STILL A VICTORY

I did something this morning that I've probably done thousands of times. But today, I caught it. Today, I'm calling it out, and I'm never doing it again.

Now, a first paragraph like that seems like it ought to precede a confession of something like, say, eating a jar of peanut butter with a spoon. Something shameful.

But, you know what I did?

I had a small success. Actually, it was the result of a few small successes: A few days of making good choices. And thus, a lower reading on the scale this morning.

And what did I do? Did I do the happy dance? Did I say hey, babe, this is working, keep it up?

No. You know what I did? You know what the very first thought was that crossed my brain?

"This isn't much."

Yep, that's me. A little success, and immediately I start thinking oh, this barely makes a dent. This will take forever. I start saying "sure, you ordered one healthy meal in a restaurant, big deal. Okay, you drove home from rehearsal without stopping at Wendy's - whoopee. That's just one, and you need millions."

Now, there is an entire day's worth of writing to explore about my fear of success, and about how I use fatness to be invisible, and so on. But I'll save that for another day.

For now, I resolve to celebrate my successes to at least the same degree that I grieve my failures, which pretty much means, to achieve parity, that I should be shouting from the rooftop, because I sure beat myself up when I fail.

I resolve to respect my successes, one at a time, for what they are. Sure, each individual one is not The Solution, but they're going to add up. And these first ones are the hardest, since the journey seems so bleak and so hopeless from this low point.

Yes, I'm going to do the Happy Dance for a half pound weight loss. And for driving past McDonald's, and for leaving CostCo without huge bags of snacks, and for drinking my daily goal of water, and every other healthy, life-affirming thing that I do today. I'm only two months in to an eighteen month journey. Even the fastest sports car starts from a standstill and builds momentum.

I will do the Happy Dance, and I will sing, and I will smile. Because a small victory is a victory nonetheless.

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

Apologies if the song is stuck in your head now.

Building (pun intended) on yesterday's post, I'm thinking of the small positive things I do as bricks. Just regular old red bricks. I'm using these bricks to build something wonderful, beautiful, calm, safe, solid. Something (or, actually, someONE) who will be a comfort and a source of strength to other people.

I've never laid bricks, but I've built some extensive dry stone walls here on the farm, several hundred feet long and several feet high. It's an incredible labor of love, and there's time when it just seems like the end is never in sight. But you learn to just focus on making the next stone fit perfectly.

That might be a better analogy than building a house, actually. If I were building a house, I'd want it to be exact and have perfect right angles and everything lined up just right. i'd know before I started exactly how many bricks I needed.

With the walls, things are much more fluid. You make do with the shapes that you have. You learn which ones will fit together the snuggest. You learn to adapt when the terrain curves a little bit. You aren't sure you're 'done' until you actually ARE; you just sort of tweak and adjust until finally one day you stand there with your cup of coffee and say "that will do just fine."

I was frustrated with myself yesterday because I wasn't able to celebrate putting one stone in the wall. All I could see was the enormity of the project that lay before me. I had lost about two pounds in the eight days since we'd left for vacation, and I had (this part is actually more important) genuinely made good choices during that time. I had held off the Beast, and not given in to the addictive behaviors.

But yesterday, all I could think of was..........if I'm going to lose 60 pounds over the next 16 months, and I've only lost 2, this is impossible. Just impossible.

I'm reminding myself, today, that I didn't get fat in just a few months. I'm reminding myself that this is about kicking the addictive behaviors, not achieving any specific weight. I'm reminding myself that my worth as a person is not tied to my waist size. I'm reminding myself that when my grandchildren tell their own grandchildren about me someday, my squishy belly isn't going to factor into the description. I'm reminding myself that the best indication that I've kicked the addiction is......kicking the addiction. Not a specific dress size.

I'm reminding myself that it's going to take a lot of stones (hey, you can interpret that in multiple ways, and actually........they both work) to get this wall built. I just had lunch. I did not eat since breakfast. I ran errands and drove past all the fast food places. Breakfast was reasonable and healthy. So was lunch. People, this is a HUGE stone in the wall. Sure, it represents only a few hours. But they're going to add up.

All in all it's just another stone in the wall.

(I'm working on the rest of the lyrics. "We don't need no.......food addition." Etc. But damn, the grammar just really bothers me. Sorry, Pink Floyd.)

GROUP SPORT, SOLO SCORING

I think most of us understand that we need community in order to live a fully productive life. We certainly need community to beat addictions.

But scoring this game is a totally individual thing.

I weigh 218. I think that's awful. But that number is someone else's goal weight. Someone in my small town, or on this board, would love to get down to 218.

My goal weight is 160. But that number is someone else's nightmare. Someone in my small town, or on this board, is horrified because they just weighed themselves and omigod they're up to 160.

The Desiderata (does anyone even know that poem anymore?) says "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

In this case, that's quite literal.

Food addiction does not automatically mean being overweight anyway. It manifests itself differently in all of us.

So the numbers are only meaningful in relation to one's own personal self.

I think most of us get that. But we're also in danger of making comparisons, favorable or unfavorable, in other ways - and it slows down our recovery.

It's easy to find someone with a bigger problem, isn't it? And then say oh, I'm not doing so bad after all, let's eat that last doughnut?

It's just as easy to find someone who makes it look easy, and then be demoralized and give up. "Look at her, she's my age and she's a marathon runner and has iron willpower and gets up at four to exercise and eats raw vegetables and air. Screw it, I'm eating that other doughnut."

I think of myself as a free spirit who isn't influenced by other people's judgment, but let's face it, we all do some of these comparisons. And they're not good for us.

This is a group sport with solo scoring. All that matters, friends, is how you do today. tomorrow isn't here yet, yesterday can't be changed. Just how we do today.

I once saw graffiti in a restroom on the turnpike, written on the bathroom mirror, Someone had scrawled "You're looking at the problem" on the mirror. Underneath it, someone else - at least, it appeared to be a different hand and different lipstick - had added "and also the solution." Ironically, the woman who approached the sink ahead of me spent a good deal of time looking behind her at the stalls trying to figure out what the message referenced.

Let's all look in the mirror, and start having one good day.