THE REALLY HARD F WORD

What a crazy two weeks it's been. And have I ever slipped up.

So I have to work on the forgiveness thing today, in a big, big way, because I know that as long as I hold on to my anger and disgust about slipping up, I will be unable to get back on track.

I found this quote in the process:

"Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know until you learned it." (Maya Angelou)

I've made some mistakes that have really cost me over the years. I genuinely thought drinking Diet Coke was a good thing, since I'd be giving up sugary soda, and I ended up with an addiction to it, and perhaps some health problems that have been exacerbated by it. I don't know for sure. But it certainly was not a good thing to be consuming that much.

I cringe now when I remember how often I'd pour a bowl of peanut M&M's and 'reward' myself by allowing myself to eat one after folding the laundry, one more after cleaning the kitchen counter, one more after paying the monthly bills (in that days that predate automatic payments). I thought I was motivating myself to get my work done. I thought I was teaching myself to make something last longer instead of eating it all at once, as if eating the whole bowl over four hours was really all that much better than eating it all at once.

It was an awful thing to do. What I actually did was teach my body to expect a sugar hit every ten minutes, and reinforced the idea that food is a reward.
I have so much regret about this.

But......I didn't know better at the time. Sure, it may seem like a pretty obvious thing. But in the mindset I had at that time, which basically was that I was in my thirties and not overweight and therefore immortal, I truly couldn't see the reality of what I was doing.

I've learned to forgive myself for not knowing what I didn't know until i learned it.

So, let's apply this to right now this minute.

I never thought I was 'cured' of course, but the last two months have been amazing. I have had more than sixty days free of binging. that's the longest I've gone in my adult life. I felt good. I lost weight. I think my hair and skin looked better. I had energy. My assorted awful symptoms from the rheumatoid arthritis were NOT gone - it's not that kind of disease - but there was some improvement.

And I really blew it. There's "funeral food" here. I mean, we're overwhelmed with it. And while this is my house, my daughter in law is the one who had the loss (it was her Dad) and she and my son know what's best for their kids, so it's not like I'm going to throw out ten cartons of baked ziti; the little ones love it. I didn't have beer in the house because while I'm not giving up alcohol, I'd stopped having that end-of-the-day beer or two, because I felt it was another version of that food-as-reward thing, and I'm trying to learn a different approach to food. The kids bought a few cases of beer. They were well within their right to do so. They had no idea I didn't want it in the house right now, how could they? I hadn't told them. I wasn't about to ask them not to, if they wanted it. I thought I'd be fine. But I popped a few open, sitting around chatting late at night.

There were dinners in restaurants. The kids wanted to take us out as a way of thanking us for having them here for two weeks. Lovely gesture on their part. And I ordered things I shouldn't be eating, plus I finished the grandkids' food.

I made some non-food mistakes too. I can't afford to get physically exhausted; my immune system is screwed up because of the RA, and exhaustion makes it kick in and start attacking things that aren't germs, like my joints. I know this. I know I need regular sleep, and a little more of it than most adults. And I haven't been good about getting it. No one's infringing on me or being demanding of me. I just like my kids, and when they're here I like to hang out with them, we can talk for hours. And we did. And I'm paying for it.

I haven't exercised enough. That's another thing I can't get lazy about, no pun intended. RA takes something from you every day if you don't fight it. I need to be vigilant about range of motion exercises or I will lose things I can't get back. I need gentle consistent cardio, not just for weight loss but to manage this rampaging immune system.

So I have two options right now. One is to wail and moan and gnash my teeth and think that I'm a failure and I shouldn't even try and I spent two months working so hard and I'm practically back where I started so what's the point, etc, etc. I don't need to spell this out. If you're on this site reading this, you know. You know the whole script, don't you? Because even though our stories are different, our ages are different, our lives are different, we have this guilt / self loathing / despair thing in common, don't we.

This is the approach I would have taken until recently. And it would have guaranteed that I'd continue to spiral downward.

My other option is to smack myself upside the head just once, look in the mirror and say damn, girl, you've made yourself a mess again.........and then move on. Literally, start moving.

Moving, exercising, stretching, and being aware of food and making good choices again.

I can do this. I did it for over sixty days. Of course I can do this.

So, you guys. this whole fortnight (I've always wanted to use that word) has been a huge emotional rollercoaster, and I don't want to sound like a shit by gloating over something good that's come from it, but I will. My son is taking the gorgeous, high-end rowing machine that his father in law had at the house. He's taking it back to Pittsburgh. He brought it here, but they've decided that it won't fit in the van for this current trip, with the kids and all the other stuff they're taking back now.

Either that, or my son is pulling a fast one on me.......but I'll take it. Because this lovely, gentle-on-the-joints thing is now set up right in front of my fireplace, and I get to play with it until they come back for it in a few weeks. This means that at a crucial time (it's MUD season here, or it will be once this freaking late snow (we got 14") melts. Going out for walks is a soggy mucky mess right now. But I can roll out of bed and park my ample ass on the rowing machine and go to it, several times a day if I want.

So, I've got a rowing machine to play with. I've got a freezer full of food, some of which is not good for me but which I can feed the husband. I wrap up a show tomorrow night, and then I have a bunch of Easter gigs, so there's some income coming in. (March is slow financially on a produce and plant farm.) After Easter, I have a week in which I have only two off-farm obligations. The weather will break. I'll be able to get caught up on the farm. I'll be able to think and write, and do things like use the bathroom without someone knocking at the door because they need shoes tied, or they need an audience for their latest dance routine. (I'll miss them horribly. But having a chance to pee without interruptions will be heavenly.)

In short, I have what I need to be successful and get this train back on the track.

Yes, I slipped up. The Church Lady funeral desserts were too much for me. The beer. The crackers and dip. The baked ziti. Te restaurants. I did all the things. I did them with glee and with no self control.

But, see, I learned. I learned that I'm not ready to face temptations yet. that thing I'd been doing, checking out menus before going to a restaurant and writing down what I'd order on an index card ahead of time? Now I know that I still need to do that, because without that, I was right back to ordering fried food.

The thing I was going where I'd literally put my day's food out on the counter (or an index card with the name of something that was in the fridge or freezer)? The logic being that doing so would mean I would make ONE set of decisions for twenty four hours? Now I know that I still need to do that. Otherwise, I torture myself all day: should I eat that orange? that coffeecake? that avocado? WHat about a yogurt and some crackers and hummus? I mean, for the last two weeks here at Food Central, I've been doing that ALL DAY.

My rule about eating a good breakfast and then not snacking, eating a good lunch and holding out until dinner or having one piece of fruit at 3 pm if I really needed it? Yeah. I still need to do that. I've been grazing at the kitchen counter while cooking for everyone, and I've been prepping things the kids could take with them to reheat at the father-in-law's house while they were cleaning it, and as a result my 'breakfast' stretched out over two hours some mornings. I need the routine still.

And so on. I've learned that I'm just not ready for prime time yet.

This was an unusual test, of course. I had thought my first challenge would be one I chose, like going to a restaurant without 'pre-ordering' in my mind, or making popcorn in the evening to see if I could just eat a small bowl. I didn't expect a sudden deluge of food and beer and hungry children and all the other upheaval of the past few weeks.

But it was a test, and I failed, and now I know. Now I know that I nad in fact been on the right track. Now I know that eating the way I used to eat really makes me feel crappy.

This is actually huge. This actually affirms all the GOOD things I was doing before my two week period of BAD things.

My son and his family will pack up all their boxes and bags and coolers and children and toys and head for home tomorrow. I have been a good Mom and mother in law and grandmother this past few weeks. I've done right by them. I haven't done right by myself, but I am grateful that I was able to serve them in a time of need. And at the funeral I reminded myself that taking care of myself is ALSO serving them, because they still need me from time to time, and they do not need the burden of another incapacitated parent.

A few months ago, I would have written "and so I'll start fresh tomorrow, after they leave." But now i'm writing something different: I'm starting fresh right now. I know what to do. They'll be back soon from their afternoon visiting friends, and the little ones want fish sticks for dinner, and I don't want to eat breaded things...........So I'll sit with them and have some fruit, and then leave for tonight's show with bottles of water and some almonds. When I get home tonight, I might have a glass of wine with them if they're still up, but midnight is the latest I'll stay up. Tomorrow they head out after breakfast, and I have a ten am rehearsal for a Palm Sunday gig, and then two shows.........but I've just emailed a friend who's playing with me in the pit and suggested that we walk to a restaurant about a half mile from the school for a salad in between the two shows.

Sunday, after the church gig. I will throw out any remaining funeral desserts, clean the fridge, assess things, and write up a plan for meals for the week. And I'll get on that rower, and catch up on transplanting the peppers, and take a long, quiet walk with the dog.

I can do this. You can do this. We can forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made, even if they were recent. Because every day we learn more, and we know better, and we can do better.

The kids asked if they can come back in two weeks for a long weekend, so they can pack up more things from the late father-in-law's house, and get it ready for a real estate agent to appraise it and start that process. By the time they come back, I will have a better plan in place.

Because now I know better,

IT'S EASY TO GET BACK ON TRACK WHEN YOU KNOW WHERE THE TRACK IS

Important news, friends: I have found it really easy to get myself back on my program this time. Yes, I slipped up, but this is the first time it's ever been almost automatic to go back to healthy food and regular exercise.

It's a tantalizing little glimpse of what I hope my post-crisis-addiction life will be. (I'll never say 'when my addiction is gone', because I don't think it works that way.) My hope is that I'll reach a point where I will be able to order whatever the hell I want at a restaurant - and then go right back to eating good things. I'll be able to hang out with the kids and drink a few beers one night, but not reach for one the next evening. I think it can happen.

Life Things spiraled into crazy places for me in the last two weeks, and I learned that I'm not really ready to handle that much stress yet and still stick to my plan. So now I know that, and now I'll work hard to plan for the next stress round.

A couple of things come to mind. When my house was invaded, I thought oh, exercise is hopeless, how can I possibly take an hour for a four mile walk when so much is happening here?

So I didn't walk at all. Like a dumbass, it didn't occur to me that if I could not do my entire fitness regimen, at which I'd been faithful for two months, that maybe I could do a modified version of it.

Duh! Now I know better. I'm figuring out how to do a condensed version of the regular routine, and I'm thinking back to opportunities that I missed. I could have run around a park with the grandkids instead of sitting on a bench reading emails. I could have still done pushups and things like that, even though I'm sure the baby would have draped himself across my back while I was doing them. Even on the craziest days, I managed to find time for a shower, you know? So I could have found time for a fifteen minute walk, if I hadn't been so rigid about the all-or-nothing vision.

I can also plan ahead so that there's some food here, at all times, that will work for me when what I'm cooking for houseguests is off plan. I think I can do that without being super obvious about it or making meals more complicated.

But more to today's point, friends, I just slipped right back into my routine. I didn't have to think hard or give myself a big speech or spiral downwards for four weeks. I filled my water bottle for my long day of rehearsals and shows. I went out with other pit orchestra members for dinner between shows, and ordered something that was wonderful but which also fit my guidelines. I did NOT come home and immediately start eating. I got on the rowing machine this morning. It's an amazing workout and I want to maximize use of it while it's in the house - I think I have it for about three weeks.

So I'm asking myself why it was easier to 'recover' this time around,. and I think it's for several critical reasons:

One, I have more awareness now. When I did slip up, I could identify it right away. I was honest about it. I didn't rationalize and say those fries would have gone to waste on my granddaughter's plate and I was doing this for starving children in India. No, I was doing it because I was stressed out and I'd awakened the Beast with some bad food choices.

Two, I have more understanding now. When I identified the slipping-up, I understood why. I knew it was a combination of being overtired, being stressed, feeling overcrowded in my house, and the stress that my kids were going through.

Three, I'm starting to understand this forgiveness thing. When I realized that I'd eaten three of the five remaining lemon bars, I did NOT default to the usual "oh, fuck, might as well polish them off." I did the whap-upside-the-head, shrugged, closed the box, and brushed my teeth. It happened. It wasn't a good thing. It's over. I'm moving on.

Four, I saw it as an opportunity to learn more. I learned that I still need structure. I need to have decisions taken out of my hands, even if I'm actually making the decisions, just in advance, and at a deliberate time (like buying the frozen salmon pieces at CostCo, and planning to cook one piece and split it for two lunches, with vegetables.) I still need to put six post-it notes on the kitchen counter in the morning, representing my six glasses of water minimum. Without the post-it notes, which get shifted as I drink each glass, I'm still not aware of staying hydrated.

Five, I am benefitting from my nerdy anal-retentiveness about documenting this journey. I could look up what i ate on days where I'd felt successful, and I could replicate that. I could read old journal entries from the point when I honestly didn't know if I could ever do this, and see how far I've come.

And lastly, I think I'm worth it. I'm reading heartbreaking posts from new members who don't know that about themselves. I am struggling to accept that there might not be any words that will make these young women love themselves. I ache for them, and I want to and I will try, but it might be the equivalent to trying to put out a housefire twenty miles away through the internet: it's just the wrong tool for the job, no matter how much you want to help. But struggling with if and how to answer some of the new posts makes me realize that one of the keys to beating this thing is feeling that we're worth the effort. And that might mean thumbing our noses at what the media and commercialism tell us we're supposed to want to look like. I'm going to go on a whole 'nother rant about that in a day or two; I can feel it simmering inside me already.

But for now, here's what I've learned: You can get back on track if you know where the track is. So, define it carefully, and practice being on it, and you'll find your way back with you mess up.

THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

We focus on the overeating. It makes us crazy. We get fed up at ourselves for doing it. It consumes our thinking.

Consider, for a moment, an iceberg. Most often, only the tip is apparent. What lies underneath the ocean's surface can be massive. It's a thick, solid base that supports the visible part.

The tip of my iceberg, and yours, is overeating, and we're working on that. But what lies underneath the surface for me may be different from what's under the tip of your iceberg. Other addictions, loneliness, guilt, abuse, clinical depression, anxiety, hormonal disorders, alienation, family issues, suicidal thoughts, and stress are just a few of the things that are frozen together under the surface. I suppose most of us have combinations of more than one of those things.

Ships don't sink because they hit the part of the iceberg that you can see. The way icebergs are formed, sort of like a pyramid, it would actually be impossible for them to do so. Nope, it's the shit under the surface that actually does them in.

Let's say you stop overeating (yay) but you have not addressed the underlying issues (boo.) Your ship's in trouble, I do realize I am totally messing up my analogies and metaphors here; one minute you're the iceberg and now suddenly you're a ship. Please overlook that and focus on what I'm trying to convey here: we need to deal with our shit, people. And by 'we' of course I mean "me'; mine is the only iceberg I can affect.

I needed help to figure out what was beneath the surface, and I only started making any progress at all once I started dealing with it. I wish I could say I found the magic wand that will work for everyone, but it's not that easy. My own answers thus far - I'm sure I'll find more - have come from a combination of things: lots of reading and study, four hypnotherapy sessions, two actual therapy sessions, long discussions with trusted mentors, a lot of long walks where I talked myself through problems, volunteer work, prayer, meditation, poetry, art and music. Your answers may come from different places, but they're findable.

You might benefit from OA or a similar structured meeting, or a more active role in a faith community. You may benefit from a lot more therapy (I suspect I would too), or you might need antidepressants or something - my knowledge base is shaky here so let's just leave it as a vague 'something' - to help with anxiety or depression. You might need more structure in your life, or less. But none of us is sentenced to live the rest of our lives this way. The world is full of people who have overcome obstacles. I fully intend to be one of them.

A TINY STEP TOWARD NORMALCY

i found myself out of town today, and hungry. Now, I could have planned this better and packed food. But here's what happened: I have been waiting for Violet the Sheep to have her baby. She's the size of an ottoman and it's go to be any day now. If I were a better farmer, I'd know the exact date, but Noodle, the ram, figured out how to open a gate last fall, and the two of them had quite a little orgy until the gate was repaired. So there's something of a range for the due date.

Lambs generally come at night. i woke up this morning, no lamb, and realized that the stars were perfectly aligned for my annual trip for nursery supplies (not the human or animal kind, here, I mean for plants). Once the lamb shows up, I'll have to bottlefeed it every two hours around the clock for 48 hours. Violet is charming but she's a terrible mother. My nursery-supply excursion takes at least five hours, so this was possibly my last opportunity.

So I grabbed my keys and hopped into the stalker van and headed for PA Dutch country. If you're not in the US or in our part of it, this is a central area for the Amish, Mennonite, and Pa Dutch, and I won't even try to explain the distinctions here, because it's their commonality that matters: these people thrive on carbs like no other group of people I've even seen. the average Amishman who's actively farming will eat 8,000 calories a day and be at an ideal weight. The women tend to be plumper but are still doing more than 15K steps a day, and they're strong. They'll grow veg and raise their own meat and eat a lot of healthy things, but when they eat outside the home, they sure go for the sweets.

So all the places to eat along the way (I had three stops) had names like Mama Yoder's Country Diner - good home cooking! or Auntie Essie's Homemade Pies, or Stoltzfus' Chicken'n'Dumplings. I realize it sounds like I'm generalizing horribly here, but I sell at markets with Amish and Menno vendors who have become good friends, and they'd agree with me: you don't get good salads at these places, because the folks who eat there all have their own gardens and winter greenhouses, and why would you go out and eat something you have every day?

So, I'm starving, and I'm surrounded by whoopie pies and the like. I ended up pulling into a Sheetz - in the MidAtlantic US, this is a big gas station chain with made to order food. In the 'old days', i could stop at one of these places and drop a couple thousand calories pretty fast - a sugary frozen coffee drink, a fried chicken sandwich, fries, and a candy bar or two. the menu is full of things I shouldn't eat now, and can easily binge on, but they also have fruit and cut-up veg and yogurt and healthier options.

Thus, this was a test for me. And I did well. I did in fact get the chicken sandwich that I love. And an bottle of unsweetened iced tea, and a cup of fruit. I believe this is what normal people do: they might choose one item that's a little over the top, but not all three or four items. I'd had a good breakfast, and I know that my dinner will be a good one. In the grand scheme of things, this is actually going to be a good day, even with that sandwich.

Because that's the unique challenge of our addiction, isn't it? It's not like we can go cold turkey on eating entirely. And since we are as a group a bit of a hot mess emotionally and psychologically, we have to be on guard against replacing our addictive food behavior with another addiction, or with a restrictive eating disorder that will cause another whole set of problems.

Today might not end up being a day in which I lose weight, but honestly, I'll settle for a 'normal' day every now and then.

Now, if she'll just have that lamb tonight.......

YES, DAMNIT, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

Do you think you're not?

If I could see you, if I could stand beside you while we looked together in the mirror, I would point out your beautiful qualities firsthand, and I would hug you, and reassure you. I would.

But I'm just a crazy old lady on an internet forum, so that won't work.

All I can do is present some things to consider. I hope you will. I honestly feel the my successes beating the Beast of addiction have happened because I finally got a grip on the very things I'm going to share with you now.

But know before you read it that it's going to veer into a bit of tough love before I get to the end. If you're not in the mood for that, just don't read this.

And if you're a guy, I'm going to use feminine pronouns and talk about boobs at some point, but most of this applies to you too.

#1. What does 'beautiful' even mean, anyway?

There is no single standard of beauty. Different cultures and different time periods defined it in various ways. Want to find out what I mean? Post a picture on social media of an attractive celebrity and caption it "this is the most beautiful woman in the world" and wait for the arguments to start. So, point one: we don't even know what beauty IS. Consider the boob, for a moment: in the last hundred years, the ideal boob has at various times been huge, flat, pointy, squished entirely into the second boob (the mono-boob years) big again, athletically small, and every possible shape. We can't make up our minds about a perfect boob, let alone hair color or style, skin color, height, eyebrow shape, lip shape, teeth color, or anything else.

2. Someone's making shit tons of money trying to convince you otherwise.

If you think your hair is wrong, or your skin tone is too red, or your eyebrows aren't shaped right, or a body part is too hairy, it's because someone told you that it was, and that someone, generally, was conveniently able to sell you a product to remedy the situation. Nothing would affect domestic spending more in the US than confident women who called bullshit on the assortment of products and gadgets that exist solely to take financial advantage of insecurity about our looks - an insecurity which that industry created. It is in the best interest of those industries to make you feel that you are unattractive. Stop giving them that power. Just stop.

3, If you think men don't like women with small boobs.....

..........then you have not yet made the acquaintance of any real men. You have apparently only encountered self-centered assholes. Get away from them and find better ones. Full stop.

Seriously. You aren't going to find lasting quality at the Dollar Store; you're going to find a cheap solution for a minor problem, because that's what it's designed for. You want something that's going to last a lifetime, you've got to look elsewhere.

Seriously, do you think a relationship based on boob size is going to be a lasting one? Think again. And if you're young, know this: those babies are going to deflate like two old balloons at some point. If that's all you have going for you, you've got troubles.

Suppose you 'won' some guy who only liked you for your boobage? How's that really going to make you feel when you stop to think about it?

4. However you came to be on this earth, it's a freaking miracle.

If you are a faith based person, you can't very well consider yourself unattractive without recognizing that it's a bit of a slap in the face, especially if you believe that you were created in the image of the Creator. Maybe you believe you're the product of a totally random universe and you're made up of stardust - well, that's actually fairly awesome too, when you think about it.

5. the big picture won't fit in your mirror

Instead of staring at your pores in a mirror, read up on the women who have survived acid attacks in India, or genital mutilation in certain African countries. Or look at a photo of a young woman who's lost her hair from cancer treatment. These women are survivors. They know things that most people never learn. And you're down on yourself because you don't like your eyebrows? Get a grip. An appalling percentage of women in the world live in poverty without running water and are subject to domestic and sexual abuse. make sure your perspective is not too self-centered on this issue, please. There are some real problems to solve out there. The shape of your chin just isn't one of them.

6. The women who attract men aren't all one size or shape, but they do have one thing in common.

And that's confidence. read Maya Angelou's exquisite poem called "Phenomenal Woman". Read it out loud. Stand up tall and read it LOUD. Memorize it. If you read her biography and writings, you'll know that she was surrounded by appreciative men her whole adult life, and she was never model thin or 'perfect looking', whatever the heck that is.

There is not a woman in the world who is considered beautiful who hates herself. That self-hate radiates out from us and poisons us for other people. They can see it and feel it and they know it's toxic, and they'll run away from it. We need to work on that first.

7. If you're 'looking for love' before you know who you are, it's not going to end well.

Become the best you that you can be, and the rest is going to sort itself out. I know this. Learn to love yourself and men will be attracted to you. I know this in my heart, and I know this in my own experience, and I'm NOT sharing all the details on this one with you.

If you are suffering from intense anxiety, and you've isolated yourself from other people, and you're insecure, and you're shy, and you're severely depressed, then the reason you can't 'find a man' isn't your hair, or the muffin top, or the shape of your ears, okay? It's that you have some work to do on yourself, just like I do, just live everyone here does. And you know what? That's an okay place to be at. That's nothing to be ashamed of. If everyone in the world was trying to be the best person they could be, well, you'd stop running into to many assholes who only want a girl with big boobs.

What I'd tell you, if we really were looking into that mirror side my side, is that I see a phenomenal woman in you........who's hiding behind a couple of layers of hot mess. You might think it's hopeless. But you know, you came to this forum, didn't you? You kept reading, didn't you? You're thinking about things you've read that I or other posters have written here, aren't you? You're hearing that tiny voice say "maybe............" when you read someone else's story, right? And if you listen really hard, that little voice might be saying "Maybe I can........"

So you're ready to work on this self-worth thing. If you weren't you'd have stopped reading long ago.

And yes, you're beautiful.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

Some random thoughts on a rainy day:

Breaking old, bad habits is absolutely possible. I had two and a half great months to start the year, and then a two week cluster. But I'm back on track. The old bad habits resurfaced under stress, but they no longer have the power over me they once did. I was able to shake them off very easily, and now that I know that the stress triggered them, I'll be ready the next time things get crazy around here.

+++

I feel that I am occasionally acting, in regard to food, like a 'normal' person now. I'm no longer trying for a strict, extremely controlled diet. A bit of that was helpful for a short while, but it's not sustainable. Now, I find that I can have one treat every few days and not crave more. This might mean my weight loss will be slower than i'd hoped, sure, but I think it will also mean I can sustain this.

It's not an accident that I used the word 'acting', because to an extent, I'm still faking it until I make it. But at least I know what to do now.

++++

I don't think anyone just randomly develops a food addiction. I think somewhere along the way, each of us was hurt somehow, and that's contributed to it. And it's possible that it was not intentional. It could have been done with the best of intentions, or perhaps it was just a careless thing, or maybe our own minds spun it out of control I recently met the woman who, as a child, made my life hell in 6th grade, when the girls in class started splitting into cliques, and I was left on the sidelines. She was awful to me. I have never hated anyone truly, but I got pretty darn close then. I've thought of her as a motivating factor sometimes: do one more lap in case you ever run into that miserable bitch, and you'll show her then! I imagined her apologizing, or perhaps looking stunned when she realized what a wonderful person I'd turned into, or whatever. (I understand how petty this sounds. I do.)

So, I randomly ran into her when her name was called at a restaurant for a reservation and I realized that the very pleasant, articulate woman I'd been chatting with on the waiting area bench at the restaurant was the demon of my 6th grade year. Before she stood up, I introduced myself and watched carefully.........she did not remember me. At all. Yet I had carried that anger all these years.

Which one of us did that hurt? Me.

How much power are you giving the person(s) who hurt you, who may have inadvertently steered you towards abusing food with their thoughtlessness?

Maybe they don't actually deserve that much power over you. Maybe it's time to let that go.

WHEN ARE YOU HEALTHIEST?

This post was inspired by my deep, deep love for Berkeley Breathed's cartoons, and if you also follow him, you'll know exactly what I mean when I say Frank got me thinking about this.

If you don't, and you try googling it, it won't make any sense as a single panel. It's one of those things where it takes a long, long time to understand the characters. So I'll try to explain myself clearly without that reference.

We've talked about finding out what hurt us, what big traumatic event or collection of tiny papercut-hurts brought us to this point. But, we haven't yet talked about those times when we're actually got it together.

From what I've observed, most of us cycle through really bad periods of abusing food, and then have stretches where we're not doing too bad at all. Those stretches might be hours, or days, or even weeks.

So, it's in our best interest to figure out the commonality there.

What connects those times for you? Is it having structure? Is it being busy physically? Is it lower stress? Is there a weather component? Does being around certain people help?

When are you successful, even if only for a brief period of time? I know someone's thinking "only when I'm asleep!" but let's really look at this. I mean, if you go to church, odds are that you're not eating for the 60 minutes the service lasts. So, there's one for your list. Seriously, let's start looking at what's working.

I do not eat while working in the greenhouse, and I don't have any cravings then, either. I do not eat when I'm performing (or for about two hours beforehand) but I do have to be careful about the immediate two hours after a good performance. In both cases I have something actually in my hands, and there's some creativity, and there's joy in the actual work. I've come up with a few other 'safe' times, and I have found that there are certain people in my world around whom I tend to make good choice.

But I'm also looking for longer-term strong times, and so far I've found three.

One is when I feel physically in good form. If I'm feeling slow and sluggish and flabby, I'm going to console myself with even more food, ironically. But when I've been exercising and stretching and so on, I generally do much much better.

I'm also good when there's an interesting project at hand. It does not seem to matter if it involves physical labor or if it's something like sitting down to develop a spreadsheet that will save me some time with recordkeeping. I really like new shiny things, it's part of my underlying ADD, and working on something like rearranging the furniture or refinishing a junk-store find can keep me in a good place.

And the last one is the one inspired by the fictional Frank. I'm truly in a good place regarding food when I'm of service to others (with one caveat, which I will explain). At those times in my life when I see that I'm actually helping someone else, or I have an opportunity to perform a random act of kindness, I tend to be at my strongest regarding my food addiction. This cannot be a coincidence.

(The outlier is when that service infringes on my "personal bubble" and I don't get any alone time, or enough sleep - like the two weeks when I had the five extra beloved-but-needy people here at the house, and slipped up.)

Food addiction seems to be linked to social isolation. I don't know which comes first. But I see this in many of the posts that I read here. There are mentions of loneliness, of despairing of finding love, and of concurrent issues with anxiety. There's a bit of the chicken-vs-egg question here: if we fix one, can we fix the other? And honestly, that's way over my pay scale to figure out.

But........what could it hurt to try? There's just so much need in the world, and so many ways in which someone can help. You can find organized, regular activities. they can be through a church, or not. You can find occasional things that fit into your ability to give. i've got very little money - everything's always tied up in farm production. My blind friend just lost everything (potentially) in a house fire. I'm going there today to meet his wife and landlord, in the hopes that I can bring a few loads of laundry back to the house - there are a few rooms that only had smoke and water damage but are still standing, so we are hoping that they'll be able to salvage some clothing from the storage bins that had been in a closet. I can run the laundry while I'm getting my farm work done, just have to come in the house regularly to swap things out.

I'm mentioning this not because I need a pat on the back - I don't - but for two other reasons: I will not binge eat today, because I'll have this sense of purpose. And it's something that isn't costing me anything more than a little electricity and a minimal amount of time. My friend could really use some cash right now, and I don't have any. He could use a GoFundMe page, but I don't have the skill to set that up and manage it. So, I looked for something that I could do that would be useful.

There are of course non-service ways to connect with people, and perhaps you'll find something like that. I saw on the news this week that a local community is having a weekly board games night, anyone's welcome. That's not my thing particularly, but if I were into competitive games, it might be fun.

I don't have the resources to research this, but I'd bet that there's a strong connection between isolation and overeating. I think in my case, the uncommunicative husband is playing a role in it. I am not casting blame on him or anyone else - it's ultimately my problem. But it helps to see what the influences are.

If you're thinking well, fine, but I've got extreme social anxiety, and no car, and my feet hurt, and I'm allergic to sunlight, and I simply cannot venture out of my house - well, fine. use your computer and write something positive. Welcome a new member. (Remember you own first post, when you were afraid no one would even answer it? Or perhaps you haven't even made that post yet, because of that fear?) You don't have to have answers. You don't have to know the perfect solution. What people need in the immediate moment after admitting to a problem is to hear that they're not alone, and that' they've valued. That's all. You can do that.

Find your purpose. My mother had a massive stroke from an aneurysm at the age of 59 (the age I am now, and that has been on my mind a lot lately). She was paralyzed after it. She lived for fifteen more years. She could move one arm, from the elbow down. Period.

She'd never been a terribly communicative person, and was very reserved and private ( or 'cold' if I'm not feeling charitable). But one day I asked her how she kept her spirits up. She said there were two things that helped: the young, undereducated, underpaid aides, who did most of the hands-on care for her, seemed to very much appreciate someone who listened to their stories and offered them some hope (trust me, if you knew pre-stroke Mom, this wasn't an answer I saw coming) and, secondly, she would watch the news and pray for people. Argue the merits of prayer all you want, but at the very least, it made HER, the person doing the praying, feel a connection and a purpose.

Find your thing. Find your thing that helps someone else and also makes you feel connected, even if it's just a few kind words to a newcomer on this forum. What do you have to lose?

HERE'S A PAINFUL BIT OF HONESTY

I am not afraid of failure. But, I am afraid of success. Sort of - it's a fine line, and I'm trying to sort this out now, because I think this is part of my overeating.

I can list dozens of examples in my life where I sabotaged my own self at the brink of success, because - I think - this was my fear: :"What if my best isn't good enough?"

For me, I now realize, it has always been easier to just kind of coast, instead of putting in al all-out effort, because then I can say "well, it's not like I really tried." You see? That's my way out.

I found a letter to my parents from Sister Mary Fifth Grade teacher - well, let's continue being honest, I recognized her handwriting when I got the mail that day, and I searched the house high and low until I found it Please understand I offer this story with only humility. I was a 'smart kid', but only in the sense that I took tests well. Intelligence comes in many forms and i happen to have the kind that do well on standardized tests, but in the grand scheme of life that means very little.

Anyway, Sister wanted to send me to a testing program at Johns Hopkins for gifted kids - IF my standardized tests that year matched the ones from previous years.

So I deliberately blew the test that year. Just enough. I figured out if I took the last ten percent of each section and filled in the third circle for every one, it would drop my scores just enough.

My fear was not of failure. My fear was 'what if I shoot for this, whatever it is, and my best is actually not all that good?" By doing what I did, you see, I could always say to myself "yeah, but see, I didn't really try. So, I COULD have, if I'd wanted to."

And that's the key phrase which I now realize has been a guiding principle in my life. I never tried hard to look good, because I thought what if I knocked myself out with the makeup and fussing with my hair and so on, and it turns out that I'm still dorky looking? This way, I can tell myself
"I didn't really, try, you see. So it's possible that I'm actually quite beautiful." Holding onto that possibility would be impossible (in my mind) if I actually went for it. If I did that and failed,

I've done this with my music; I never really pushed one hundred percent. A lesser effort brought me recognition and good-enough jobs. More effort - even now - might result in better opportunities. But instead of going for it, I seem to be content to say "well, I could if I wanted to."

I'm thinking of literally dozens of other examples but not really feeling the need to list them all on paper. Let's jump to the overeating.

My most dangerous time is when I start to be successful - when I start to take off the weight that my bad habits have piled on over many years. I tend to choke and go back to junk food right about the time someone notices my weight loss.

There could be many reasons for it, really. I was raised in the dark ages in terms of sexual education - not the mechanics of it, but the psychological part - and I was a year or two younger than most of my classmates, so I would have been baffled by my own body, and uncomfortable if I ever received attention for it. We just didn't have self-confidence in our bodies back then, certainly not in the Catholic schools at that time. But, id on't think my classmates were messed up the way I have been, so while that might have contributed, I don't think that's the whole story.

I think it's this fear of success, this idea that if I did achieve the top score, the perfect weight, and it still wasn't good enough, that I'd then have nowhere to go from there. The way i've handled things, here's always been that extra wiggle room : I could have looked better, done better, whatever, but it was my choice not to do so, and thus I can't be judged for not being good enough, because I didn't actually put the effort in.

I am not explaining this clearly, mostly, because I'm still sorting it out in my head.

But it's a consistent pattern of self-sabotage, and I believe that the whole basis is being afraid that my best might not be good enough. (Good enough for whom, I wonder?)

I remember, very clearly, being on stage for the semi-finals for the spelling bee, the step that was just before Washington, the state level, and realizing that if I didn't misspell the next word I'd actually have to go into the next round of competition - and what if I did, and didn't win? Better to choose to bow out now, right? So I deliberately blew the next word.

I'm the equivalent of the guy who plays sports well but doesn't try out for the major league team because if he did and failed, he'd have to live with that, but if he doesn't try, he can always console himself later in life by saying "I could have done it." The 'could have" becomes more important than actually getting it, and certainly more compelling than the possibiilty of actual failure.

This is part of my story. I know it is. But I haven't put it all together yet. I'm working on it.

LIKE RIDING A BIKE

Do you remember learning to ride a bike? I do not have any hint of athleticism whatsoever, and nothing like that comes easily to me. It took me a long time to get the hang of it.

I'm remembering some of those attempts. Now, please think about your own and see if they line up with mine - it probably didn't take you as long, but I bet the basic outline's similar.

The first few times were total failures, I couldn't even balance at all. i was terrified. I wa sure I'd never learn.

An adult would help me, and then I could stay upright, but I still couldn't move. I did not understand that staying perfectly still while balancing a bike is far, far harder than staying on it while it's moving. I needed to lean on that adult, but ironically, that very need to lean was holding me back.

Eventually I started pedalling. If I had someone beside me I could manage a little bit. But as soon as they let go I'd fall. And the grownup who helped me couldn't help indefinitely. I was going to have to do this myself.

I gave up for a couple days and then came back to it. Several times.

Each time I suppose I improved a little. My muscles got acclimated to what was being asked of them. My own sense of balance began to improve. But, I'd still fall, and thus, I was still 'failing'. Actually, I was improving a lot - but I still couldn't ride a bike, so I looked at it as a failure.

There was a point, one day, where I said whatever the seven-year-old equivalent of 'fuck it' was, and just got on the bike and went for it. Sure, I still fell sometimes. But now I had determination, and momentum. Also, I'd learned how to fall, literally. I'd learned that I could take a spill and it wasn't the end of the world.

And now I'm realizing OH MY GOD that's what we're doing while we fight our addiction. Right, RIGHT? Do you see it?

We don't even know WHAT to do at first. We need some help, but we can't lean on it; you've got to stand up straight or you'll fall over the minute that support is gone. But the help still helps at first. You can't stand still, that's harder than actually having some of plan and being in motion. Standing still is where all the stress comes from. You try different things, and discard the ones that don't work. It all looks like a failure, even though every single damn time you go out there and try it, you're actually getting wiser, better, stronger, more balanced. There is no way that someone else can do the work for you.
There are those people in this world who get it right immediately, but in the end, we're all riding bikes, so that doesn't matter. the end results are worth it. When you're no longer afraid to fall, you can suddenly succeed. And once you do succeed, it's easier to get back on it if you do fall.

The skill we're aiming for is a normal relationship with food. And achieving it is going to be every bit as exciting as learning to ride a bike.

You folks write in your initial posts, as I did, that you constantly fail, and you wonder if you will ever succeed. But you can, if you choose awareness, learn from every one of those failures. And every attempt may be getting you a little further.

Think of it this way: you can keep from binging for sixty seconds. You might need to set an alarm, but you can hold out that long. So tomorrow you set the alarm for two minutes, and then three. There's only so many minutes in a day, people. Eventually you'll not abusing food for three hours, and then you'll have to negotiate a 'hill' on your 'bike' - an actual meal. But you can get a little better that every day too.

Eventually, it's muscle memory. that's what normal people seem to do about food: they just sort of understand, inside themselves, what to reach for, what their bodies need. Whereas our little squirrel brains are short-circuiting over bags of potato chips, We're the kid on the bike who just can't start pedalling because he's terrified. But we can do this. We can.

SPELLING IT ALL OUT

A new development on my farm is the addition of minions. I now have workers who come a few times a week, it's very part-time-ish, but it's working well for all concerned.

Sometimes I can work alongside them, and sometimes not. For the latter, I need to write up a list of jobs for them to do.

One woman actually has her own farm, but it's just in the starting-up stages, and she can use both the extra income and the hands-on learning from working here. It's pretty much win-win.

This morning, she told me that she enjoys working here, because when she does so, she doesn't need to think about what to do next, she just follows the list. On her own farm on her off days, she's constantly second-guessing herself, and having those exhausting mental gymnastics that you go through when you're self-employed in a very fluid kind of business. By that I mean we're not dealing with a static product that behaves on a shelf. We're wrestling with Mother Nature, who, frankly, needs to up her meds: there's six inches of snow since last night. But, I digress.

Her point is that sometimes it's just easier to do what needs to be done when you're not the decision-maker. You just, as she said, do the work and listen to your podcast or your music or just daydream a bit while your hands are moving.

So, her list for today says "transplant tomatoes', and she's happily out there in the greenhouse, gently picking single tiny plants out of a flat and tucking them into 4" pots. She's happy. She's not stressed. She's humming to herself and moving efficiently.

Whereas I, the boss, am exhausting myself mentally: will it be too cold tonight for these seedlings with just two covers, should I break out the third? Should I have finished up the pansies before switching to the tomatoes? Do I need to order another truck load of potting soil? And so on. I am not enjoying the work because I'm arguing inside my own fool head. It's exhausting.

I need to learn to make a decision based on the best information and experience I have, and then relax and get into the Zen of the work itself. I need to switch from being a boss to being a worker bee, and just do the job.

It's the same with the food addiction, and getting my shit together in general. And I've learned a trick that's helping me.

Some days I just feel a little fragile from the start. I think that's a good sign in my healing process. I didn't use to recognize these days until I saw my hand in am empty bag of Doritos. I'd be blindsided by it.......again.

Now I'm developing an instinct for the fragile days. And on those days, I make lists.

My lists are designed to take all of the decision making out of the day, once, of course, the actual list is done. I am finding that these days can be relaxing and productive. It is deeply, deeply constrictive for me to follow any kind of a list - that's why I don't work for someone else. But sometimes, it's necessary.

A few lines of today's lists reads like this:
put laundry in the washer
feed turkeys
rowing machine 5 min
print out W9 form for next week's gig
clean downstairs toilet
horn: major and minor scales
prep bank deposit

Now, you'll see that it's scattered all over the place. It might make more sense to sit down at the desk and do all the desk jobs at once. I think real grownups might do that. but honestly, if I saw that the next hour would involve sitting at a desk, I'd tear the list up. I know what kind of day I'm having, and I know what I need: bouncing around from inside work to outslde, from sitting to moving, from gross cleaning jobs to practicing to exercise. There are eighty lines on my list today, and now, at my lunch break (for which i'd already chosen and packed up my lunch) I'm on line 42, so it's going to come out just about right.

I don't need to do this often. WHen i've got my act together, I don't need to do this at all. Or, maybe I'll write up a few general categories, or a few key things to remember. Today I'm literally accounting for every step. But that's okay - it's what I need today.

i'm not going to overeat or binge today because there will be no point at which I need to wonder about what to eat next. I can already see that at approximately 2:45 I'll be stopping for a coffee and an orange. There are no decisions to make now, because today is not a day on which I trust myself to make good ones.

A key to conquering this addiction is a willingness to do what you've got to do. If you need to put gold sticker stars on a chart for every day of good behavior, go for it. If you need to take the candy bars to the next door neighbor and ask her to only allow you one every three days, do it. If you need to splurge a little at the grocery store on something healthy, postpone purchasing new socks and do it. If you need to reward yourself with new socks for four binge free days, get the socks. Whatever. Whatever it takes.

For me, today, that's a silly list.

THE CHOCOLATE SITUATION

It seems that i'm able to resist quite a few foods that used to trigger binges. I'm learning which ones I still have to avoid entirely (Martin's barbecue potato chips) and which ones I can have occasionally, even in smaller sizes (McDonald's french fries).

And then there's chocolate.

Chocolate has overcome all of my efforts to control / influence / moderate. Until now.

Understand, I once ate a bag of chocolate chips. I've eaten four packages of Reese's peanut butter cups in less than five minutes. Chocolate was a problem. A huge one.

The solution I've come up with for chocolate differs from the just-say-no approach I'm using for potato chips, or the only-once-a-month and choose-the-small-size outlook for fries.

I've taught myself to understand and appreciate really, really, REALLY good chocolate.

There is a store. There is a store that's 12 miles from my house. They make their own chocolates there, by hand. They cost a lot - and they should. They roast cocoa beans. They do all the steps. It is exquisite.

And maybe it's just because of the cost, I don't know, but the idea of binging on it is completely unthinkable. One piece, the one piece I buy there every six weeks or so - one piece is all I need or want. I take time to look at it. I smell it. I taste just a little bit. eating that one piece of chocolate becomes a sensory experience. And through interactions with the shopkeeper, I've learned things about it that help me appreciate it even more.

I started thinking about this in other ways. My budget does not allow me to eat at really expensive restaurants all that often. But I supply produce to some top-level farm-to-table restaurants and they will sometimes give me a voucher, or offer me a quick lunch in the kitchen when I deliver. Portions are never enormous. My initial reaction, when I look at a beautiful plated course, is "is that all?" But somehow, I'm always sated afterward.

There is a truth to tease out of this, isn't there? I'd need a whole carton of Hershey bars to get the same satisfaction I get from one small piece of the artisanal chocolate. And it's cheaper to buy that one piece - never mind the cost per pound. When we start talking cost per amount of satisfaction, it becomes a no-brainer. And that doesn't even consider the detrimental effect the larger amount has on my health.

I now see that - for me - a focus on quality as opposed to quantity is going to be a component of my healing. There was a breakthrough moment last week. I stopped for my once in a blue moon fries. They were not excellent. They were not crisp, but rather soggy. And.......wait for it......I didn't eat them. Now, to a normal person, that may not sound like a big deal. But you know, don't you? You know that damaged people would still eat every last fry in the bag. (Returning them was not an option, too many miles on the day's agenda). I just thought no, these aren't great, and from now on I'm only going to have great ones.

Maybe......maybe when I approach food as a quantity sort of experience, as opposed to a quality one,..........maybe I'm denying myself the actual satisfaction from the experience that meets the needs of my soul and body. does that make sense? Maybe standing by the sink eating mac and cheese out of the saucepan puts calories into my body, but doesn't fill me up, because I've been approaching it the wrong way entirely.

Major food rethink ahead.

AND IN THIS AISLE AT TRIGGERS-R-US.................

Yes, yet ANOTHER trigger. I'm trying to be positive about this, because knowledge is power, right? The more I know about what triggers me, the more defenses I have, right? RIGHT? Sigh.

Today went from boring to horrific to inspiring to terrifying - in short, a fairly normal farm day. Routine start; three of us were going to fill 120 flats with potting soil. The most boring job, ever. Then one worker - the one who's starting her own farm - called off, in a panic, because last night a bear attacked her goats, and she was nursing a potentially dying animal while her husband was scouring the woods for a missing one. Two of us got through the boring job and then I did a monstrous inventory and spreadsheet project that let me know exactly how many more pots, in each size, are still to be done, how many more cases of pots i need to buy, how many more bales of potting mix, etc - I went online and placed a huge order which I will pick up tomorrow. I felt SO virtuous - this is the kind of planning I need to do more often.

Then the wind picked up. And up. And up. And at the same moment it hit 50 mph, the fan that inflates the air space between two layers of plastic on the giant hoophouse crapped out. Now, that air layer gives me about a six degree advantage on cold nights, one of which this will be, which keeps my plants alive. But it also strengthens the whole structure. After windstorms like we are having right now, my farming friends will post pictures of hoophouses like mine which have been destroyed by wind, if they don't have the double layer of plastic and the inflater fan. Without it, there's not any resistance to high winds at all. That's a whole season of lost income for the contents, plus rebuilding the structure.

So, panic. When it happened I was carefully building the three layers of fabric and then plastic that covered the plants, suspended eight inches apart over a series of different sized hoops, , which we'll desperately need tonight. The second it was done - and it was scary in there, with the wind whipping things around - I started phoning friends who are smarter than I am. A neighbor came through with a great emergency solution - he hooked up a shop vac in reverse, and it's pumping enough air in between the plastic sheets to keep the structure rigid enough to hold up. We think. The winds are starting to die down a bit and it's still looking good. I'll pick up a replacement fan tomorrow when I go get the other supplies.

Now, the eating trigger? I was fine during the boring stuff. I was fine during the bear emergency (there was some scrambling here to find the veterinary penicillin and syringes and some other medical supplies I keep on hand here and get them to my friend's farm). I was fine during the manic spreadsheet session. But.......during the time I was phoning for help with the potentially threatened hoophouse and then waiting for my neighbor to get here with his shop vac, I ate one twelve inch turkey sub, five cookies. some potato salad, a bowl of cashews, a dill pickle, and a hunk of cheddar cheese. And a bowl of granola. And some grapes.

Within a space of maybe fourteen minutes.

So, now I know that I panic-eat in times of worry, when the adrenaline's really flowing. I can think of other examples, now that I realize this. The icy-roads evening when the husband was late getting home from work and there were so many emergency sirens. Before grad school exams. The night we waited for a phone call from a hospital.

Now I know more than I did before. The next time things hit the fan, I can be more aware of it. I can, hopefully, remind myself to stop and ask if I'm actually even hungry. I can remind myself that I am allowed to eat, and I will be able to eat, but I don't need to eat All The Things. And not All At Once.''

I just hope there's at least twenty four hours before another emergency!

BOB'S ADVICE IS THE BEST

'Bob in Maine' posted a wonderful response to a new member, suggesting in his usual well-written and thoughtful way that she make one small change at a time, while still pursuing the therapy necessary to untangle the emotional part of overeating.

I'm here to sing the praises of both parts of that advice, but let's talk about the small steps.

i spent too long (decades) thinking there was no point trying to make behavioral changes because I still hadn't figured out the 'why' behind my overeating. What was the point, I thought, in depriving myself of that (x) that i wanted for immediate gratification, when my head was so messed up that I'd eat it later anyway? Why bother to make a small change when the big picture was still so cloudy?

And then I realized, it's that quote about a long journey starting with a single step. I'm convinced it's the way to go.

Because I'm list-obsessed, I made a list of 100 small steps I could take. This was a few months ago, and I've incorporated nearly half of them into my life by now. They are not all food related, since I had some other messy life areas to clean up.

Taken singly, none of them are impressive. Add them up, and it's a gamechanger. A small example: when i take the dog out (leashed) for a tinkle, I now use a different path that adds about eighty steps each time. Big deal, Eighty steps. But I might take him out six times a day. Now we're at 480 extra steps a day. Three or four things like that adds a significant amount of exercise to a normal day.

I couldn't have done them all at once. I would have given up. It would have been too many changes. Adding one or two a week has made it feasible. Some had to happen in stages: When i gave up diet soda, I knew I needed to drink more water. I hate using disposable plastic bottles, but buying a few cases of bottled water and setting four out on the counter every morning made it easier for me to start drinking enough water. After it became a habit and I learned to tell when my body needed it, I was able to switch to filling a big pitcher - but I kept it on the counter for a few more weeks. Then, it went in the fridge. Now, finally, I'm just drinking tap water. I couldn't have gone straight from diet soda to tap water, though. I needed a plan, with incremental steps, to get there.

I used a kitchen timer when I had a craving, and made myself wait ten minutes. Not a big deal. But then I could wait fifteen, and then twenty. And at thirty, it occurred to me that I actually had some control of this after all, and I did not HAVE to eat when I felt like it. But I had to start with ten minutes.

Take the small step. You can do it.

FEELINGS ARE NOT COMMANDS

I wrote, a few months ago, about my two visits to a psychologist. At the time of the visits, and when I wrote of them a bit later, I felt that they had not been productive. The woman's advice boiled down to the four words I've used to title this reflection: feelings are not commands.

At the time, I railed against that. How could she know how intense these feelings were? How could this thin, elegant person understand a food craving that takes control of your body? Didn't she realize I was there for help because I could not control those cravings? Did i Just pay $90, twice, for THAT? Etc. Etc.

Now, nearly a year after those appointments..........I get it.

Do you see the importance of this? This particular seed took an entire year to germinate. And I had to do a lot of work before it could. I had to make the soil receptive and provide some of the other conditions it needed.

There wasn't anything wrong with her advice, other than that I still believe she didn't really grasp how serious a problem I had, and her timing was off. But the message itself? Pure gold. But I could not see that for a year.

Feelings are not commands.

The thing is, I already know that - I just had never applied it to my overeating. If I did not understand that basic concept, just in the last 24 hours, let's see: I would have thrown the television out of the house, told a friend to just stop whining, slept in until noon and blown off a rehearsal and morning chores, had a second whiskey, ordered four pairs of shoes online, and had sex with the UPS man. These are all things that, yes, I fleetingly thought might be good ideas. I didn't consciously invite those thoughts into my head. They entered my brain unbidden, like little butterflies, and fluttered there looking attractive, but I had the sense to say to myself, no, no, we don't do that.

That ability to say no to impulse develops relatively early in life - I can see that my four year old grandson has zero capacity for it, the six year old is starting to get it, and the eight year old is pretty good at it.

I'd like you to think about that with me. I think this is important, because we, as a group, tend to think of ourselves as pretty hopeless. But think. You've thought some horrible things in the last 24 hours, just like I did. Not things you'd actually DO, But just awful thoughts. I could strangle that kid. I want to tell my boss to take a flying fuck. Sex with the UPS man. Whatever.

But, you didn't DO those things. I know this. I know you've thought them, or something like them, because we are human, and those thoughts just pop up unbidden. And I know you didn't do them, because you haven't been arrested or fired. So, okay - you had the thoughts, but you immediately blocked them; imagine a posterboard with the word "inappropriate' on it - you flashed that sign in your head and you moved on.

So we know that our brains can whip out the "INAPPROPRIATE" sign at some times. Our problem seems to be that we can't do that regarding food.

But.

Here's the thing, guys: I think I'm doing it now. I have had two slips since January. Two. In three and a half months. Now, I have some normal friends, in terms of food addiction issues. And they know what I'm going through, so they weren't surprised when I phoned them last night and said hey, how many times since January 1 do you think you've made bad decisions regarding food?

Guess what? More than two.

This is something else I didn't know: normal people have occasional episodes of what you and I would call binging. Now, their episodes are very different from ours, in that one overindulgence of Oreos doesn't lead to a six day blowout. But..........it still happens.

What's made this work for me is that I've finally figured out how to raise the 'Inappropriate' sign. But I couldn't do that until I'd worked hard to figure out where some of this screwed-up thinking had come from in the first place. I couldn't do it until I started drinking enough water and keeping my body hydrated. I couldn't do it until I started really paying attention to what was going on in my life, and identifying my triggers. I couldn't do it until I changed a lot of small habits, and made changes in my home environment, and in my diet (diet not being used in a restrictive sense here, just tweaking the balance of fats and carbs and proteins and so on until I got it right, for me.) I couldn't do it until I'd talked to my doctor and had some tests done and found one or two vitamin deficiencies and started taking supplements. I couldn't do it until I started taking better care of myself in general. I couldn't do it until i forgave myself for the mistakes in the past.

Because of that work, I can now work the "Inappropriate" sign when it comes to food, nearly all of the time. Not a hundred percent, but, apparently my normal friends have moments too. It helped me enormously to learn that.

It occurs to me this morning that while I will always be a food addict, and always need to be vigilant, I am no longer the person who wrote tearful, angry journal entries about sitting on a couch doublefisting potato chips while crying, and having tears and potato chip crumbs all over my face and the front of my XXXL shirt. I'm just not that person now. I can look back at her with love and tenderness and forgiveness, but i also know I've moved past that point of constant, ongoing crisis with this addictive behavior.

Now - and I can't believe I'm excited to say this, but I think you'll get it - I'm just a regular fat person! I'd set a goal to get a handle on this addiction and to lose a certain amount of weight before my sixtieth birthday next year, and I honestly think I can say that I have achieved a great deal of success with the first part of that. Now, I've got myself quite a mess to clean up, as far as the weight goes.

But before, I was trying to lose the weight without having a grip on the behavior that was causing it in the first place, and the futility of my efforts just added fuel to the self-loathing fire. Of course I couldn't keep the weight off. It's like trying to rake the leaves in a windstorm. The conditions aren't right. This isn't the perfect analogy, because you can't control the wind. But I think you'll see what I'm trying to say.

It's a Monday morning, a fresh new week, perhaps even the start of real spring, soon, and I have good coffee. Anything is possible. Today, I start a subtle but important shift in my journey: I am no longer a person in crisis. I have a food addiction, but now I have some control of it, and that control will keep maturing, because I'm going to keep doing that work, of course. But now, I need to work on losing the weight - but, now, I can actually do that.

Friends, if you come here and just read the initial posts that people make, you must wonder if there's any hope at all. But there is, there is. If I can do this, any one of us, all of us can.

WHAT I WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD ME FORTY YEARS AGO

1. This addiction will kill you. This is not a joke. This is not a 'few extra pounds". You may need to reach out for professional help, and it may take more than one try to find the right fit. This part is terrifying, but the alternative is more so.

2. Before it kills you, it will rob you of much, much joy. It will compromise your body, it will mess with your head, it will gum up relationships, it will cost you financially, it will destroy your confidence. This is a serious problem. It is not your fault. It may be chemical, it may be past trauma, it may be something that we haven't even figured out yet. But this is NOT because of any weakness or unworthiness on your part. You are a magnificent, vibrant creation, and you can and will shine.

3. There is something about overeating that you find comforting - there is a reason why you hold onto it. If you are not actively trying to solve this problem, it's because, for some reason, you don't really want to do so - not yet, anyway. You must find that reason and address it before you can heal.

4. There is something you need, something missing in your life, that you are trying to fix with food. Identify it and seek it out. It is not in the Dorito bag.

5. You must let go of the guilt that you are carrying. It is eating away at your soul. You cannot heal while you carry that load. You will simply cycle back through the behavior that's causing the guilt.

6. But, you can take small steps now, before you solve those problems. You can fake it until you make it, to some extent. even before you have all the deep psychological things settled, you can still make some good choices.

7. Small successes will lead to greater ones.

8. You are worthy of love now, right now. You do not need to beat the addiction or lose a certain amount of weight in order to be worthy of love. If there is someone in your life who tells you otherwise, release them from your life now. They are toxic to you.

9. You DO have control Perhaps not much, not yet. But you DO have some. And you can practice it, and get better at it. The first steps will seem insignificant. But you will get better at it.

10. Your worth is not determined by your appearance or your weight. Do not confuse your inherent value as a human being with the scale, or with your addiction. Become the gift you were meant to be, while you're working on the addiction. Your life does not need to be on hold until you get this right.

11. You will 'sailboat'. You will veer off course and then overcorrect and this will frustrate you. But if the basic direction is right, you will get where you're going.

12. This is the hardest thing you will ever do. But it is a doable thing, and the rewards are more wonderful and more complex than you can imagine. You will develop a deep empathy with and compassion for people who are suffering. You will find steel inside yourself that you didn't know was there, and at the same time, a deep well of love. You will find out what matters, and who has your back. You can do this.