shocking, shocking!

Alleged "internet addicts" in China are being strapped down and given electric shocks to cure the addiction. One youth reported using the internet five hours per week. Uh-oh.

Why doesn't someone do this with food addiction? Why can't we get electric shock treatment for that. Oh wait! You can do that and, oops! I did do that back in 1979. $500 for a "treatment" program of a number of weeks, with the intent of curing addictions to certain foods.

My trigger foods were, of course, sugar (my heroin) and various combinations of fat and sugar (my speedball). My first treatment appointment arrived and I trudged off to Schick Center with my substances-of-abuse in a brown paper bag.

Upon arrival, I was taken to a room with a small table facing a mirror. I was asked to name five things that make me feel sick. Not a problem: moths, roly-polies, grub worms, maggots and the dreadful guinea worm, forever in my head, courtesy of First Lutheran Elementary and those mandatory missionary recruiting films.

Electrodes were attached to my wrists and activated. I reported when it was uncomfortable and the technician was supposed to leave it at that. I am confident that she actually jacked it up a few notches because by the time we were done with my half hour session, my hands were numb and my arms so tingly as to be useless. But by God, I didn't want to eat anything.

The theory is that the seductive substance creates some sort of pleasurable sensation in the brain. This must be disrupted by the insertion of pain and unpleasantness over the top of any good feelings associated with the substance of abuse, kind of like a nasty cork-o-pain in your bottle of good stuff.

The actual treatment consisted of arranging the brown-bagged substances on a plate before me while I faced the mirror. When given the go, I put a spoonful of sugar in my mouth. Don't swallow!! Just roll it around in there. As I was rolling and not swallowing, the technician was shouting out "grub worms!" "guinea worms!" "moths and roly polies!" and she was shocking me vigorously on the wrists. I then spit the sugar out on a plate.

We proceeded with a bit of chocolate. "Chew it up, do not swallow!!" Vigorous shocks coupled with intermittent exhortations to think of "maggots!" "fat slimy worms" (not one of mine, must have been one of hers). On this second go, I was running my fingers through the slimy sugary stuff I just spit out. Shock! Slime! Unpleasant and unhappy face in the mirror! Revolting creatures! Shock! Shock! Shock!

I paid for this. Actually, my dad paid for this because I paid for my sister to go through the same torture for smoking. The funny (or not so, but ironic) thing is that I would be perfectly happy to weigh what I weighed when I started at Schick Center. I was round, but far from obese. I'm within sighting distance of that weight again, and I will be thrilled, delighted, pleased, happy as a little clam to get there.

Though I lost a little weight with Schick, the aversion therapy lasted until the moment my father returned from New York toting a box of Godivas, my first experience with those nuggets from heaven. One chocolate, two, and I was off and running, as only a food addict can be. I think Schick had it right as far as the fact of addiction, it's just that the high speed treatment was less than effective for the long run.

ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges

In my futile but lifelong effort to transform my food addicted self into a normal person, I am revising yet again my eating plan. I know I need a plan. OA tells me "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," but there's a little voice in my head saying "it's okay to go slow."

So am back to a couple of shakes a day and a meal and a snack, something like that. The point is flexibility. I vacillate between absolute rigidity and some sort of fluid approach to food. Too fluid = big binges, but absolute rigidity seems beyond my grasp at this moment.

I learned this yesterday after returning from Ponca City, taking my sister to the airport and finding myself starving. Starving, I tell you! Starving!! So I stopped at a fast store thinking I'd get a protein bar kind of thing. When I am thinking protein bar, I should never, ever stop to read the ingredients. These things have to be manufactured by Dow or Pfizer and they actually smell and taste like it. Yuck.

So instead of the plan-approved protein bar, I looked around and there were grapes. Red, luscious, fresh grapes all clean and lovely in a nice portion-sized cup. I dropped the chemi-bar and snagged the grapes. I went to the park and sat in the grass feeling a delicious sense of gratitude for the beauty of the day, the sun, the breeze, and each one of those cold, crisp, delicious, divine little bursts of juicy sweetness.

Life may be too short to not eat grapes. I am forever grateful for the 6-7 months I was able to do on a full liquid diet because it gave me such freedom. I got rid of a pile of weight and feel frisky and fit and strong. I can do the rest with a more moderate plan of a few meal replacements and a real meal, something to share with friends or my sweetheart. It's okay not to be in a rush. It is. Isn't it?

Thin

Just watched the documentary Thin on HBO. My husband sees these women as different from me, but he wasn't around during the bulimic years, during the insanely excessive exercise, the abuse of laxatives, diuretics, thyroid pills. Sometimes I think that an eating disorder of such extremes burns itself out over time. If you live long enough. I quit throwing up, for the most part, in 1987. I still remember the horror of the relentless weight gain thereafter. Twenty years later, it's still a temptation. I listened to two hours of misery and hope and anger and sadness and childishness and all I can feel is hopeless. I just don't know if it ever goes away. It transmutes. It is better, I guess, to struggle with weight and eating today than with bulimia of 20 years ago.

But I am really, really sick of it. I am just sick of having this shit in my head, of always thinking about it in one form or another, whether good or bad. It's always there on some level of consciousness. Always. What a waste. Eat this, don't eat that, what will the scale say, what does that mean for today, how do I feel about that, what will happen if I let go, can I start over ever, will I start again tomorrow if I give it up today, am I really an addict, is this all in my head. Most days I am grateful for freedom from the kind of insanity that afflicted me in my younger years, the kinds of things I saw in these women today, in Thin. I really am grateful most of the time, but right this minute I am angry and resentful and just flat pissed that it is still something I have to deal with every single fucking day of my life.

Boot Camp Still

Another great day in Camp ~ all is well. Having had testicles bouncing in my face for nearly 80 miles on I-40, I am otherwise speechless except to say that I'm down 1.5 pounds this week. A little disappointing, but likely attributable to enormous exertion, water retention, etc. etc. etc. All is well. Hope so with you too. Truck nuts. Crimifuckinitly.

Wrench, please

In my shop, when we're unloading or shipping furniture, I am often faced with undoing bolts or screws that have been in place for 100 years. Especially with old, old French armoires, it takes a tight wrench and a lot of elbow grease to get the old dirty rusty connectors moving.

I feel right now as if I'm trying to wrench my head around, giving it a major heave-ho, working to get back to a point of gratitude and acceptance. I am not white knuckling it, but neither am I in that divine spot where it feels I am floating on a cloud of grace and serenity.

So much better than it was, as I said this morning, but nowhere near where I want to be. Some of this is likely the aftereffects of excess. Why can't I remember that this. does. not. feel. good. Why? I have a disease that tells me I don't have a disease, tells me this time it will be different, I'll be able to handle it, keep on track, quit with one. It's a liar, this affliction. Maybe one day I will lose my ability to hear its voice.

No, no, no, no, NO!

Food does not make it better. Food does not make it better. Food does not make it better.

There. I wonder if I could get it tattooed on my right hand, the one that reaches for relief? Amazing how much better I feel just a couple of days clean. Amazing. Night and day. Whole different person.

Food does not make it better; it's the big lie, the thing that seduces me with a promised comfort and provides just a brief bit of numbness, then leaving me with the feelings of loss and disappointment and frustration and and and and . . . .

Um . . . I don't think that's typical. I don't see folks on the commercials eating Oreos and becoming despondent. Since that is for me the aftermath to the consumption of a bag of Oreos, does that make me a food addict? Ya think? (Note to self, sense of humor returning, good sign.)

Eating hell for leather

Been doing that, these last couple of weeks: eating like a grown man, like a late July hay hauler, pretty much anything I've wanted, whenever I've wanted and often when I didn't want, just to get through.

It was the drug that got me past this ordeal of taking care of my mother-in-law. Facing 12 hours of tediousness at her empty, cold, dark house, and desperately missing my quiet time, my leisurely mornings, my four-day work week, my sweet little cottage, I'd fortify myself with large quantities of the obsession du jour, thinking if I could just stand it, get it done, survive it, get through, I'd quit.

This is old history for me. I've used food as the fortifier for most every unpleasant or painful task in my life. It works. Temporarily, of course, but I'd not have used it to such destructive lengths if it didn't work.

So I'm beginning again to work on my healthy eating habits and on my fitness. Haven't been to the gym in weeks. Haven't been myself in weeks. I miss the me that I was a month ago. I am closer today to who I was 18 months ago. I don't want her back, not ever.

It's pretty scary, because I know that I am powerless over this addiction. Just saying "I'm beginning again" doesn't mean I will. I want to, I'll take the steps I can to do so, I'll ask for help, commit to a food plan, but still . . .

I can't undo this lost time and the only thing I've really learned is that I am never safe from this thing. Food will always be an issue for me. I may be in remission from the disease, one day at a time, but it is never gone, no matter how much weight I lose or how much time I string together. It's always waiting, always ready, still deadly, still strong.

Checking in

You have all been so kind with your comments, thank you. Here's a brief update before I head out to the final stretch of this three weeks of hell: This is the last day I have to finish clearing out the mother-in-law's house. I'm heading over there with one of my guys from the shop and we'll move furniture and donate and anything else that's needed.

Then I'm going to vacuum and if she wants to clean beyond that she can. I will not haul over to her place the teensy light little boxes she could easily have put in the trunk of her giant cruiser. She is not helpless, helpless just works very well for her. I think part of my anger about this whole deal is that I long to help my parents, who live 100 miles away. They never ask for anything, I love them dearly, they need help with Daddy's dementia and my stepmother's 48 hour a day caretaking role, and I can't do anything for them that would seriously improve their lives. This one, not my mother, not even my kin in the tight definition of my family, is living it up in a retirement community, hanging out, enjoying her life and sucking the life out of me. God, that just sounds ugly and I am sorry to have written it but the comparison between her life and how I can help and their lives and how I can't just kills me.

I am fed up, exhausted, resentful. These are not helpful feelings for me when it comes to eating and working on weight and getting to the gym. I confessed my wish to run away to my husband, even describing my aerie in the old Victorian replete with iron bed and rocker. I am not sure he realized the fantasy does not include him.

I am a resilient person with a strong sense of self. I know I'll bounce back from this and it won't even take that long, but I am ready now and I have one more day. So I know I can do this and I will. But I am getting pretty tired of taking care of other people and I am just a bit afraid that when the quittin' time comes on that behavior, it's going to be final. When my switch turns off on concern for others, I don't know who I'll be, but I believe it will be irrevocable and I believe that change is coming up fast.

Oprah says fat people spend their whole lives putting others first. This fat girl is on the homestretch heading toward done with that soul killing, life stealing way of life.

I hope you all have a lovely day today. I can't wait to have some time this weekend to catch up with all of you.

Meltdown

I sat on my front steps crying my eyes out this evening. Just too much over the last two weeks: 80 hours of estate sale work for the mother-in-law plus running my business, and then she managed to lose 1/3 of the funds collected at the sale. I am so tired, so overwhelmed, just can't get back into my life as I want it to be. This was too much and that's a lesson I've learned over and over ~ I just never seem to figure it out in the midst of whatever it is, only after the fact when I'm as deflated as a used condom. I am deflated, tired, sad.

Addendum: Woke up this morning, October 17, feeling the same way. Started thinking these meltdowns occur with some regularity. Searched through my other blog and found a post titled Insanity, which comes close to expressing how I feel right now, with that tremendous urge to just run away and abandon my post in this life I know. The only difference today is that I'm not sure I'd miss the husband. I'd definitely miss the dogs. Malaise? Incipient madness? Diagnosis, anyone?

The @#$%&* scale

As a fat girl, I know that moving the scale is death. I know it. Once moved, the thing will never read precisely the same again. It will be up or down, and though I try to readjust it, it just won't be right.

My husband, sweet man who holds steady at 172, 172, 172, 172, no matter what, moved our scale. He did it in an effort to determine whether little Bill was as fat as the vet said. Mike has his own scale thing going on: he denies that the vet's monstrous digital appliance is as accurate as our retro chrome beauty when it comes to the fat little dog.

He kicked the scale around the uneven tiled floor in my sitting room a couple of days in a row, desperately trying to make Billy weigh less than 14 pounds. Knowing that an evil report would be the likely result of this moving of the scale, I skipped weighing a few days. And here's the stunning, terrifying thing about that: I gained 6 pounds.

Did I really gain 6 pounds or has he messed up the scale? Really? Really, I've been working this estate sale and skipping the gym. I've been burning the candle at both ends, feel tired all the time, not eating clean. I've probably really gained a few pounds. Six or not, I'd go with the gain being a reality and that speaks to the power of this disease for me.

For whatever reason ~ a lifetime struggle with weight, more fat cells than the average bear, whatever ~ I have a stunning capacity to gain weight quickly. It is one of the things I'm best at. If it were a competition, I'd win, but the truth is I lose with every increment of increase on the @#$%#$^ scale.

I hate scales. Hate them. But I have to have one for accountability. Skipping a day of weighing is a step toward a complete relapse. It's how I gained 80 pounds in less than a year in 1987. It's how I kept a comfortable denial going about the weight I gained when Mike was sick. I have to have daily accountability if I'm going to hold steady. Have to. So I'm back to it, weighing every morning, and I've hidden the scale from the 172 pound man and his fat little dog.

Habits

I sleep in an old four poster, the bed of my parents and the one in which I was made. They bought it in D.C. when Daddy was working for the FDA before he signed on for a world war. A pair of spinster sisters had slept in the bed all their lives and were happy to give it my newly married parents when the sisters moved to a nursing home. My bed is topped with three layers of feather beds, a down comforter, an old quilt, eight soft down pillows and two of firm feathers for propping up to read.

I was fluffing the bed this morning ~ tossing all of those feathers and down ~ and it struck me that I used to do this daily. Daily. I did it every day for a period of two years and then I just quit. Now I fluff on the day the housekeeper comes and aside from straightening the covers, I do nothing else the entire week.

I don't understand this. A fully fluffed bed is truly one of the pleasures of my day, yet I only give myself that gift once a week. It takes about two minutes to toss and fluff and then the bed is an absolute nest. I sleep better, feel as if I've had a treat, feel comforted in this world where comforts are sometimes infrequent.

It's the same with the prayers I said for the 20 years I was attending 3-4 12 step meetings a week. I believed nothing in the beginning; I got on my knees and said the words because I was told to do so and I was desperate. After a year or two of taking that positive action, I began to realize that something was different. I'd become aware of the Power that changes hopeless, desperate alcoholics into people with sparkly eyes and smiles and laughter. Aware, but not there for myself. More action, developing a habit.

I clearly remember the day I took the action and felt as if my prayer connected somehow. It was a profound spiritual experience and one which changed my heart and my mind. That connection strengthened and the habit I'd developed led me to a life I'd never imagined: living free of alcohol, free of excess food, free of binging and purging, free of the insane relationships that marked my actively addicted years.

One day I stopped. Mike was sick and I was working full time, running a full time business, caring for him. I quit one day and then the behavior became periodic. He and I used to pray together every morning, holding hands, and we did that for 12 years. After he was unable to work and was so desperately ill, I left the house before he even awakened most days. The habit of years fell away and so did the connection.

Once broken, the habit is so hard to bring back. I've noticed it's not so hard to bring back the habit of overeating ~ I've done that over and over and over throughout my life. But then overeating isn't so much habit as actual addiction for me. But the positive habits, fluffing my bed, praying with my sweetheart, pausing to ask for help through the day. Damn, those are just so elusive.

I am starting right now by saying a prayer to get through this day and to find a way to be of service to others. I don't know what / who / if anything's out there, so I am acting as if there's a benevolent Power that cares for me. The kind of connection I had for so many years is the greatest high I've ever known and I. Have. Known. Some. Highs.

I've done this before and it works. I don't know how to start anything beyond just doing it for one day, this day. So today I'll pray.

Ya think?

I've tucked this one away into my personal "oh my God, say it's not so!" file:

Food like drugs for some, same brain path used
Overeating and drug addiction may be linked, researchers find

Anyone else surprised? Heh.

Epiphany

Reading this morning (avoiding work, but this find was a gift, so well worth it), I came across a post from Skinny Sara in which she talks about the moment she made the decision to lose weight and get healthy. It's a beautiful post and put me in mind of something in the AA Big Book (what doesn't? I've thought about that, I refer to it so much, but then I realized that it's a book about life and so it makes sense.)

Anyway, Sara writes that it wasn't enough that her weight ~ at close to 400 pounds ~ was killing her, that she was suffocating and struggling to breathe, that her swollen feet were cracking and finding shoes was an impossibility. The thing that got her was when someone she respected asked her offhandedly about whether or not her weight had impeded her success in business.

In answering that question, Sara came to this: "Every bite of food I’d shoved into my mouth, every moment I’d given up, every place I hadn’t gone, and every experience I’d avoided because my overweight body made it too difficult or even impossible to contemplate, was my own fault. It was a realization long overdue, and one that could have been fraught with self-pity and sent me spiraling deeper into hopeless despair. Instead, it was the first glimmer of hope I’d felt in years. After the words were spoken, it made perfect sense to me: If the life I was living and the body I was living it in were a direct result of my own choices, if I had done this to myself, if the fault was my own, that meant that the power to change it was also mine. . . . And that was it. That was the moment I decided that I could do this. So I am."

That speaks to me on so many levels, thank you Sara. And it takes me to that phrase in the Big Book that is the essence of freedom: "So our problems, we think, are basically of our own making." That is a freedom because if I am in charge and my problems are my own, then I am free to make changes. If my problems are the result of some other, some outside circumstance, some other place, something else, then I am powerless to effect a change.

If I got myself here ~ not my sad childhood or abuse or mistreatment or genetics or this or that or any of the myriad of reasons why we end up overweight ~ then I can get myself out. No excuses, no blame, just responsibility and action. Of course the past and our life experiences play into it, but the bottom line is all of that is over. What am I going to do today? Am I going to eat and put it off one more day? Or will I make decisions today that will lead me to a healthy fit future? I got myself here. I did it. That means I can change it. And like Sara, I am.

Oprah speaks

Love her or hate her (I love her because I am her, minus a few billion $$), Oprah speaks to my heart when she talks about her struggles with weight, spirituality, finding a way to live successfully without excess food:

"I was standing on the front porch of my new home in California, the one I've worked on for three years as a gift to myself. I was looking at the mountains folding over on themselves and my yard filled with oak, pine, and redwood trees, thinking how this property is really graced by God, a promised land, and I suddenly said to myself: I do not want to be an unhealthy fat person standing in the doorway of this beautiful house. . . .

"So after many years of my weight going up and down—of saying on Monday 'I'm going to do it' and by Wednesday failing—I realized that the commitment to do well and to be well is a lifetime of choices that you make daily. The space to live in is not 'I'll try.' Not 'I want to.' Not 'I really want to.' It's 'I have decided.' . . .

"I've known all of this intellectually for a while, but last year the click came as an emotional and spiritual awakening. Now I live straight through the center of myself, which means telling the truth about everything. No more games. Every day I make the choice to live as well as I possibly can. And that starts with exercise. I do not have the genetics or the body type to function without it. So I stopped vacillating between 'Maybe I'll work out' and 'Maybe I'll take the day off.' I do it the way I bathe. And guess what: I do not hate it anymore. Don't get me wrong—you won't see me jumping up and down going, 'Oh, jeez, exercise is great,' but I no longer dread it. And that is nothing less than a revolution. . .

"With food, what works for me is treating refined and processed carbohydrates as though they are poison. . . . The biggest imbalance for many of us, though, is in the amount of thought we devote to food and weight. If I could add up the time I've spent worrying about what I just ate and what I shouldn't have just eaten, feeling guilty about it, and getting down on myself about why I'm not where I want to be, it would probably be several years of my life. And you can't get those years back. . . .

"I am not wasting any more time. And by no longer dwelling on all of these negative thoughts, I have opened up a whole new energy field for myself. It's amazing. I feel as if I'm living on a higher frequency, a stronger, brighter charge. The voltage got turned up. People stop me all the time and ask, 'What have you done to look so different?' This is the answer. . . .

"I want you to think about why you're overweight. But let me save you a lot of time: The reason you're fat is that you give more to other people than you give to yourself, because you don't feel you're worth it. The bottom line is, you cannot lose weight until you make yourself enough of a priority to do the things you need to do to make it happen. People always say, 'I'm too busy to exercise,' 'I have to be there for the kids,' 'I've got too much work.' You know what? These are little lies you're telling yourself, and they go against the laws of self-preservation, because the more whole and healthy you are, the more fully you can give to other people. And that's the truth. I'm not asking anyone to abandon her children. I'm just saying: Put yourself at the top of the list so you can treat your body with as much care and respect as you'd give to someone else's—and when anyone needs something from you, you will be operating from a full cup."

The whole thing is here. Love it.

Clear it out!

I love this post from the blog Angry Fat Girlz: "Celebrate Discardia!" What's Discardia? And why does it deserve its own holiday?

Beyond the fact that finding things to celebrate is a fine way to live life, "Discardia is a floating holiday to celebrate letting go and it takes place in the time between the Solstices & Equinoxes and their following new moons. . . . Letting go of physical stuff is one big part of Discardia, the visual aspect that is very therapeutic. We AFG's can take a cue from it and take advantage of this holiday to clean out a closet or our dressers as we turn over our clothes for the new season. I weed out the the things that are too big and can be donated or that fit or are too small but I don't really like and wouldn't wear even if I could get into them. I go through the shoes, too, and look at what I've worn and what boxes are starting to get dusty from disuse. Pull them out and get rid of them!"

This divine idea, which reminds me of one-half of the reason I started this writing exercise (simplicity), comes from this blog: Discardia . . . let it go.

As an antiques dealer with thousands of feet of warehouse space stacked to the rafters and a home which reflects years of loving antiques and decorating and collecting, it's daunting to consider how to "let go," but the urge is upon me. I want to clear out, make way, get free of the stuff that ties me down. It's not fun any longer and I want out from under it. This is great motivation to let go.

God / The Universe / The Light /

This was left in response to a recent post and I wanted to throw it out here because I love the way Lynn from the blog My Mixed Company writes. I had asked about her weight loss/fitness program and she wrote:

". . . And grateful am I, yes. Being grateful is motivation, moving your body is better than a prayer, it is using what God/The Light/The Universe whatever you believe in, gave you and with joy."

I love that: "using what God/The Light/The Universe whatever you believe in, gave you and with joy." Is there anything better? And what a gift! I was at the gym this afternoon doing 30 minutes on the elliptical and the euphoria that rises up in me near completion has to be of God / The Light / The Universe. Using this gift of a strong, healthy body, more fit than I've ever been ~ well, it's a thrill, to say the least.

Lynn writes beautifully and evocatively about her life and being young and living in New York. She has a way with words that's of "God / The Light / The Universe." Perhaps you'll drop by and visit her.

Not hungry

I don't know how many times I'll have to learn this, but the fewer carbs I eat, the less hunger I experience. (Fewer? Less? Wish I actually knew that grammatical rule.) I've looked back through MyFoodDiary records of eating since March and I see that my healthy eating plan has included a proper percentage of carbohydrates and calories, fats and proteins, all of that. It's just that I was hungry most of the time. Really hungry, despite eating 1400 - 2200 calories a day. It's as if the grain-based carbs, particularly, because I wasn't eating much sugar, stimulate hunger and appetite.

Having had five days now of lower carb eating ~ not zero carbs, but lower, under 50-60 or so, and without grains or sugar ~ I find that I'm not hungry at all. My head is clear and after the initial crankiness that inevitably comes with that change, my mood has lifted and I feel more energetic. Slept better, too.

This is like jumping off a diving board into an empty swimming pool. As I smack my ass on the concrete, I shriek and think "learned it!" I climb out and go on my way, only to return to the diving board. Jump in, smack my ass on the concrete, shriek and think "learned it!" Learned it, learned it, learned it. Have I learned it yet? For today I have.

Proof that we create our own reality

In a burst of optimism and that exquisite joy that often comes to visit in autumn, I posted below about that intense feeling of being alive I love so well.

Just so you know I've not entirely lost my marbles in saying that this feeling comes to visit aided by a sense of goodness in the world, I am most assuredly not unaware of the state of our nation and of the world. I am heartened, however, by the words of Keith Olbermann in his impassioned monologues calling for, among other things, our president to extend an apology to the American people for his recent rose garden speech.

His words are powerful and so refreshing ~ like the cool breezes and crisp mornings these days ~ because we've been so long without someone publicly speaking the truth about our would-be emperor who has, in my humble opinion, been naked for years while parading about as if clothed in fabric of gold. The media has been cowed by our current administration, as have been the voices of dissent in our society. Mr. Olbermann's words give me hope and hope brings joy.

For a moment I can believe that our republic is not lost after all, that our freedoms will survive intact and that we will emerge from this crisis state a better people more appreciative of the magnificence that is our Constitution and our land.

Alive, alive . . .

Upon occasion, I have moments, sometimes days, weeks, whole long periods of time during which I have the most exquisite, divine feeling of being fully alive in every fiber of my being. It's always a combination of freedom from food and a sense of goodness in the world. This is one of those moments and it is purely magic.

No dress rehearsals

I am trying to be mindful, to be present, REALLY present in every moment of every day. It feels so good to be alive, to be healthy, to be working on fitness and to be actively achieving recovery from this dreadful illness. I am thankful to be at peace on the inside so that I can at last deal with the outside symptom of my years of misusing food.

One of my favorite sayings is "This is your life. It is not a dress rehearsal." We only get one life, just one. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I always thought I'd get a do-over somehow. I spent years and years and years saying to myself that tomorrow, things would get better. Tomorrow I'd make good choices. Tomorrow I'd feel like working on my behaviors, on my weight, my health.

Tomorrow never comes. This is it, this day, right now, this minute.For many years after becoming sober in 1982, I chaired beginners' meetings at my home group in AA. I did it long enough that I saw the same folks come back again and again over a period of years. They weren't ready at the first meeting, had to get a paper signed or whatever, but then a year or so later they'd turn up again.

Maybe the job was gone or the wife or the house. Still not ready, maybe, and off again, out into the world, to try it one more time. Over the years, a number of my "beginners" were buried before they ever drew a sober breath. I think of this now, because when I worked with those folks it was patently obvious that the thing I could not give them was the "want to."

I could tell them how to work the steps, assure them of the Higher Power waiting at the end, give them aid at every turn, encouragement, prayer, hope for their recovery. But if they did not bring with them the desire, the longing for, the unrelenting willingness to NOT drink, all efforts were wasted.

Another thing became clear over the years. With each slip or relapse or binge, a little piece of that belief that THIS CAN WORK died in them. They would eventually become immune to the concept of recovery. Except that it is harder to do, quitting our killer eating habits is very much like recovering from alcoholism. We are all too precious to sacrifice to this disease. LIFE is too magnificent to lose it to an eating disorder.

"If not now, when?" is one of the most helpful mantras I can use for myself when faced with decisions about food. When do I start if not now? When do I stick with my plan if not this minute? Tomorrow NEVER comes and I lose my life ~ my entire life ~ by waiting until the next meal, the next day, the next week to begin.

Nike had it right: Just do it. Do it now, this minute, today. Do it.