Nov 29

I have taken a few days off from writing the journal.

Thanksgiving was a good time. I ate and enjoyed foods I don’t normally eat. Treating Thanksgiving as a celebration allowed me to enjoy food abundance and freedom without the food shame flashback. The heavier eating seemed more like a break than an eating breakdown.

I am weighing myself and writing it down every morning, right when I wake up. It is helping me by breaking down my compartmentalized thinking about food. One food compartment says, I am unacceptable because I am overweight. I must lose weight. If I do that I will no longer feel shame.”
The other compartment says, “I have a right to eat this food. I need it to deal with the pain of my shame.”

The truth is that food is neither the cause of my shame nor the solution to my shame pain. Weighing myself everyday brings my shame out into the open where I can grab it and deal with it. My eating improves as a function of the decrease in my inappropriate shame.

Nov 30

Tony is right. [See comment below] The fun of Thanksgiving is sharing it with loved ones. Eating together is a bonding activity. That is the reason behind religious feasts, business lunches, and dinners on dates.

Eating alone cannot be as satisfying to me as eating with someone I love. Conversely, eating with someone I don’t like is an unpleasant experience for me.

I am going to lunch today with an old friend I have not seen in 15 years. The meal will help us re-bond. Food and eating is an essential part of healthy living.

Years ago, I was trying to learn to date again after my divorce. It was not going well. In a conversation with my oldest daughter, I was complaining about my inability to enjoy dating.

She said, “Dad, maybe your dates would go better if you did not treat every conversation as an opportunity to win.” Ouch. Double ouch.

A woman at a meeting said this. “When I die, they will not say, ‘She was a lovely lady; she was always right’.” In a sense, people who need to always be right, make the people around them be always wrong.

There is a recovery program saying, “Would you rather be right or serene?” Historically, my need to be right has not brought me peace. It has mainly produced tension.

The last few years I was President of the Union Rescue Mission, I did not lose a board vote. The board solved their problem by having secret board meetings to which I was not invited. At one of their secret board meetings they fired me.

As I grow older, I realize that over the years, I was completely wrong about things I things about which I thought I was absolutely right.

In 1988, I made a plan for the rest of my life. According to my plan, in 2006 I would have retired from the mission and I would be a volunteer at the mission. I was wrong about absolutely everything in my plan for my future. None of it came true.

My humility and willingness to admit I may be wrong, has improved and still needs to improve. As it improves, certain things happen.

1. Life is far less exhausting.
2. I have learned many important things from other people.
3. People enjoy my company more.
4. I see that humility is a major contributor to my joy.
5. The statement,”You may be right ” is becoming a powerful tool of
my program.

Nov 17

Today I ate some vegetables. I ate an onion and I ate a can of green beans. I cooked my vegetables in a skillet using low heat for an hour. Included in this dish were some fresh fish and some olive oil. It tasted good.

I wanted to use some frozen spinach instead of the green beans. It sounded tastier. However, I ran into my familiar veggie block. Rather than fight the block, I just used the green beans. There is this, I prepared and ate vegetables.

A man was sharing at a meeting. He was talking about a very small program victory he had enjoyed in the week just past. The other people at the meeting failed to show the interest I am sure they had, in the man’s small victory.

That prompted the man to say the following:

“You people need to learn to celebrate small victories.”

Eating the green beans was a small victory for me. I am writing this to celebrate my little victory. Learning to eat healthy is not going to be a huge, one time event. Learning to eat healthy will be tons of small victories experienced over a long perod of time.

Nov 18

I have a bad cold. Today healthy eating has to emphsize drinking lots of liquids and getting my vitamin C. I do not want to eat my way throught his day.

I am used to lots of activities. In order to get well and to avoid inflicting this cold on others., I am staying home. Fortunately, there is lots of college football for me to watch. Maybe I will do well in my eating today. Or maybe I will eat for comfort or as a solution to boredom. Either way, I intend to learn about healthy eating on this day.

Nov 19

My beloved cousin died a few days ago. Her death is making me conscious of my fear of death. I was not safe as a boy. I did not receive a solid foundation. Maybe no one has a solid emotional foundation. I don’t know about that. I do know that I don’t feel safe. Way deep inside, I am afraid of dying.

I have tried to cover the pain of this fear by eating. The price of not overindulging in food is facing my fear of death.

When I look at my fear of death, I am overwhelmed. My fear is so basic and built in. That fear has invaded every cell in my body. I have no idea who I would be without that fear. Overcoming this fear seems impossible.

When I look at my history, I have hope. I have overcome so much. Maybe I can overcome this fear too.

I do know I am powerless over my fear of death. I need God’s help today, just like I needed God’s help yesterday.

Nov 20

It is good to be looking at my fear of death. It is healthier for me to have the fear of death and feel it, than it is for me to bury my fear of death. When I am conscious of my fear of death, I can feel it twisting my personality.

One of the ways it twists me is that it turns hunger into a panic attack. When hunger badly frightens me, I organize my day to keep from getting hungry. I want to eat in response to hunger instead of eating to avoid hunger.

A therapist friend of mine taught me this prayer:

” God, today is as good a day as any for me to die. If you choose to let me live, help me gratefully enjoy my day, and live compassonately.”

Nov 21

I bought a scale today. I put it in my bedroom in a place I have to walk past it many times every day. I am going to weigh myself several times a day. I am going to keep a daily record of my weight, and also my blood pressure. I want to get over my scale shame. I also want to live facing the reality of what I weigh.

I learned a lesson in facing reality from a friend who attends Debtors Anonymous. DA advises its members to get a receipt and to look at it every time they use an ATM. They also advise people to keep their checkbook balanced. The first step in economic recovery is to face your problem head-on.

Maybe checking my weight and recording it will help me to face the reality that I need to learn to eat healthily. I am going to try it for awhile and see if it helps.

Nov 22

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. That is a day off in terms of eating healthy, at least to some extent. That is probably not the best way to say it. That makes eating healthy sound like an imposed chore. I could call Thanksgiving a feast day and be better off.

When I was a boy, I used to play with a Bat-a Ball. Thats a game played with a small ball tethered to a small, wooden paddle by a rubber band. You hit the ball up. When the ball gets high enough, the rubber band gets tight and puls the ball down. Then you hit it back up. Sometimes, I could hit the ball 200 times in a row without missing.

Some days, my healthy eating is like that little ball. I am fine all day, but an eating deprivation tension builds up all day, and I eat unwisely in the evening. I have to stay out of that “Imposing a diet on myself” mentality. Eating healthy has to built around my own desire and decision. I can not try to shame myself into improvement.

I heard about a wise bumper sticker a few days ago. Here is what it said:

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think” This bumper sticker is helping me.

These are difficult days for me. I feel I have suffered a great loss. I am working my way through the situation in a way that is satisfactory to me.

The hardest times are in the morning when I wake up. Most of the time that is about 3:00 AM. I do go back to sleep, so I am not suffering from lack of sleep, but old, faulty belief systems tend to operate for an hour or an hour and a half early in my mornings.

My faulty thinking centers around the feeling that I am fundamentally unacceptable. It feels like my lack of acceptability means that my current loss is just the first of many losses that will inevitably come to me.. Eventually, I will be all by myself, isolated, forlorn.

That is not the case. I know I am a loved and valued man. I know I can rely on remaining in fellowship with wonderful people all the rest of my life. A rich life socially is a part of my heritage from my Higher Power.

Another program saying is:

“My mind is a dangerous place. I should never go there alone.”

In this tough time I am not isolating. Each day I make sure to stay in contact with my many wise and caring friends. They help me see where I have allowed the emotional pressure I am under, to negatively influence my thought life.

Another saying is this:

“There is a committee in my head. This committee convenes on a regular basis to tell me the same old lies.”

My committee’s lies center around my worth and acceptability as a human being. Sometimes I say to myself, “At least I could make them tell me some new lies. They have been telling me the same lies for over sixty years.”

Each morning I fight through those fears, go back to sleep, get up and have a good, full day. I am learning I don’t have to believe everything I think.

Nov 10

Here is a quote from A comment Gina posted on last weeks journal.

“Do you think you equate green foods with the evil word ‘diet’? ”

Diet is definitely a bad word for me. It is probably the worst four letter word in my vocabulary. Diet speaks of a lifetime of failure and shame, a lifetime of well meaning people humiliating me by offering me magic food plans I could not keep.

In fact, the second I begin to think in terms of losing weight, I begin to re-experience all the harmful food thinking that has bound me up all these decades. That is why I am learning to think in terms of healthy eating.

I want to think about Gina’s suggestion that my resistance to vegetables comes form associating dieting with eating veggies. I suspect she may be right. If she is right, eating vegetables is a part of my food deprivation thinking, as opposed to food celebration thinking. Eating veggies would be tantamount to doing without instead of enjoyable eating.

Nov 11

I was in first grade during the food shortages of the 2nd World War. Doing without certain foods was seen as everyone’s duty to the boys fighting “Over There.” One result of the food shortages seemed to be that the school cafeteria where I ate lunch frequently served boiled cauliflower to the kids. I guess the boys fighting the war did not like cauliflower any better than I did.

I don’t think the cafeteria cooks seasoned it in any way beyond salt. It was badly overcooked and mushy. I could not eat it. Every time I put it in my mouth I gagged.

The school tried to force me to eat it. I could not leave the cafeteria to go play in the school yard, until my plate was clean.
Sometimes, I sat looking at the food, wondering what to do until after the afternoon classes had begun. Finally, someone would come and angrily dismiss me so I could go to my class. They reproached me for not caring enough about our boys fighting the war to finish my food. I felt like a problem child.

I solved the problem by putting the cauliflower into my jeans pockets each day. My Mother asked me, “What on earth do you keep putting in your pockets?” I don’t remember what I told her. I am sure it was not the truth. The smell should have told her or my teachers something was amiss.

I don’t remember how the situation resolved itself. Maybe the school year just ended. However, I imagine that my cauliflower experience contributed to my rebellion against vegetables.

Nov 12

My Dad was a stickler about finishing all the food on your plate. I think people that lived through the Great Depression must have picked up the idea that making your kids clean their plate was good child rearing.

He liked to say, “Well, either finish your food or sit there and look at it.” The food that I most frequently sat there and looked at was vegetables. It became a contest of wills.

My Dad tolerated no rebellion against his authority. I risked the razor strap if I tried to defy him. Maybe not eating my vegetables was a passive aggressive way to express my individuality. Maybe I can end that little game now, some 60 years later.

Nov 13

My Maternal Grandfather was a very interesting man. He moved from the coal mining area of Ohio to Tucson as a young man with a wife and two kids. He had to move in order to keep his lungs from being further damaged by the coal mines and harsh winters.

He loved baseball and brought the first organized baseball leagues to Arizona. He was a pitcher and apparently a good one. He was very good looking and always managed to catch female eyes.

He was a better grandfather than he was a father. I worshipped him. He was a primary model for my masculinity as I grew up.

The woman of the family said with female admiration, “He is a meat and potato man.” I heard implied , “None of those vegetables for him!”

Nov 14

When my family did serve vegetables, they were generally the starchy vegetables like peas, corn, or carrots. Salads were not a part of our routine. However, my Dad loved collard greens. He grew greens, tomatos and radishes in his sandy soiled garden.

This summer, my daughter and granddaughter grew lots of tomatos. I had the privilege of eating fresh off the vine tomatos to my fill.

My Grandmother loved to snap green beans. She cooked them with bacon. My mouth is watering at the memory

Nov 15

There is a saying in my program, “Progress not perfection.” I am just not able to make a move to a fullblown healthy attitude toward vegetables. I can accept that. What can I do that isn’t perfection, but is progress?

The thing I can do right now is to buy some high quality vegetable juices at the Trader Joes. I have tried them and I do drink them.

Many times in my life I have set out to improve my eating habits and have gotten discouraged. The first time I blow it, I feel like my true nature as a eating failure has emerged. It is like when I eat healthily, I am acting counter to who I am.

There may be some truth to that. I may be inclined to overeat by some quirk of my DNA. There may be something wrong with the physical mechanism that tells me when I am full. I may well have a predisposition to overeating.

But even if all that is true, I can improve my eating. I may not be able to completely eat in a normal way, but I can improve.

I am certainly genetically predisposed to depression, and I have suffered severe clinical depression. But I have not given myself over to depression. One of my daughters told me that I was one of the happiest person she knows. If I can learn to work around my depression DNA, I can learn to work around my predisposition toward eating problems.

However, I can not do all at once. I have to be satisfied with slowly getting better a little at a time.

Nov 16

I was riding my bike a few hours ago on a bike trail that parallels the ocean. I got to thinking about a party my daughter is giving. One of the thoughts I enjoyed thinking was, “I bet she will serve some wonderful vegetables.”

Thinking of her good vegetables was a very happy thought. I have been writing about my veggie block for a few days now. And yet her vegetables sounded so good my mouth watered. In fact, my mouth is watering now right at this computer… Go figure.

Nov 3

A few days ago I was down at my sisters house in San Diego. She cooked us a delicious pot roast. We had lots of leftovers.

Before I went to bed, I went into the kitchen to have a piece of meat and a small glass of milk. I was completely welcome to any food in the whole house. However, for some silly reason, I felt I had to sneak the food.

I ate it so fast that I did not enjoy it. I hardly chewed the meat before I tried to quickly wash it down with milk. I choked my self a little bit. I coughed off and on for a half an hour.

My boyhood panic about having insufficient protein re-emerged. I badly wanted that meat.

My boyhood need to grab whatever food I could and to eat it competitively rose up. I ate as fast as possible.

I have enjoyed laughing at myself over the incident ever since.

Nov 4

The apartment building where I live just installed a universal weight machine and a treadmill machine. I was thinking of joining a health club near my building. I won’t have to do that now. I can ride my bike in the morning and walk and do resistance training in the evening. That gives me hope.

That the Universe supplied that exercise equipment for me, right in my building is a reminder that the Universe is on my side to help me achieve any worthwhile goal. I needed that reminder today. I have Higher Power help in learning to eat healthy. I can succeed.

Nov 5
The last few weeks have been very hard for me emotionally. I suffered what is to me an enormous loss. I am grieving.

Other old griefs have attached themselves to this grief to make the feeling more intense. This process is very painful, but it is just pain. Someone has said, “Life is Pain.” Someone else said, “To be human is to experience pain.”

I have had, do have, and will have pain. I have no right to expect my life to be any different than any other person in this regard. I do have a right to be able to make my pain work for me. I am doing that. This is an enormously hard time for me, but I am somewhat healthier emotionally as a result.

That health includes my eating. I am eating more healthily with less effort. I see hope.

Nov 6

This morning I played around with being hungry. I woke up very early. That is not uncommon at this time in my life; this time is so hard for me. I decided to wait a few hours to eat so I would be eating at a more normal time. Then I ate a light breakfast.

After breakfast I went on a long bike ride. I intended to get a little more to eat along the way. Nothing sounded good to me. I knew I had some healthy but unappealing food at home. I chose to wait till I got home to eat. I was too hungry by then. I had to fight off a little food panic.

Some observations:
1. I have not grocery shopped for a long time. There was no reason for me not to have restocked my food supply so I had delicious healthy food choices. That seems necessary if I am going to eat healthy comfortably.
2. I was pleased that feeling hungry was a little scary, but not overpoweringly negative.
3. There is such a thing as getting too hungry for me. I must kick off some physical reactions that are very powerful when I get too hungry.
4. I definitely feel I am making progress.

Nov 7

I am hungry. I am hungry on purpose. I am delaying eating breakfast because I want to experience hunger every day, so I can learn not to eat just to avoid being hungry.

The mornings are hard for me. Right now, I am feeling a little tense about eating, but I am not trying to comfort myself with food. I am comforting myself by talking to people on the phone. Eating to avoid being hungry and eating for comfort are two major engines that drive my unhealthy eating.

Another area I need Higher Power help is my attitude toward vegetables. Gina gave me some wonderfully rich vegetable juice, [Trader Joe's of course], I am going to get me a supply of that juice today .

The mystery is salads. I love salads, but I am completely blocked about making myself a salad at home. I don’t buy salad makings for fear they will be wasted. I don’t make salads partly because I don’t stock the makings. There is some kind of downward spiral going on here.

Nov 8
I ate comfort food for breakfast today. It was a huge breakfast burrito and a diet coke. It was not healthy in any sense except that I wanted and needed the old familiar food comfort.I don’t feel any remorse. I should add, the burrito was part of a 12 mile ride along the ocean and around a marina.

It doesn’t help me to feel I have to eat in a perfectly healthy manner. Here is something I emailed to a friend.

“A part of being human is making mistakes. A part of being connected to the divine is knowing that God does not care at all that we make mistakes, but cares lots that we learn from them. I think you are learning that you are human and that you have the resources to deal with the things you do right and the things you screw up.”

That applies to me as well as to my friend.

The advantage of food comfort is that it is quickly available, and carries no risk of rejection.
The disadvantage of food comfort is that it is relatively ineffective. It takes my mind off my pain for a few minutes, but it does not give me a comfort that supports me for the next few hours.

Nov 9

The advantage to personal comfort as opposed to food comfort is its permanence and its power of extrapolation.[See Nov 8 journal entry for a discussion of food comfort], Personal comfort is permanent because everytime you ask for and receive comfort from a person you love, it touches both the comforter and the person being comforted.

That means that the comforting ability of the two people involved becomes more profound every time they reach out to each other. In that way,the resource of love we all so desperately need, just grows and grows and becomes more and more available.

Also, every time I ask for and receive comfort, I permanently improve my ability to receive comfort in all of my future discomforts. For me, I have gone witout comfort because of my inability to receive comfort, more often than I have gone without comfort because no comfort was available.

Human comfort can be extrapolated to other situations. The love and comfort I receive today in regard to situation “A” is still working tomorrow for situation “B”. Human comfort improves my overall comfort level. If my overall comfort level increases, it takes a greater level of problem to upset my serenity. With a high comfort level, I just sail through problems that would have devastated me in the past.

For a good example of human comfort, see my daughter’s comment at the bottom of this blog. Her comment inspired this entry.