Sunday, October2, 2011
I’m relieved that during a very stressful week, my program has been good. It has become a strong center-point in my life and I’m so grateful for that.
But even more, our little family, Kay, Lorna, Kev and Meg, is a center point too, a “still point in the turning world.” It’s beautiful to be surrounded by their affection and understanding and wisdom.
You, my partners, also share in that vocation. Thanks for being there for me again this week.
--Michael-Eddie
Balance is being restored
Sunday, September 25, 2011
It’s been a good week.
Last week I noted that my program was off kilter: too little time to nourish the soul and too much of sugary, sweet desserts (which don’t do much to nourish the body).
This week it’s been different.
I’ve been reading a book by Donald Altman. It’s called Meal by Meal: 365 Daily Meditations for Finding Balance through Mindful Eating. Today’s insight was helpful: “The fact you may struggle with food means that you are in the process of finding balance and maturity. This process is natural, just as all of nature goes through stages from infancy to adulthood to maturity.”
I like Altman’s emphasis on natural progress toward maturity. That’s what it felt like this week. As I submit, day by day, week by week, to the structure of my program, I find that I’m not fighting for success, not fearing failure. I’m not pathologizing my over-eating but neither am I ignoring it or excusing it.
Just as my body easily finds its balance when, from a seated position, I stand up, so my mind can find its natural equipoise. I’m grateful that this past week a bit of balance has been restored.
--Michael-Eddie
It’s been a good week.
Last week I noted that my program was off kilter: too little time to nourish the soul and too much of sugary, sweet desserts (which don’t do much to nourish the body).
This week it’s been different.
I’ve been reading a book by Donald Altman. It’s called Meal by Meal: 365 Daily Meditations for Finding Balance through Mindful Eating. Today’s insight was helpful: “The fact you may struggle with food means that you are in the process of finding balance and maturity. This process is natural, just as all of nature goes through stages from infancy to adulthood to maturity.”
I like Altman’s emphasis on natural progress toward maturity. That’s what it felt like this week. As I submit, day by day, week by week, to the structure of my program, I find that I’m not fighting for success, not fearing failure. I’m not pathologizing my over-eating but neither am I ignoring it or excusing it.
Just as my body easily finds its balance when, from a seated position, I stand up, so my mind can find its natural equipoise. I’m grateful that this past week a bit of balance has been restored.
--Michael-Eddie
Augment the quiet time; diminish the desserts
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Just a quick report this week. Checking in after a very busy, very stressful week, to say that, in the main, I’ve been happy with my program.
I’ve neglected my meditation and my journaling time, two very important anchors in my life.
And though my exercise has been consistent this week, I’ve had an excess of sweets. This, too, needs to be addressed.
Augment the quiet time and diminish the desserts. That’s the prescription for this coming week. I know I’ll feel better and handle the stress much better too.
Thanks for keeping me on your heart this week. I’m doing the same for you, sending you my love.
--Michael-Eddie
Just a quick report this week. Checking in after a very busy, very stressful week, to say that, in the main, I’ve been happy with my program.
I’ve neglected my meditation and my journaling time, two very important anchors in my life.
And though my exercise has been consistent this week, I’ve had an excess of sweets. This, too, needs to be addressed.
Augment the quiet time and diminish the desserts. That’s the prescription for this coming week. I know I’ll feel better and handle the stress much better too.
Thanks for keeping me on your heart this week. I’m doing the same for you, sending you my love.
--Michael-Eddie
Love is enough
Sunday, September 11, 2011
My sister Karen and I spent the past week, Monday through Saturday, in Knoxville, visiting my Dad, who lives there with my younger sister, Kathy and her husband Charley. We had a great time together, a good, long relaxing time. (Kathy and Charley were away on vacation so Karen and I were there to be with Dad).
Wednesday night we went to a class taught by a member of the church Dad attends. In the course of the lecture/discussion, Ray, our teacher, made this statement: “In the New Testament era, God no longer institutes bi-lateral covenants with his people.”
He said, “In the past, in the Old Testament, God made conditional, quid pro quo promises. He’d say, ‘If you do this, I’ll do that.’” I thought of several instances: for example, the covenant he made with Abram. God promised him that if he left his homeland and followed God into a country he would lead him to, God would do three things: 1) bless him, 2) make his name great, and 3) make him the patriarch of a great nation. (Genesis chapter 12). Ray said, “God used to make covenants like this but not anymore.”
The truth is—as I see it—rewards are mentioned in the New Testament, the biggest of which is eternal life, granted to those who follow God as revealed in the Gospels. But Ray is right, there is a shift. There is less emphasis on our tangible returns and more on our relationships—with God and with others.
That’s what our family values. We just like spending time together. That’s what Dad wants, that’s his highest value and it’s no surprise therefore that everybody wants to go to his home and everybody hates to leave.
So it really didn’t matter what we did this week—preparing and sharing meals, watching and discussing political debates, playing cards, playing horseshoes. I loved all those things, but in it all, common to all the disparate activity, was simply spending time together, loving each other by being together in love.
There was a long walk with Karen hearing about her life, her children, and how her plans for retirement are unfolding. And then there was a long lunch at the airport where I was able to share my life with her. When Kathy and Charley returned from their vacation, we had a little overlap time with them, too, and their son, Evan, who came back for the weekend from college.
Life—when you reduce it to its simplest terms—is love. What makes life worth living is not what we have or hope to have. What life gives to everyone, without fail, is an opportunity to love. Now and then I remind myself: that’s all I want, that’s all the reward I really need.
--Michael-Eddie
My sister Karen and I spent the past week, Monday through Saturday, in Knoxville, visiting my Dad, who lives there with my younger sister, Kathy and her husband Charley. We had a great time together, a good, long relaxing time. (Kathy and Charley were away on vacation so Karen and I were there to be with Dad).
Wednesday night we went to a class taught by a member of the church Dad attends. In the course of the lecture/discussion, Ray, our teacher, made this statement: “In the New Testament era, God no longer institutes bi-lateral covenants with his people.”
He said, “In the past, in the Old Testament, God made conditional, quid pro quo promises. He’d say, ‘If you do this, I’ll do that.’” I thought of several instances: for example, the covenant he made with Abram. God promised him that if he left his homeland and followed God into a country he would lead him to, God would do three things: 1) bless him, 2) make his name great, and 3) make him the patriarch of a great nation. (Genesis chapter 12). Ray said, “God used to make covenants like this but not anymore.”
The truth is—as I see it—rewards are mentioned in the New Testament, the biggest of which is eternal life, granted to those who follow God as revealed in the Gospels. But Ray is right, there is a shift. There is less emphasis on our tangible returns and more on our relationships—with God and with others.
That’s what our family values. We just like spending time together. That’s what Dad wants, that’s his highest value and it’s no surprise therefore that everybody wants to go to his home and everybody hates to leave.
So it really didn’t matter what we did this week—preparing and sharing meals, watching and discussing political debates, playing cards, playing horseshoes. I loved all those things, but in it all, common to all the disparate activity, was simply spending time together, loving each other by being together in love.
There was a long walk with Karen hearing about her life, her children, and how her plans for retirement are unfolding. And then there was a long lunch at the airport where I was able to share my life with her. When Kathy and Charley returned from their vacation, we had a little overlap time with them, too, and their son, Evan, who came back for the weekend from college.
Life—when you reduce it to its simplest terms—is love. What makes life worth living is not what we have or hope to have. What life gives to everyone, without fail, is an opportunity to love. Now and then I remind myself: that’s all I want, that’s all the reward I really need.
--Michael-Eddie
Hundreds of phobias—one treatment for all
Sunday, September 4, 2011
I have a friend who’s doing post-grad work in psychology, specifically anxiety studies.
A few weeks ago we were talking about phobias and she said something that surprised me. She said, “All phobias have the same treatment.” I said, “Really? What is it, because there must be hundreds of phobias.”
“There are,” she said, and started totting them up, the standard ones like heights, germs, crowds, enclosed spaces, and so on. She said, “There may be hundreds of phobias but they all have the same cure. It’s called exposure: facing the fear, confronting the fear.
“Here’s an example,” she said. “Germophobes are encouraged to touch a dumpster with their hand and then lick the hand. The guide must do it too, of course. But that combination of helpful support and intentional exposure to the source of the fear—that’s what sets you free.”
With me the big fear was always hunger. I never thought of myself as a hungerphobe, even at the height of my compulsive eating days. Later, after I grudgingly admitted I was addicted to food, I still couldn’t admit I was afraid of being hungry. But what do you call it—when even the smallest vacancy in the stomach is intolerable, when the emptiness demands to be filled—if not hunger phobia?
I read again this week this amazing fact: healthy human beings, if they have adequate water, can easily survive without one morsel of food for thirty days. Some have gone as long as two months. The fact is, we do not need to eat every day, let alone three, four or five times a day, or whenever the stomach registers the faintest distress.
My grad student friend went on to say, “You can confront your fear in one fell swoop, or little by little. Often a guide is helpful, but the effort must be voluntary. You can’t force patients to confront their fears. It just doesn’t work.”
That got me to thinking about my program: whatever else it’s been, my program has been a ten-year treatment for hunger fear. Day by day, by week, by month, by year, I’ve been gradually re-training Eddie. With your help, I’ve been his guide, leading him to realize that we really need only about half the calories he used to require. It’s been more than a decade now, living on what he regards as a meager, Spartan diet, but we’re still alive, still maintaining a stable weight.
So, the facts speak for themselves. And I think, deep down, Eddie’s as glad as I am to be free—or nearly free—of the tyranny of hunger fear.
To you, my guides, I send love again this week. Thanks for being there for me.
--Michael-Eddie
Low-level ecstasies
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Dear Partners,
Recently I finished Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. It’s his story of walking the Appalachian Trail (AT). The AT is a 2100-mile hiking path that runs through the forests along the east coast from Georgia all the way up to Maine.
Some serous hikers, called “thru-hikers,” attempt do it in one, long, continuous, multi-month walk. And that was on Byron’s mind when he first planned the expedition. But he had two problems. One was his own lack of experience (he was not in very good shape) and the other was his trail companion, a friend of his, Stephen Katz, who was in even worse shape.
So they didn’t achieve their original goal, but they did learn a great deal along the way. When you hike 870 miles with a 40-pound pack on your back and sleep in a tent virtually every night and cook your meals squatting at a camp stove—you start to appreciate little luxuries.
All along the way, at intervals, the AT provides wooden shelters, for which Bryson and Katz were very grateful. Each shelter had a nearby outhouse, “a good water source, and a picnic table, so we could prepare and eat our meals in a more or less normal posture, instead of squatting on damp logs.”
In one shelter, someone had left a broom. When he saw it, Bryson was amazed at his excitement. He muses: you know your life is pretty spare when the mere sight of a broom can make you smile.
On the Appalachian Trail, such modest provisions—an outhouse, a picnic table, a common broom—all are great luxuries. Bryson concludes: “If there’s one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.”
Last week, on our vacation, Kay and I sat with 17,000 music fans in the open-air Hollywood Bowl to hear the LA Philharmonic do Beethoven’s 9th symphony—which concludes with that exuberant, triumphant chorus: Ode to Joy. Now, that was ecstasy.
But since we’ve returned, I’ve been aware that events on a much smaller scale make me just as happy, happier in fact: like last Saturday morning, making scrambled eggs for my granddaughter, and raisin toast and French press coffee for my daughter. It took Annika approximately 40 minutes to eat one-third of her eggs. She did finish every morsel of toast, and while she was doing it—she needed encouragement to stay on task—we read the comics in the morning paper.
I laughed. Annika laughed. It was an ode to joy, not in the vast Hollywood Bowl but in that chic, intimate venue, The Breakfast Bowl in Evanston, Illinois.
Peace to you, my partners. I wish you this week your own low-level ecstasies.
--Michael-Eddie
Dear Partners,
Recently I finished Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. It’s his story of walking the Appalachian Trail (AT). The AT is a 2100-mile hiking path that runs through the forests along the east coast from Georgia all the way up to Maine.
Some serous hikers, called “thru-hikers,” attempt do it in one, long, continuous, multi-month walk. And that was on Byron’s mind when he first planned the expedition. But he had two problems. One was his own lack of experience (he was not in very good shape) and the other was his trail companion, a friend of his, Stephen Katz, who was in even worse shape.
So they didn’t achieve their original goal, but they did learn a great deal along the way. When you hike 870 miles with a 40-pound pack on your back and sleep in a tent virtually every night and cook your meals squatting at a camp stove—you start to appreciate little luxuries.
All along the way, at intervals, the AT provides wooden shelters, for which Bryson and Katz were very grateful. Each shelter had a nearby outhouse, “a good water source, and a picnic table, so we could prepare and eat our meals in a more or less normal posture, instead of squatting on damp logs.”
In one shelter, someone had left a broom. When he saw it, Bryson was amazed at his excitement. He muses: you know your life is pretty spare when the mere sight of a broom can make you smile.
On the Appalachian Trail, such modest provisions—an outhouse, a picnic table, a common broom—all are great luxuries. Bryson concludes: “If there’s one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.”
Last week, on our vacation, Kay and I sat with 17,000 music fans in the open-air Hollywood Bowl to hear the LA Philharmonic do Beethoven’s 9th symphony—which concludes with that exuberant, triumphant chorus: Ode to Joy. Now, that was ecstasy.
But since we’ve returned, I’ve been aware that events on a much smaller scale make me just as happy, happier in fact: like last Saturday morning, making scrambled eggs for my granddaughter, and raisin toast and French press coffee for my daughter. It took Annika approximately 40 minutes to eat one-third of her eggs. She did finish every morsel of toast, and while she was doing it—she needed encouragement to stay on task—we read the comics in the morning paper.
I laughed. Annika laughed. It was an ode to joy, not in the vast Hollywood Bowl but in that chic, intimate venue, The Breakfast Bowl in Evanston, Illinois.
Peace to you, my partners. I wish you this week your own low-level ecstasies.
--Michael-Eddie
When was the last time you got caught in a pair of Chinese handcuffs?
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Last Sunday (August 7th) Kay and I went to church in Tucson and at one point during the sermon, the preacher, to illustrate a point, reached under the pulpit and pulled out a pair of Chinese handcuffs, a small cylinder of woven bamboo. Then he inserted both index fingers, one at each end, and showed how even the slightest pulling away tightens the trap. He said, the natural instinct, when you realize you’re entrapped, is to pull away more, but of course this just tightens it more.
He said, “I’ve noticed, in my life, if I have a problem and I start working on it, sometimes, instead of getting better, it gets worse. So then I try harder, but the harder I work the worse it gets.”
That got me to thinking—you know how your mind can drift in a sermon, even a good sermon—about my program and how, over the years, how many crazy diets I had tried.
After the service I thanked the preacher, tucked the metaphor in my pocket and promptly forgot about it.
A few days later, Kay and I were 500 hundred miles away, in Santa Monica, California. We were walking along Ocean Avenue, a half block from our hotel, when I spotted a young man standing at a corner bus stop, holding a pair of Chinese handcuffs. I stopped and said hi and I told him the story I just told you and we both had a good laugh at the coincidence.
He said, “What fascinates me is the physics of the thing,” and he started explaining the science behind it, but then, sensing I wasn’t getting it (I wasn’t) he stopped. The bus pulled up and we exchanged hurried good-byes. As he turned to go he said, “By the way, did you think I was Chinese?” I said, “No, I didn’t think anything; I guess I was just so focused on the cuffs.” He smiled and said, “Oh, OK, well, I’m not.”
He said it with a smile but earnestly too. Apparently he’d thought I had assumed two coincidences and while he was happy to figure in one of them, he was eager also to disabuse me of the other. Why, I don’t know. You might know, some expert in Asian ethnology might know, but I don’t.
Nevertheless, I walked away relishing this single, very cool, synchronicity. It wasn’t until later, reviewing the photos I’d taken, that I spotted another: how the handcuffs matched his shirt and how both suggested prison stripes.
And that got me thinking, again, about my program and my addictive history.
I remembered, once, back in the summer of 1986, just before I took the church in Clarendon Hills, I constructed what I called my Every-Other-Day Diet. I literally ate one day and fasted the next. I don’t know how long it lasted but it was a crazy diet. However it wasn’t the first and it wouldn’t be the worst.
A few years later, I did Optifast, along with Oprah, where I lived on this liquid chocolate chalk (at roughly 800 calories a day) for six or eight weeks until that diet, too, caved in on itself.
It’s funny, you’d think that after three or four of these failed experiments, I’d try a different approach, a more reasonable, sustainable approach. But in fact—and this was the pastor’s point—I did exactly the opposite. As the bamboo cylinder began grabbing my fingers, I kept pulling away, harder and faster.
Eventually, twelve years later—12 years gone and 130 pounds gained—eventually I found a twelve-step program. Its central tenant was Surrender and its primary slogan was “Let go and let God.” For me, a 375-pound diabetic dieter caught in Chinese handcuffs, letting go was just the word I needed to hear.
So, my partners, I’m glad today, glad to be in recovery with you all. And while I’m still learning to let go, I’m hanging on hard to you, my friends, my fellow travelers along the long, dusty road to happy destiny.
Peace to you, my partners.
--Michael-Eddie
Last Sunday (August 7th) Kay and I went to church in Tucson and at one point during the sermon, the preacher, to illustrate a point, reached under the pulpit and pulled out a pair of Chinese handcuffs, a small cylinder of woven bamboo. Then he inserted both index fingers, one at each end, and showed how even the slightest pulling away tightens the trap. He said, the natural instinct, when you realize you’re entrapped, is to pull away more, but of course this just tightens it more.
He said, “I’ve noticed, in my life, if I have a problem and I start working on it, sometimes, instead of getting better, it gets worse. So then I try harder, but the harder I work the worse it gets.”
That got me to thinking—you know how your mind can drift in a sermon, even a good sermon—about my program and how, over the years, how many crazy diets I had tried.
After the service I thanked the preacher, tucked the metaphor in my pocket and promptly forgot about it.
A few days later, Kay and I were 500 hundred miles away, in Santa Monica, California. We were walking along Ocean Avenue, a half block from our hotel, when I spotted a young man standing at a corner bus stop, holding a pair of Chinese handcuffs. I stopped and said hi and I told him the story I just told you and we both had a good laugh at the coincidence.
He said, “What fascinates me is the physics of the thing,” and he started explaining the science behind it, but then, sensing I wasn’t getting it (I wasn’t) he stopped. The bus pulled up and we exchanged hurried good-byes. As he turned to go he said, “By the way, did you think I was Chinese?” I said, “No, I didn’t think anything; I guess I was just so focused on the cuffs.” He smiled and said, “Oh, OK, well, I’m not.”
He said it with a smile but earnestly too. Apparently he’d thought I had assumed two coincidences and while he was happy to figure in one of them, he was eager also to disabuse me of the other. Why, I don’t know. You might know, some expert in Asian ethnology might know, but I don’t.
Nevertheless, I walked away relishing this single, very cool, synchronicity. It wasn’t until later, reviewing the photos I’d taken, that I spotted another: how the handcuffs matched his shirt and how both suggested prison stripes.
And that got me thinking, again, about my program and my addictive history.
I remembered, once, back in the summer of 1986, just before I took the church in Clarendon Hills, I constructed what I called my Every-Other-Day Diet. I literally ate one day and fasted the next. I don’t know how long it lasted but it was a crazy diet. However it wasn’t the first and it wouldn’t be the worst.
A few years later, I did Optifast, along with Oprah, where I lived on this liquid chocolate chalk (at roughly 800 calories a day) for six or eight weeks until that diet, too, caved in on itself.
It’s funny, you’d think that after three or four of these failed experiments, I’d try a different approach, a more reasonable, sustainable approach. But in fact—and this was the pastor’s point—I did exactly the opposite. As the bamboo cylinder began grabbing my fingers, I kept pulling away, harder and faster.
Eventually, twelve years later—12 years gone and 130 pounds gained—eventually I found a twelve-step program. Its central tenant was Surrender and its primary slogan was “Let go and let God.” For me, a 375-pound diabetic dieter caught in Chinese handcuffs, letting go was just the word I needed to hear.
So, my partners, I’m glad today, glad to be in recovery with you all. And while I’m still learning to let go, I’m hanging on hard to you, my friends, my fellow travelers along the long, dusty road to happy destiny.
Peace to you, my partners.
--Michael-Eddie
A lesson from the desert
Dear Partners,
Kay and I are here in Tucson for our 39th anniversary (the actual day is this coming Wednesday the 17th).
On Saturday, John, the front desk clerk at the hotel, took us on a nature walk, just the two of us. We walked the resort property, pausing while he told us all about the plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert.
He told us a most fascinating story about the saguaro cactus, the tall tree-like cactus, the one with arms. He said that many of them have nurse trees. Kay snapped a photo of me standing by a saguaro. You can see its nurse tree, behind and to the left. In fact it is wrapping itself around the cactus right over my head.
A nurse tree is a larger, faster-growing plant that provides shelter and shade for a younger, smaller, slower-growing one. A saguaro can be nursed by trees like the palo verde or the mesquite. In fact, John told us, often a desert bird, having ingested seeds from a saguaro some distance away, will perch on what will later become the nurse tree, defecate, causing a little cactus to sprout at its feet. In this way the nurse tree literally gives life to the plant that it will then, for many, many years, shelter and protect.
I was thinking today about marriage, our marriage, and it occurs to me that Kay and I have both been nurse trees to each other. Throughout our life it seems that when one of us was down, the other was there to offer support and understanding.
I remember this, vividly, when I was going through the throes of my addictive eating. One of the gifts I cherish from those years was Kay’s steadiness. She never hounded me or hassled me. She never gave me advice or criticized. She stayed by me, beside me, quietly and consistently. She loved me. She was my nurse tree.
I remember, one day at O’Hare airport, we were waiting for our flight, and I was telling her about the new recovery program I had recently entered I was telling her all about the 12 steps, the meetings, and the Big Book (which I had just finished reading for the third time). Then I took the book out of my brief case and began reading to her a passage known as The Promises. It moved me so, I had to pause. When I tried again to read, I couldn’t, so I gave the book to her and she continued, reading aloud while I sat beside her, in tears, holding her. I remember being vaguely aware of the travelers passing by, wondering what they must be making of this scene, but mostly I just sat there, beside her. And then, when she finished reading, she said, “Michael, you don’t know how many years I’ve been praying for you, praying for this.”
That’s what I remembered on Saturday as I stood by the saguaro. I’m a happy man this morning, happy to be married to Kay, and grateful, too. Grateful that, when I needed her most, she was there for me. She was my nurse tree and thanks to her, I’m still flourishing and growing on.
Peace to you, my partners.
--Michael-Eddie
This week again I skipped no meals and missed them all
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Kay is reading Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior. She emailed me this quote today, just what I needed at the end of a hectic week.
There was one time, several weeks ago, when I did experience the pleasure Millman is talking about. And this pleasure came in a remarkable intensity. I remember Kay and I were eating at Gio, a great little trattoria here in Evanston. Before the meal, they brought the bread basket –the usual oven-warm delight–and for some reason I took a slice and held it to my nose. I breathed in slowly, deeply. There was the light-yeasty aroma of fresh-baked Italian bread and it registered as just that, a lovely aroma.
But then I noticed something that I’d ever noticed before. I was feeling it in my stomach. It was a very clear if subtle sensation, a satiety, a fullness, almost a nourishment. It was so strange I thought I must have imagined it, so I did it again. I lifted the bread to my nose and slowly inhaled. Sure enough, there it was again, the same sensation! It felt almost as if I’d actually consumed a small piece of the bread, that’s how palpable the feeling was—in my stomach.
Kay noticed and asked me what I was doing. I told her and she took some bread and did what I’d done. Her experience was not so pronounced but very similar. (I don’t know what this sensation is called but it was the first time in my life I’d noted it. I suspect it’s quite common. I wonder if there’s a name for it and whether any of you have noted this.)
Anyway, that’s what I recalled this morning when Kay’s email came: how at that Gio meal, before any food was actually consumed, I had been filled, satisfied.
Love to you, my partners. May we all this week—as Kay reminded me, as Millman reminded me, as my good friend and partner, Dick Waller frequently reminds me—may we not miss a single meal this week, but savor each bite of every one.
--Michael-Eddie
Kay is reading Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior. She emailed me this quote today, just what I needed at the end of a hectic week.
The pleasure from eating…is more than the taste of the food and the feeling of a full belly. Learn to enjoy the entire process, the hunger beforehand, the careful preparation, setting an attractive table, chewing, breathing in, smelling, tasting, swallowing and the feeling of lightness and energy after the meal. You can even enjoy the full and easy elimination of the meal after it's digested. When you pay attention to all elements of the process, you'll begin to appreciate simple meals. The irony of your present eating habits is that while you fear missing a meal, you aren't fully aware of the meals you do eat.That last sentence—I read it, sat back and smiled. How many meals had I missed this week? Several? Most? Honestly, I think I missed them all. Oh, there were one or two moments I can recall when I paused to savor the texture or flavor of the food or the sensation of swallowing but most of the time I was eating robotically.
There was one time, several weeks ago, when I did experience the pleasure Millman is talking about. And this pleasure came in a remarkable intensity. I remember Kay and I were eating at Gio, a great little trattoria here in Evanston. Before the meal, they brought the bread basket –the usual oven-warm delight–and for some reason I took a slice and held it to my nose. I breathed in slowly, deeply. There was the light-yeasty aroma of fresh-baked Italian bread and it registered as just that, a lovely aroma.
But then I noticed something that I’d ever noticed before. I was feeling it in my stomach. It was a very clear if subtle sensation, a satiety, a fullness, almost a nourishment. It was so strange I thought I must have imagined it, so I did it again. I lifted the bread to my nose and slowly inhaled. Sure enough, there it was again, the same sensation! It felt almost as if I’d actually consumed a small piece of the bread, that’s how palpable the feeling was—in my stomach.
Kay noticed and asked me what I was doing. I told her and she took some bread and did what I’d done. Her experience was not so pronounced but very similar. (I don’t know what this sensation is called but it was the first time in my life I’d noted it. I suspect it’s quite common. I wonder if there’s a name for it and whether any of you have noted this.)
Anyway, that’s what I recalled this morning when Kay’s email came: how at that Gio meal, before any food was actually consumed, I had been filled, satisfied.
Love to you, my partners. May we all this week—as Kay reminded me, as Millman reminded me, as my good friend and partner, Dick Waller frequently reminds me—may we not miss a single meal this week, but savor each bite of every one.
--Michael-Eddie
Nassim Taleb goes out to eat
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Nassim Taleb is famous. Taleb is the Lebanese-American philosopher, essayist and exponent of math-intensive finance who is famous for his “Black Swan” theory of financial catastrophe.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What The Dog Saw, we get a glimpse into his real-life life. After an interview with the finance guru, Gladwell goes out to supper with him.
When it comes to the elemental impulses of life—like eating and drinking—everybody has to work at it. Success in one sector does not guarantee success in another. There is no carry-over.
So I take this lesson into the week ahead. And to you, my partners, I send you best wishes. Let’s not give up. Let’s do what we have to do. Cover the wine glass. Block the plate. Direct the busboy. And—when we need help to do these things (and we will)—let’s reach out to each other for support!
--Michael-Eddie
Nassim Taleb is famous. Taleb is the Lebanese-American philosopher, essayist and exponent of math-intensive finance who is famous for his “Black Swan” theory of financial catastrophe.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What The Dog Saw, we get a glimpse into his real-life life. After an interview with the finance guru, Gladwell goes out to supper with him.
At the quaint dinner, Taleb devoured his roll, and as the busboy came around with more rolls Taleb shouted out, ‘No, no!’ and blocked his plate. It was a never-ending struggle, this battle between head and heart. When the waiter came around with wine, he hastily covered the glass with his hand. When the time came to order, he asked for steak frites—without the frites, please!—and then immediately tried to hedge his choice by negotiating with the person next to him for a fraction of his frites.”I find this story oddly comforting. I sometimes think that if I were smarter or richer or more famous—that I would get some kind of carryover effect, that I wouldn’t need an eating program anymore. That’s not true.
When it comes to the elemental impulses of life—like eating and drinking—everybody has to work at it. Success in one sector does not guarantee success in another. There is no carry-over.
So I take this lesson into the week ahead. And to you, my partners, I send you best wishes. Let’s not give up. Let’s do what we have to do. Cover the wine glass. Block the plate. Direct the busboy. And—when we need help to do these things (and we will)—let’s reach out to each other for support!
--Michael-Eddie
An email exchange between my brother and me
Sunday, June 12, 2011
(Writing from Milwaukee, where Kay and I have been taking a little R&R since last Thursday).
Last week I blogged about Yoda’s wisdom: “Try not! Do or Not Do. There is no Try.” I found it helpful to think in those terms this week. It helped me focus on the daily, often meal-by-meal, even bite-by-bite decisions that I faced this week as I worked to meet by annual goal for weight maintenance: 196.3. The results speak for themselves.
This prompted a very helpful email exchange between my brother David and me. Here’s that exchange.
From David:
That's good, Michael. Do or Do Not. For most people the challenge is not to be so taken up with their feelings and all the circumstances that make it well nigh impossible to do what they have covenanted to do--and just do it. For you, it seems, the challenge is insist on "Do or Do Not", and also to attend to why this week or this day there is such a struggle to do that. It's both. Attend to one's feelings, and also to do what must be done. Since your blog is a big part of your accountability structure for "Do or Do Not" we tend to get that end of the debate. But as a reader I frequently wonder about that other, inner conversation. Ah, this is a pastor reading. Can't help it!
My Response:
This is very helpful, David. Yes, very good to be thinking on both sides of the equation. I do tend to overemphasize the volitional at the expense of the emotional/spiritual/relational in my blog. Good point.
And when I talk about taking action—I need to remind myself that taking action often entails non-action. I learned in the Big Book that program “actions” include prayer and meditation and making phone calls and writing (journaling)— the kinds of actions that many addicts avoid like the plague. So “action” in this sense is not just counting calories or lifting weights. It’s doing just the kind of spiritual and emotional work I think you’re talking about.
So when I got your email I sat and thought for a while about the actions that I’m taking and those that I need to take or take more often—
Here are the actions I am taking now and have been taking:
• Writing my blog—that’s mostly for me. I’m preaching to me but also reaching out, asking for help, admitting that I can’t do this alone.
• Exercise—I am doing this pretty consistently. I’m really happy about that. I’m doing this sometimes in a regardless-of-the-circumstances, gutting-it-out frame of mind, but it’s getting done. I may want to investigate variety in my workouts and look for ways to create a more enjoyable process.
• Daily weighing, daily filling out the program card, keeping track of my program activities and then reporting them out.
Here are some actions that are lagging and that I need to pick up:
• Prayer & Mediation
• Journaling (reflection)
• Eating high-quality food. Eating complex carbs, fruits and veggies, high-quality protein--it’s possible to lose weight and not be all that hungry if I take in high-quality nutrition.
• Meal Definition: I’m sort of eating whenever I feel like it; it’s the grazing thing. I have a cool system of defining my meal before the meal begins and then taking the last bite. That’s served me well in the past and it’s a tool I can use now.
• Relationship mending. There’s been some anger in my life lately…and I’ve chosen to harbor resentments rather than take the time to work it through. I often get around to doing that work but delayed forgiveness, or delayed understanding hurts the relationship, hurts the other person and hurts me.
Thanks, David, for the impetus to make this list. Probably the biggest gift 12-Step work gave me is this sense that bi-lateral action, inner and outer, is a necessity. So thanks for pastoring me, bro. You know you’re good at this. Have you considered making it a career?
Love to you,
Michael
And love to you, my partners. I wish you all a balanced, integrated, wholesome program week to come.
--Michael-Eddie
(Writing from Milwaukee, where Kay and I have been taking a little R&R since last Thursday).
Last week I blogged about Yoda’s wisdom: “Try not! Do or Not Do. There is no Try.” I found it helpful to think in those terms this week. It helped me focus on the daily, often meal-by-meal, even bite-by-bite decisions that I faced this week as I worked to meet by annual goal for weight maintenance: 196.3. The results speak for themselves.
This prompted a very helpful email exchange between my brother David and me. Here’s that exchange.
From David:
That's good, Michael. Do or Do Not. For most people the challenge is not to be so taken up with their feelings and all the circumstances that make it well nigh impossible to do what they have covenanted to do--and just do it. For you, it seems, the challenge is insist on "Do or Do Not", and also to attend to why this week or this day there is such a struggle to do that. It's both. Attend to one's feelings, and also to do what must be done. Since your blog is a big part of your accountability structure for "Do or Do Not" we tend to get that end of the debate. But as a reader I frequently wonder about that other, inner conversation. Ah, this is a pastor reading. Can't help it!
My Response:
This is very helpful, David. Yes, very good to be thinking on both sides of the equation. I do tend to overemphasize the volitional at the expense of the emotional/spiritual/relational in my blog. Good point.
And when I talk about taking action—I need to remind myself that taking action often entails non-action. I learned in the Big Book that program “actions” include prayer and meditation and making phone calls and writing (journaling)— the kinds of actions that many addicts avoid like the plague. So “action” in this sense is not just counting calories or lifting weights. It’s doing just the kind of spiritual and emotional work I think you’re talking about.
So when I got your email I sat and thought for a while about the actions that I’m taking and those that I need to take or take more often—
Here are the actions I am taking now and have been taking:
• Writing my blog—that’s mostly for me. I’m preaching to me but also reaching out, asking for help, admitting that I can’t do this alone.
• Exercise—I am doing this pretty consistently. I’m really happy about that. I’m doing this sometimes in a regardless-of-the-circumstances, gutting-it-out frame of mind, but it’s getting done. I may want to investigate variety in my workouts and look for ways to create a more enjoyable process.
• Daily weighing, daily filling out the program card, keeping track of my program activities and then reporting them out.
Here are some actions that are lagging and that I need to pick up:
• Prayer & Mediation
• Journaling (reflection)
• Eating high-quality food. Eating complex carbs, fruits and veggies, high-quality protein--it’s possible to lose weight and not be all that hungry if I take in high-quality nutrition.
• Meal Definition: I’m sort of eating whenever I feel like it; it’s the grazing thing. I have a cool system of defining my meal before the meal begins and then taking the last bite. That’s served me well in the past and it’s a tool I can use now.
• Relationship mending. There’s been some anger in my life lately…and I’ve chosen to harbor resentments rather than take the time to work it through. I often get around to doing that work but delayed forgiveness, or delayed understanding hurts the relationship, hurts the other person and hurts me.
Thanks, David, for the impetus to make this list. Probably the biggest gift 12-Step work gave me is this sense that bi-lateral action, inner and outer, is a necessity. So thanks for pastoring me, bro. You know you’re good at this. Have you considered making it a career?
Love to you,
Michael
And love to you, my partners. I wish you all a balanced, integrated, wholesome program week to come.
--Michael-Eddie
The wisdom of Yoda—tough, but oddly comforting
Sunday, June 5, 2011
These past few weeks I’ve been struggling to keep my weight at 196 or below. Most of this week it’s been above that and this morning, Monday, it’s up to 199.
In this struggle, I thought of the now-famous scene from Star Wars:
Yoda was standing by as Luke surveyed what seemed an impossible task and Luke made the mistake of saying, “We’ll never get it out now.” Yoda tells him: “Always with you it cannot be done.” He goes on to say that the problem is in Luke’s head, in the limiting thoughts he must unlearn.
Luke seems open to that idea but then makes matters worse by saying, “All right, I’ll give it a try.” Yoda barks back “No! Try not! Do, or Not Do. There is no try.”
That’s what I needed to hear this week. All week I’d been telling myself: I’m trying. Then the little guy with the pointed ears reached in and plucked that verb from my vocabulary.
It was disturbing, but also oddly comforting. My alternatives have been reduced. Now I have a choice to make. It’s a simple choice—simple but not easy. I know what to do. There is no question in my mind about the actions I must take. That’s the beauty of it.
So, for the week ahead I’m not going to predict the outcome. Prediction itself can be a subtle form of evasion, a way to avoid taking action. All I’ll say is this: I will Do or Not Do.
Be well this week, my partners. And may the Force be with you!
--Michael-Eddie
PS:
Here’s a YouTube clip of that Star Wars scene. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hn6fFTxeo
These past few weeks I’ve been struggling to keep my weight at 196 or below. Most of this week it’s been above that and this morning, Monday, it’s up to 199.
In this struggle, I thought of the now-famous scene from Star Wars:
Yoda was standing by as Luke surveyed what seemed an impossible task and Luke made the mistake of saying, “We’ll never get it out now.” Yoda tells him: “Always with you it cannot be done.” He goes on to say that the problem is in Luke’s head, in the limiting thoughts he must unlearn.
Luke seems open to that idea but then makes matters worse by saying, “All right, I’ll give it a try.” Yoda barks back “No! Try not! Do, or Not Do. There is no try.”
That’s what I needed to hear this week. All week I’d been telling myself: I’m trying. Then the little guy with the pointed ears reached in and plucked that verb from my vocabulary.
It was disturbing, but also oddly comforting. My alternatives have been reduced. Now I have a choice to make. It’s a simple choice—simple but not easy. I know what to do. There is no question in my mind about the actions I must take. That’s the beauty of it.
So, for the week ahead I’m not going to predict the outcome. Prediction itself can be a subtle form of evasion, a way to avoid taking action. All I’ll say is this: I will Do or Not Do.
Be well this week, my partners. And may the Force be with you!
--Michael-Eddie
PS:
Here’s a YouTube clip of that Star Wars scene. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hn6fFTxeo
She leaves a little of what’s desired
Sunday, May 29, 2011
This past weekend we had a brief visit from my sister Karen and her husband John. (Karen is my older sister. Of the seven sibs, she’s number one and I’m number two). They had come up from Dallas for a wedding and we were able to spend a little time together.
On Friday night we went out for dinner here in Evanston. Then on Saturday we went into the city to see the sights. We strolled through Millennium Park and took the mandatory pictures at the Cloud Gate. Then we stood on State Street, a half block from the reviewing stand, and watched the Memorial Day Parade. After the last band marched by we walked to Burnham Pointe, a luxury condo and retail complex in the Printers Row district where brother-in-law Steve Hickok has three beautiful paintings on display.
Program-wise the thing that stuck in my mind from this trip was watching my sister at dinner Friday night. I noticed, as the server cleared her place, something remained on her plate. It wasn’t much, a small portion of the fingerling potatoes she’d ordered. I asked her about it later, at lunch on Saturday. She was sitting across the table from me and when I said, “Karen, did you do it on purpose?” she replied with just a wink and a small smile.
Karen is fit and trim. It’s partly because she has a regular exercise routine. But leaving a little on the plate—that’s also a good exercise. In the first place, it’s a few extra calories she doesn’t carry away on her frame. In the second place, it’s part of her mental game of weight management: resigning from the Clean Plate Club. In order to get what she wants, she’s leaving a little of what’s desired.
I needed to see that, a small but significant action I’m happy to copy from Karen, my little big sis.
---Michael-Eddie
This past weekend we had a brief visit from my sister Karen and her husband John. (Karen is my older sister. Of the seven sibs, she’s number one and I’m number two). They had come up from Dallas for a wedding and we were able to spend a little time together.
On Friday night we went out for dinner here in Evanston. Then on Saturday we went into the city to see the sights. We strolled through Millennium Park and took the mandatory pictures at the Cloud Gate. Then we stood on State Street, a half block from the reviewing stand, and watched the Memorial Day Parade. After the last band marched by we walked to Burnham Pointe, a luxury condo and retail complex in the Printers Row district where brother-in-law Steve Hickok has three beautiful paintings on display.
Program-wise the thing that stuck in my mind from this trip was watching my sister at dinner Friday night. I noticed, as the server cleared her place, something remained on her plate. It wasn’t much, a small portion of the fingerling potatoes she’d ordered. I asked her about it later, at lunch on Saturday. She was sitting across the table from me and when I said, “Karen, did you do it on purpose?” she replied with just a wink and a small smile.
Karen is fit and trim. It’s partly because she has a regular exercise routine. But leaving a little on the plate—that’s also a good exercise. In the first place, it’s a few extra calories she doesn’t carry away on her frame. In the second place, it’s part of her mental game of weight management: resigning from the Clean Plate Club. In order to get what she wants, she’s leaving a little of what’s desired.
I needed to see that, a small but significant action I’m happy to copy from Karen, my little big sis.
---Michael-Eddie
My weight management rule of thumb--
Sunday, May 22, 2011
What’s a rule of thumb? It’s a rule that, while not absolutely true, is true enough often enough to be useful in quick, low-stakes, every-day decision-making.
In chess, the rule of thumb for average players is this: control the board’s four center squares and you control the game. (Grand Masters ignore this rule all the time but for most players in most games, it’s a sound strategy.)
And here’s my rule of thumb for weight management: If I gained weight, I overate.
When my weight jumps, as I did today (from 195.0 to 197.4) it surprised me and frankly it irked me. I had been eating light for the past few days. Last night I’d gone to bed slightly hungry and this morning I was even hungrier. So before I weighed in, I expected to be down, but when I stood on the scale it said I was up, by 1 ½ pounds.
Right away, Eddie started in, as he always does, generating self-serving explanations. Here’s a list of his most popular ones:
1. You ate something salty last night: you’re retaining water.
2. You’re doing more pushups than ever before: you’re gaining muscle mass.
3. Those meds you just started taking—they must be the cause.
4. You’re constipated.
5. You must have a thyroid deficiency or something.
6. You flew yesterday: high altitude causes fluid retention.
The truth is, on any given day my weight will jump up for any number of reasons. But if it stays up, I refuse Eddie’s reasons and take my rule: if I gained weight, I overate.
My simple rule always works for me because it focuses my mind on the one action I can always take to get the results I want. It may be true that I’m gaining muscle mass. It may be true that these new meds are causing water retention. I don’t know about that. But I do know that if I consistently eat less and/or work out more, eventually the excess weight will go.
Weight management—whatever else it is—is a war against self-deception, mind games, rationalizations, excuses, all the delusions Eddie sponsors, the delusions I sometimes choose to believe.
And there’s no better antidote to these self-defeating mental processes than the simplicity of the rule. It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s true.
In the world of philosophy, I judge whether an idea is Right or Wrong in relation to some absolute standard of Truth or Justice. But in the world of weight management, I judge by a different standard, the pragmatic standard: does it work?
Not, is it Right or Wrong, but does it work?
So when the weight stays up for days—while Eddie talks philosophy, I take action, the action inherent in my simple rule of thumb: If I gained weight, I overate.
(By the way, this morning, Monday, I weighed in at 194.6. Eddie is sulking. I’m smiling. I love the rule. Now all I need is a little more consistency in applying it.)
Be well, my friends—
---Michael-Eddie
What’s a rule of thumb? It’s a rule that, while not absolutely true, is true enough often enough to be useful in quick, low-stakes, every-day decision-making.
In chess, the rule of thumb for average players is this: control the board’s four center squares and you control the game. (Grand Masters ignore this rule all the time but for most players in most games, it’s a sound strategy.)
And here’s my rule of thumb for weight management: If I gained weight, I overate.
When my weight jumps, as I did today (from 195.0 to 197.4) it surprised me and frankly it irked me. I had been eating light for the past few days. Last night I’d gone to bed slightly hungry and this morning I was even hungrier. So before I weighed in, I expected to be down, but when I stood on the scale it said I was up, by 1 ½ pounds.
Right away, Eddie started in, as he always does, generating self-serving explanations. Here’s a list of his most popular ones:
1. You ate something salty last night: you’re retaining water.
2. You’re doing more pushups than ever before: you’re gaining muscle mass.
3. Those meds you just started taking—they must be the cause.
4. You’re constipated.
5. You must have a thyroid deficiency or something.
6. You flew yesterday: high altitude causes fluid retention.
The truth is, on any given day my weight will jump up for any number of reasons. But if it stays up, I refuse Eddie’s reasons and take my rule: if I gained weight, I overate.
My simple rule always works for me because it focuses my mind on the one action I can always take to get the results I want. It may be true that I’m gaining muscle mass. It may be true that these new meds are causing water retention. I don’t know about that. But I do know that if I consistently eat less and/or work out more, eventually the excess weight will go.
Weight management—whatever else it is—is a war against self-deception, mind games, rationalizations, excuses, all the delusions Eddie sponsors, the delusions I sometimes choose to believe.
And there’s no better antidote to these self-defeating mental processes than the simplicity of the rule. It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s true.
In the world of philosophy, I judge whether an idea is Right or Wrong in relation to some absolute standard of Truth or Justice. But in the world of weight management, I judge by a different standard, the pragmatic standard: does it work?
Not, is it Right or Wrong, but does it work?
So when the weight stays up for days—while Eddie talks philosophy, I take action, the action inherent in my simple rule of thumb: If I gained weight, I overate.
(By the way, this morning, Monday, I weighed in at 194.6. Eddie is sulking. I’m smiling. I love the rule. Now all I need is a little more consistency in applying it.)
Be well, my friends—
---Michael-Eddie
The Moral of the Story: Let the bones accumulate
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Here’s something I learned this week: in the current Nutrition Action Health Letter—the May issue—there’s evidence that what I see when I eat has an impact on how much I eat.
Brian Wansink—I quoted him last week— is the director of the Food and Brand lab at Cornell University. He relates an experiment they did at an all-you-can-eat buffalo wings restaurant in Atlanta.
They brought people in and randomly assigned them to tables. What the diners didn’t know was that there were two different sets of tables. For one set, the leftover wing bones were quickly cleared away. But for the other set, the bones were left to pile up beside the diners’ plates. Wansink says, “We found that if the wings were taken away, people ate around 28% more.” With the bones gone, all visual evidence of what they’d eaten was also gone.
So how do I put this into practice? Ask the wait-staff not to clear the bones away? Perhaps, but there may be a simpler way to get the job done.
My friend Gail, my long-time mentor— I remember once we were eating at Mexican restaurant and the server brought a big basket of tortilla chips and set it in the middle of the table. I noticed that Gail took a handful of chips from the basket and put them on her plate. She never went for the basket again. From then on she ate only from her plate. Her strategy: before you begin to eat, decide how much to eat.
Today I want to eat well, enjoy life and savor the good things life has given me. And what I wish for myself I wish for you, my partners.
---Michael-Eddie
Here’s something I learned this week: in the current Nutrition Action Health Letter—the May issue—there’s evidence that what I see when I eat has an impact on how much I eat.
Brian Wansink—I quoted him last week— is the director of the Food and Brand lab at Cornell University. He relates an experiment they did at an all-you-can-eat buffalo wings restaurant in Atlanta.
They brought people in and randomly assigned them to tables. What the diners didn’t know was that there were two different sets of tables. For one set, the leftover wing bones were quickly cleared away. But for the other set, the bones were left to pile up beside the diners’ plates. Wansink says, “We found that if the wings were taken away, people ate around 28% more.” With the bones gone, all visual evidence of what they’d eaten was also gone.
So how do I put this into practice? Ask the wait-staff not to clear the bones away? Perhaps, but there may be a simpler way to get the job done.
My friend Gail, my long-time mentor— I remember once we were eating at Mexican restaurant and the server brought a big basket of tortilla chips and set it in the middle of the table. I noticed that Gail took a handful of chips from the basket and put them on her plate. She never went for the basket again. From then on she ate only from her plate. Her strategy: before you begin to eat, decide how much to eat.
Today I want to eat well, enjoy life and savor the good things life has given me. And what I wish for myself I wish for you, my partners.
---Michael-Eddie
I want to eat like Aaron
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Today we celebrated Mother’s Day. Kay, Lorna and Kathy, Lorna’s mother-in-law, were the honorees. The men were the cooks. I made baked salmon with a lemon butter sauce; Kevin made a gourmet basmati rice, and Aaron did something grand with grilled eggplant. It was tasty, a great success.
Then, as the meal was coming to a close, I saw that everyone was finished and I stood to begin clearing the table. As it turned out, I came to Aaron last and noticed some small bits of food still on his plate. So I said, in a mock, faux-server voice, “Are you still working. sir?” moving to take his plate away. But to my surprise he reached out to stay my hand and said “Yes.”
Now, let me describe Aaron’s plate. Near the upper right, about eleven o’clock: one bit of my baked salmon. Near the upper left, around two o’clock: a thimbleful of Kevin’s rice. And down near the bottom, around six o’clock, a morsel of his eggplant, a morsel that weighed maybe four-tenths of an ounce.
This measly hoard— he hovered over it like Silas Marner over a mound of gold. I paused for a moment and smiled to myself, I should have known by now.
This is how Aaron eats.
He begins each meal by taking a fork and slowly separating the constituent elements into discrete zones, scraping the plate clean between them, creating clear boundaries. Then he begins picking at the edges of each of these discrete zones, lifting little bits tentatively to his mouth.
When I first saw him do this, years ago, I thought something must be wrong, like he didn’t like the smell of something. Or like he was playing with his food.
But no. This is how he eats. And he looks like it too.
Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand lab at Cornell University, relates experiments he did in this regard. Everyone knows that the faster you eat, the more you eat. But Wansink found another twist.
He found that if the serving dishes are left on the table, women will eat 10% more than they would if the dishes are left in the kitchen. But men, in the same situation, will eat 29% more. Why? Because, Wansink says, men eat faster than women. And so, when we guys are done chowing down, we look around for something to do. If the serving bowl is nearby we help ourselves to seconds. And thirds.
Bottom line: to slim down, I need to slow down.
It’s not just that I’ll eat less. I’ll enjoy it more. The act of eating is not about getting grub down the gullet. It’s about savoring each bite, enjoying the interplay of butter & lemon & salmon & finely-diced fresh dill. And it’s about pausing to look up and enjoy the other food, the soul food, the love of family gathered to celebrate a mother’s love.
Be well, my friends. Let’s this week savor our food and all our lives. Let’s eat like Aaron eats.
---Michael-Eddie
Today we celebrated Mother’s Day. Kay, Lorna and Kathy, Lorna’s mother-in-law, were the honorees. The men were the cooks. I made baked salmon with a lemon butter sauce; Kevin made a gourmet basmati rice, and Aaron did something grand with grilled eggplant. It was tasty, a great success.
Then, as the meal was coming to a close, I saw that everyone was finished and I stood to begin clearing the table. As it turned out, I came to Aaron last and noticed some small bits of food still on his plate. So I said, in a mock, faux-server voice, “Are you still working. sir?” moving to take his plate away. But to my surprise he reached out to stay my hand and said “Yes.”
Now, let me describe Aaron’s plate. Near the upper right, about eleven o’clock: one bit of my baked salmon. Near the upper left, around two o’clock: a thimbleful of Kevin’s rice. And down near the bottom, around six o’clock, a morsel of his eggplant, a morsel that weighed maybe four-tenths of an ounce.
This measly hoard— he hovered over it like Silas Marner over a mound of gold. I paused for a moment and smiled to myself, I should have known by now.
This is how Aaron eats.
He begins each meal by taking a fork and slowly separating the constituent elements into discrete zones, scraping the plate clean between them, creating clear boundaries. Then he begins picking at the edges of each of these discrete zones, lifting little bits tentatively to his mouth.
When I first saw him do this, years ago, I thought something must be wrong, like he didn’t like the smell of something. Or like he was playing with his food.
But no. This is how he eats. And he looks like it too.
Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand lab at Cornell University, relates experiments he did in this regard. Everyone knows that the faster you eat, the more you eat. But Wansink found another twist.
He found that if the serving dishes are left on the table, women will eat 10% more than they would if the dishes are left in the kitchen. But men, in the same situation, will eat 29% more. Why? Because, Wansink says, men eat faster than women. And so, when we guys are done chowing down, we look around for something to do. If the serving bowl is nearby we help ourselves to seconds. And thirds.
Bottom line: to slim down, I need to slow down.
It’s not just that I’ll eat less. I’ll enjoy it more. The act of eating is not about getting grub down the gullet. It’s about savoring each bite, enjoying the interplay of butter & lemon & salmon & finely-diced fresh dill. And it’s about pausing to look up and enjoy the other food, the soul food, the love of family gathered to celebrate a mother’s love.
Be well, my friends. Let’s this week savor our food and all our lives. Let’s eat like Aaron eats.
---Michael-Eddie
The antidote to worry is work. And trust.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
It’s been a very good week. I’m glad to be back on track or very nearly so. Your calls and emails have been critical in that regard. I’m not so worried this week. Thanks so much. My exercise is better. I’m doing better with my journaling and meditation. Still, I weighed in this morning at199 again, so this challenge will be tougher than I thought.
Last week, brother David wrote and said—“Michael, you talked about work being the antidote to worry. That’s true but don’t forget about trust.” We emailed back and forth a few times and I thanked him for that. I needed the reminder.
You see this exact exchange in the pages of the New Testament between two apostles, Paul and James. Paul tells the churches, God saves you by faith. It has nothing to do with the deeds you do. But then James comes along with this balance: Yes, that is true, but faith without deeds is a dead faith.
So this morning I’m up and at it. I know what I need to do.
But I’m grateful that I’m willing to do it. There were times in my life—I recall them well—when I didn’t have that. I had given up. I had lost hope. I didn’t believe I could ever get well again. I’m so grateful that trust, that hope has been restored. It’s pure gift, pure grace.
Thank you, brother David, and bless you all!
--Michael-Eddie
It’s been a very good week. I’m glad to be back on track or very nearly so. Your calls and emails have been critical in that regard. I’m not so worried this week. Thanks so much. My exercise is better. I’m doing better with my journaling and meditation. Still, I weighed in this morning at199 again, so this challenge will be tougher than I thought.
Last week, brother David wrote and said—“Michael, you talked about work being the antidote to worry. That’s true but don’t forget about trust.” We emailed back and forth a few times and I thanked him for that. I needed the reminder.
You see this exact exchange in the pages of the New Testament between two apostles, Paul and James. Paul tells the churches, God saves you by faith. It has nothing to do with the deeds you do. But then James comes along with this balance: Yes, that is true, but faith without deeds is a dead faith.
So this morning I’m up and at it. I know what I need to do.
But I’m grateful that I’m willing to do it. There were times in my life—I recall them well—when I didn’t have that. I had given up. I had lost hope. I didn’t believe I could ever get well again. I’m so grateful that trust, that hope has been restored. It’s pure gift, pure grace.
Thank you, brother David, and bless you all!
--Michael-Eddie
My program is off-track
Sunday, April 10, 2011
My program is suffering. It’s off-track and on the skids. I haven’t been exercising much this week and my prayer/meditation and journaling is—well you can see the numbers. The numbers tell the story. (That’s what I love about numbers. My feelings are often vague, ill-defined, vacillating. But the numbers—they’re firm and fixed.)
Here’s what happens when I begin to slack off on the spiritual and physical exercise: there’s an inverse relationship. The less I exercise the more I want to eat. The less I exercise, the more sugar I want to eat.
So I’m reaching out to you today, for a little encouragement. I got up this morning weighed in and I was on the warning track: 200.8. So I pulled on my walking shoes and went for a long walk. I started the day with exercise. That felt good. If I get it done first thing in the morning, it gets done. If I wait and tell myself I’ll do it later, more often than not, it doesn’t get done. That’s the reality.
So today, even though I felt the pressure of Monday morning—gotta get my report written and sent out; gotta get to the office, gotta, gotta, gotta… in spite of the inner frenzy, I chose to honor my priorities, I chose to do what’s worked for me in the past: putting first things first. That’s what I want to do this week and I’m reaching out to you to make that commitment and ask for your support.
Peace to you, my partners. I feel better already.
--Michael-Eddie
My program is suffering. It’s off-track and on the skids. I haven’t been exercising much this week and my prayer/meditation and journaling is—well you can see the numbers. The numbers tell the story. (That’s what I love about numbers. My feelings are often vague, ill-defined, vacillating. But the numbers—they’re firm and fixed.)
Here’s what happens when I begin to slack off on the spiritual and physical exercise: there’s an inverse relationship. The less I exercise the more I want to eat. The less I exercise, the more sugar I want to eat.
So I’m reaching out to you today, for a little encouragement. I got up this morning weighed in and I was on the warning track: 200.8. So I pulled on my walking shoes and went for a long walk. I started the day with exercise. That felt good. If I get it done first thing in the morning, it gets done. If I wait and tell myself I’ll do it later, more often than not, it doesn’t get done. That’s the reality.
So today, even though I felt the pressure of Monday morning—gotta get my report written and sent out; gotta get to the office, gotta, gotta, gotta… in spite of the inner frenzy, I chose to honor my priorities, I chose to do what’s worked for me in the past: putting first things first. That’s what I want to do this week and I’m reaching out to you to make that commitment and ask for your support.
Peace to you, my partners. I feel better already.
--Michael-Eddie
How long does it take to kick a bad habit?
Sunday, March 27, 2011
How long does it take to kick a bad habit? It depends who you ask.
In 1960, a cosmetic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz wrote a book that was destined to become a self-improvement classic. It was called Psych-Cybernetics. I read it. Maybe you did, too. Millions did and they’re still picking it up. It’s still, as recently as 2008, on the Top 50 List of best self-help books of all time.
Dr. Maltz got into the field in an odd way. In his surgical practice he had worked with amputees who experienced phantom limb syndrome—where the patient continues to feel pain in the amputated limb. The leg was gone but, to the patient, it felt as though it were still attached to the body and not just the leg but the pain. This was a disturbing experience for the amputee, but Maltz also noted that these fake feelings gradually subsided, often ending completely after about three weeks. And not with just one or two patients. Almost everybody he treated had the same experience. You had the phantom pain for a while but then, like clock-work, after 21 days it was gone. That’s when the light went on.
The doctor began to ponder: If it takes just twenty-one days to get rid of a bad leg, he reasoned, how long should it take to discard a bad habit?
Martz started publishing this 21-day idea and it didn’t take long for the theory to gain traction. On TV and radio and in magazines—Americans were bombarded with the notion that if you just do something, or stop doing something, for three weeks, it’ll be a habit.
That was fifty years ago, but the idea’s still around. Just recently, business guru, Ken Blanchard, declared that if can do anything for thirty days in a row, it will become a habit. Actually, now, most self-help books have a much brisker time-frame: 10 Days to A New You, and 7 Days to a Stress-Free Life are just a few examples.
It may be true for some people, but it isn’t true for me.
Recently I went back and re-read some old journals—where I’d recorded my diet history. Back in 1983, in a blue spiral notebook that I’d picked up at a book store, one of those eating and exercise journals, here’s what I found: “October 23, 1983: 104 days.” Next to the day count was my weight: 220 pounds (I had started out at 274). I riffled back through all 104 pages and saw the daily, plodding consistency, noting each exercise day and my daily caloric intake and the gradual loss of 54 pounds! And then, for some reason, on October 23, 1983, I just stopped. The journal ended. No further entry. No explanation. After 104 consecutive days, I stopped. Not 21 days, not 31 days but 104 days!
I started thinking—because I’d read my Martz—I started thinking I must be a freak. Or a weakling. How could so many people do in 21 days what I couldn’t accomplish in 104? I didn’t get it.
It’s a little depressing, actually, to go back and read those journals. In addition to the numbers, they’re filled with feelings, of elation, joy, and hope as I put one day, two days, three days, behind me, heading for my destiny—that Nirvana-point where I’d be cured, fixed, free at last!
But then, inevitably, I’d record the opposite feelings, sadness and despair, as I confronted, over and over again, my failure. Most of the time, though, I didn’t write down the negative feelings. Probably they were too painful to record. Most of the time the journals just end. 104 pages of hope, and then the next page is blank, and the one after that, and the one after that.
What I’m really grateful for this morning, as I look at my number count—today I’ve been maintaining a healthy weight for just over three years, 1,153 consecutive days to be exact. But you know what—it doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t matter. And they don’t matter because what I’ve learned—in all this work—is that it isn’t about the numbers. It’s not about days and duration. It’s not about the goal or getting there or even hoping to get there.
My recovery, as I see it now, is now. It’s present tense. It is not a destiny to be achieved but a process to be lived. Which is what I got up this morning to write to you. I’m here. I’m doing the work. I’m in recovery today. Thanks for being in it with me!
--Michael-Eddie
How long does it take to kick a bad habit? It depends who you ask.
In 1960, a cosmetic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz wrote a book that was destined to become a self-improvement classic. It was called Psych-Cybernetics. I read it. Maybe you did, too. Millions did and they’re still picking it up. It’s still, as recently as 2008, on the Top 50 List of best self-help books of all time.
Dr. Maltz got into the field in an odd way. In his surgical practice he had worked with amputees who experienced phantom limb syndrome—where the patient continues to feel pain in the amputated limb. The leg was gone but, to the patient, it felt as though it were still attached to the body and not just the leg but the pain. This was a disturbing experience for the amputee, but Maltz also noted that these fake feelings gradually subsided, often ending completely after about three weeks. And not with just one or two patients. Almost everybody he treated had the same experience. You had the phantom pain for a while but then, like clock-work, after 21 days it was gone. That’s when the light went on.
The doctor began to ponder: If it takes just twenty-one days to get rid of a bad leg, he reasoned, how long should it take to discard a bad habit?
Martz started publishing this 21-day idea and it didn’t take long for the theory to gain traction. On TV and radio and in magazines—Americans were bombarded with the notion that if you just do something, or stop doing something, for three weeks, it’ll be a habit.
That was fifty years ago, but the idea’s still around. Just recently, business guru, Ken Blanchard, declared that if can do anything for thirty days in a row, it will become a habit. Actually, now, most self-help books have a much brisker time-frame: 10 Days to A New You, and 7 Days to a Stress-Free Life are just a few examples.
It may be true for some people, but it isn’t true for me.
Recently I went back and re-read some old journals—where I’d recorded my diet history. Back in 1983, in a blue spiral notebook that I’d picked up at a book store, one of those eating and exercise journals, here’s what I found: “October 23, 1983: 104 days.” Next to the day count was my weight: 220 pounds (I had started out at 274). I riffled back through all 104 pages and saw the daily, plodding consistency, noting each exercise day and my daily caloric intake and the gradual loss of 54 pounds! And then, for some reason, on October 23, 1983, I just stopped. The journal ended. No further entry. No explanation. After 104 consecutive days, I stopped. Not 21 days, not 31 days but 104 days!
I started thinking—because I’d read my Martz—I started thinking I must be a freak. Or a weakling. How could so many people do in 21 days what I couldn’t accomplish in 104? I didn’t get it.
It’s a little depressing, actually, to go back and read those journals. In addition to the numbers, they’re filled with feelings, of elation, joy, and hope as I put one day, two days, three days, behind me, heading for my destiny—that Nirvana-point where I’d be cured, fixed, free at last!
But then, inevitably, I’d record the opposite feelings, sadness and despair, as I confronted, over and over again, my failure. Most of the time, though, I didn’t write down the negative feelings. Probably they were too painful to record. Most of the time the journals just end. 104 pages of hope, and then the next page is blank, and the one after that, and the one after that.
What I’m really grateful for this morning, as I look at my number count—today I’ve been maintaining a healthy weight for just over three years, 1,153 consecutive days to be exact. But you know what—it doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t matter. And they don’t matter because what I’ve learned—in all this work—is that it isn’t about the numbers. It’s not about days and duration. It’s not about the goal or getting there or even hoping to get there.
My recovery, as I see it now, is now. It’s present tense. It is not a destiny to be achieved but a process to be lived. Which is what I got up this morning to write to you. I’m here. I’m doing the work. I’m in recovery today. Thanks for being in it with me!
--Michael-Eddie
Usually it doesn't feel like a fight but this week it did
Sunday, February 20, 2011
I was browsing in the Poetry Foundation website this week and came across something by Edgar Guest I’d never seen before. It’s called “On Quitting.” The poem opens with these two questions:
How much grit do you think you’ve got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
The poem closes with this stanza:
It’s bully sport and it’s open fight;
It will keep you busy both day and night;
For the toughest kind of a game you’ll find
Is to make your body obey your mind.
And you never will know what is meant by grit
Unless there’s something you’ve tried to quit.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a fight but this week it did. It wasn’t a struggle to stay on program, physically. Actually that felt easy. What was discouraging was to watch my weight rise with what felt like normal eating and a standard, regular exercise.
At times like this the game, as Guest calls it, is a mental/emotional game. I find there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that starts to complain and whine. “I’m doing the work, I’m making the effort; I’m doing all the right things; this isn’t fair, this is not the result I expected. Grrrr” It is combination of whining, pouting, anger and resentment. It’s a tantrum, really.
In the past, when that voice, Eddie’s voice, got going, it dominated me. It was hard, sometimes impossible, to regain my composure and self-command. Often, in the past, I just quit. Or to use Guest’s words: I quit quitting and went back to the thing I loved, or thought I loved.
It’s different now. There’s something about my program. It’s the no-turning-back factor. Maybe it’s just that after twelve years of concentrated effort and much success, it’s easier to ignore Eddie and just keep plugging away. Sometimes, when I do engage him in conversation, I’ll give the little speech I always give: “We can do the program happy or we can do it sad. We can do it with a lift or do it with a drag. But do it we will. Come on, let’s go.”
The truth is, talking does work, but what works even better is action. To make my body obey my mind, I get off the scale and get on the bike and about ten minutes in, I’m not hearing Eddie anymore. He’s too busy pedaling.
Peace to you, my partners. To each of you who, like me, wants to succeed, earnestly desires the victory over the long haul, year after year after year, I say today—In the fight to quit what you think you love, I’m your ally and you are mine.
--Michael-Eddie
I was browsing in the Poetry Foundation website this week and came across something by Edgar Guest I’d never seen before. It’s called “On Quitting.” The poem opens with these two questions:
How much grit do you think you’ve got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
The poem closes with this stanza:
It’s bully sport and it’s open fight;
It will keep you busy both day and night;
For the toughest kind of a game you’ll find
Is to make your body obey your mind.
And you never will know what is meant by grit
Unless there’s something you’ve tried to quit.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a fight but this week it did. It wasn’t a struggle to stay on program, physically. Actually that felt easy. What was discouraging was to watch my weight rise with what felt like normal eating and a standard, regular exercise.
At times like this the game, as Guest calls it, is a mental/emotional game. I find there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that starts to complain and whine. “I’m doing the work, I’m making the effort; I’m doing all the right things; this isn’t fair, this is not the result I expected. Grrrr” It is combination of whining, pouting, anger and resentment. It’s a tantrum, really.
In the past, when that voice, Eddie’s voice, got going, it dominated me. It was hard, sometimes impossible, to regain my composure and self-command. Often, in the past, I just quit. Or to use Guest’s words: I quit quitting and went back to the thing I loved, or thought I loved.
It’s different now. There’s something about my program. It’s the no-turning-back factor. Maybe it’s just that after twelve years of concentrated effort and much success, it’s easier to ignore Eddie and just keep plugging away. Sometimes, when I do engage him in conversation, I’ll give the little speech I always give: “We can do the program happy or we can do it sad. We can do it with a lift or do it with a drag. But do it we will. Come on, let’s go.”
The truth is, talking does work, but what works even better is action. To make my body obey my mind, I get off the scale and get on the bike and about ten minutes in, I’m not hearing Eddie anymore. He’s too busy pedaling.
Peace to you, my partners. To each of you who, like me, wants to succeed, earnestly desires the victory over the long haul, year after year after year, I say today—In the fight to quit what you think you love, I’m your ally and you are mine.
--Michael-Eddie
“He knew how to want”
Sunday, Feb 13, 2011
On Saturday, Kay and I went into the city for a get-away Valentine’s Day weekend. We booked a room at one of our favorite hotels and then had a lovely dinner together on the 70th floor of Lake Point Towers (the restaurant is Cité) overlooking the lake. I love this day each year, set aside to celebrate love. And that’s what we did.
Program-wise the week has been pretty good. My dessert calorie ratio is too high and I’ll have to bring that down in the next few weeks—I’ve enjoyed the indulgence but it’s good also to have limits and to enjoy those limits.
One of the books I’m reading this month is the Meditations by the second century Roman general/philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. I’ve read it many times before but every now and then I have to read it again, in a different translation. Here’s what I read yesterday. Marcus, speaking of his father, says “A man might have applied that to him, which is recorded of Socrates, the he knew how to want, and to enjoy those things, in the want whereof, most men show themselves weak.”
I want to know how to want and revel in the wanting too. Not to want with the spirit of deprivation but with the spirit of self-command.
Another note this week: I ended, quite by accident, the long string of consecutive days of weighing. Packing for our little trip to city, I simply forgot to pack my scale. Kay and I packed quickly using just one small bag and it didn’t cross my mind. I could have easily driven back to Evanston on Sunday morning but I didn’t do it. I had made a commitment to weigh every day for three years and I’d fulfilled that commitment (for almost four years) and so I just decided to let it go at that. So I racked up 1,405 consecutive days, or 3.85 years. It was good. I will continue to weigh every day, of course. But who knows, I may not take my scale on every trip as I have in the past. I will use the tool as it best suits me and missing one or two weights in any given month will not materially alter the average I’m committed to maintain.
Peace to you, my friends. I send you a red hearted valentine today, the real Valentine’s Day, and with it best wishes for whatever you want to love today, even if what you want to love is want.
--Michael-Eddie
On Saturday, Kay and I went into the city for a get-away Valentine’s Day weekend. We booked a room at one of our favorite hotels and then had a lovely dinner together on the 70th floor of Lake Point Towers (the restaurant is Cité) overlooking the lake. I love this day each year, set aside to celebrate love. And that’s what we did.
Program-wise the week has been pretty good. My dessert calorie ratio is too high and I’ll have to bring that down in the next few weeks—I’ve enjoyed the indulgence but it’s good also to have limits and to enjoy those limits.
One of the books I’m reading this month is the Meditations by the second century Roman general/philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. I’ve read it many times before but every now and then I have to read it again, in a different translation. Here’s what I read yesterday. Marcus, speaking of his father, says “A man might have applied that to him, which is recorded of Socrates, the he knew how to want, and to enjoy those things, in the want whereof, most men show themselves weak.”
I want to know how to want and revel in the wanting too. Not to want with the spirit of deprivation but with the spirit of self-command.
Another note this week: I ended, quite by accident, the long string of consecutive days of weighing. Packing for our little trip to city, I simply forgot to pack my scale. Kay and I packed quickly using just one small bag and it didn’t cross my mind. I could have easily driven back to Evanston on Sunday morning but I didn’t do it. I had made a commitment to weigh every day for three years and I’d fulfilled that commitment (for almost four years) and so I just decided to let it go at that. So I racked up 1,405 consecutive days, or 3.85 years. It was good. I will continue to weigh every day, of course. But who knows, I may not take my scale on every trip as I have in the past. I will use the tool as it best suits me and missing one or two weights in any given month will not materially alter the average I’m committed to maintain.
Peace to you, my friends. I send you a red hearted valentine today, the real Valentine’s Day, and with it best wishes for whatever you want to love today, even if what you want to love is want.
--Michael-Eddie
Goals Update: January 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
January 2011 is past and so I wanted to check in on my 2011 goals so far.
Goal #1: No Artificial Sweetener. This goal was simple to set and simple to report. In the month of January I had zero milligrams of artificial sweetener. So far so good.
Goal #2: Annual Average Weight 196.3 or less. This has been relatively easy. The more I do this program, weighing and logging the weight every single day, the more confidence I have that I will achieve this in 2011.
Goal #3: Weight Range of 6 pounds or less. The range in January was 5.6 pounds, from a low of 193.8 to a high of 199.4. I have, in the first month, gotten within four-tenths of a pound of my 2011 weight range limit. This concerns me a little, but I knew this would be tough. I remain completely committed to this goal and I have a moderate confidence that I can achieve it.
Goal #4: Pushups: 50 in one set by Dec 31, 2011. I’m really very happy about this one. The highest number in January was 37. That puts me well ahead of the goal. The good news is that I haven’t done anything different so far. No new strategy, no extra effort or work. So it may be possible to achieve this by simple dint of increment.
Goal #5: Aerobic Exercise: Annual Average of 32 minutes per day. The January average is 35 minutes. This has been relatively easy to do. The reason? I’ve taken to riding a stationary bike in the basement every morning, first thing. This priority, first thing in the morning, is really the key. And I’m getting a better workout too—I’m working harder, breathing more deeply, sweating it out. The exhilaration of riding in complete quiet, with no music, no sound, and in almost complete darkness (with just a small reading lamp) I can zone out and in a kind of Zen meditative state. And because I’m reading on my Kindle while I ride, the time flies. It’s truly an amazing thing. I can’t be happier about this.
Goal #6: Strength Training: Annual Average of 0.333 times per day. I’m well ahead of goal here, with a January average of 0.405. Again the key here has been giving this a priority, first thing in the morning.
Goal #7: Dessert Calorie Ratio-- Annual Average: Less than 10%. This, too, has been relatively easy. The January average is 9%. If I have a big dessert day, as I did last week, I have to watch it for the rest of the week. Feel very good about this.
Goal # 8: Prayer/Meditation--Annual Average: 3 times per week (0.429). The January average (0.387) is slightly under target but that’s because I didn’t start tracking this until mid-month. Here again, the key is priority. I do a simple, sitting mediation right after my aerobic workout. There’s something wonderful about a rigorous ride in complete quiet which is then followed by some stretching and then sitting in the quietness and the darkness after that. My pattern is that I’ve been reading some of the spiritual lessons from our church hymnal (very brief) and then sitting quietly, followed by a time of remembering, saying the names of family and friends that are on my heart.
This is a precious time for me. I find it very helpful to begin the day being with the people I love, letting their faces come to mind and then simply wishing them well, making an intention of peace and strength and well-being for each one.
Goal #9: Journaling: Annual Average: 3 times per week (0.429). This is going very well. The January average was 0.484. I absolutely love this practice. I’m so glad I made it a goal that I must work to achieve. The simple act of goal-making has made it a part of my daily routine, whereas in the past, I often did it only when I felt like it. This way is much better. And here’s an interesting thing I’ve learned. I’ve made it a point to make the journal mostly positive in nature. My tendency in the past, especially when I was doing my 12-step work, was to focus on my faults and my short-comings, “character defects”, is the term the Big Book uses. Well, I found that, while very useful, essential, in fact, it had become a kind of negative focus, an unhealthy emphasis. I think I’ve achieved a better balance.
Goal #10: Reading: 18 books this year. I’m well ahead of schedule on this one. In January I finished five books, but two of them I had started before the month began so I don’t expect to continue this pace. This has been a wonderful experience for me. I’ve always been a reader but I often read in a kind of desultory, unfocussed way, often starting a book and then never finishing. And I read the paper every day and several magazines and that has continued but I’m especially glad about the books I’ve read, four non-fiction and one novel (which is very rare for me).
1. Leadership and Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute)
2. The Five Temptations of a CEO (Patrick Lencioni)
3. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni)
4. Crucial Conversations (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler)
5. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
Goal #11. Men's Group: Stay in until at least July 1, 2011. I’m on target to make this goal. I’ve met with my group twice in January (we meet twice a month) and it’s been so good for me.
I’m a little disappointed that so many of the original 13 men in the group have dropped out. Only about six of us have carried on, but we’re doing good work.
Thanks for your support in the pursuit of these goals. Have a great week!
--Michael-Eddie
January 2011 is past and so I wanted to check in on my 2011 goals so far.
Goal #1: No Artificial Sweetener. This goal was simple to set and simple to report. In the month of January I had zero milligrams of artificial sweetener. So far so good.
Goal #2: Annual Average Weight 196.3 or less. This has been relatively easy. The more I do this program, weighing and logging the weight every single day, the more confidence I have that I will achieve this in 2011.
Goal #3: Weight Range of 6 pounds or less. The range in January was 5.6 pounds, from a low of 193.8 to a high of 199.4. I have, in the first month, gotten within four-tenths of a pound of my 2011 weight range limit. This concerns me a little, but I knew this would be tough. I remain completely committed to this goal and I have a moderate confidence that I can achieve it.
Goal #4: Pushups: 50 in one set by Dec 31, 2011. I’m really very happy about this one. The highest number in January was 37. That puts me well ahead of the goal. The good news is that I haven’t done anything different so far. No new strategy, no extra effort or work. So it may be possible to achieve this by simple dint of increment.
Goal #5: Aerobic Exercise: Annual Average of 32 minutes per day. The January average is 35 minutes. This has been relatively easy to do. The reason? I’ve taken to riding a stationary bike in the basement every morning, first thing. This priority, first thing in the morning, is really the key. And I’m getting a better workout too—I’m working harder, breathing more deeply, sweating it out. The exhilaration of riding in complete quiet, with no music, no sound, and in almost complete darkness (with just a small reading lamp) I can zone out and in a kind of Zen meditative state. And because I’m reading on my Kindle while I ride, the time flies. It’s truly an amazing thing. I can’t be happier about this.
Goal #6: Strength Training: Annual Average of 0.333 times per day. I’m well ahead of goal here, with a January average of 0.405. Again the key here has been giving this a priority, first thing in the morning.
Goal #7: Dessert Calorie Ratio-- Annual Average: Less than 10%. This, too, has been relatively easy. The January average is 9%. If I have a big dessert day, as I did last week, I have to watch it for the rest of the week. Feel very good about this.
Goal # 8: Prayer/Meditation--Annual Average: 3 times per week (0.429). The January average (0.387) is slightly under target but that’s because I didn’t start tracking this until mid-month. Here again, the key is priority. I do a simple, sitting mediation right after my aerobic workout. There’s something wonderful about a rigorous ride in complete quiet which is then followed by some stretching and then sitting in the quietness and the darkness after that. My pattern is that I’ve been reading some of the spiritual lessons from our church hymnal (very brief) and then sitting quietly, followed by a time of remembering, saying the names of family and friends that are on my heart.
This is a precious time for me. I find it very helpful to begin the day being with the people I love, letting their faces come to mind and then simply wishing them well, making an intention of peace and strength and well-being for each one.
Goal #9: Journaling: Annual Average: 3 times per week (0.429). This is going very well. The January average was 0.484. I absolutely love this practice. I’m so glad I made it a goal that I must work to achieve. The simple act of goal-making has made it a part of my daily routine, whereas in the past, I often did it only when I felt like it. This way is much better. And here’s an interesting thing I’ve learned. I’ve made it a point to make the journal mostly positive in nature. My tendency in the past, especially when I was doing my 12-step work, was to focus on my faults and my short-comings, “character defects”, is the term the Big Book uses. Well, I found that, while very useful, essential, in fact, it had become a kind of negative focus, an unhealthy emphasis. I think I’ve achieved a better balance.
Goal #10: Reading: 18 books this year. I’m well ahead of schedule on this one. In January I finished five books, but two of them I had started before the month began so I don’t expect to continue this pace. This has been a wonderful experience for me. I’ve always been a reader but I often read in a kind of desultory, unfocussed way, often starting a book and then never finishing. And I read the paper every day and several magazines and that has continued but I’m especially glad about the books I’ve read, four non-fiction and one novel (which is very rare for me).
1. Leadership and Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute)
2. The Five Temptations of a CEO (Patrick Lencioni)
3. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni)
4. Crucial Conversations (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler)
5. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
Goal #11. Men's Group: Stay in until at least July 1, 2011. I’m on target to make this goal. I’ve met with my group twice in January (we meet twice a month) and it’s been so good for me.
I’m a little disappointed that so many of the original 13 men in the group have dropped out. Only about six of us have carried on, but we’re doing good work.
Thanks for your support in the pursuit of these goals. Have a great week!
--Michael-Eddie
A milestone, my goals and a connection.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
1. The Milestone. I can’t let this day go by without notice. Exactly three years ago today, January 30, 2008, I started counting consecutive days maintaining a healthy body weight. Today, three years, I celebrate 1,095 consecutive days with a sub-25 BMI.
2. The Goals. Wanted to check in on my goals for the year. I’m on track for all eleven and I’m thinking a once-a-month report will be a good thing. So, since tomorrow is the end of January, I’ll give you a report next week.
3. The Connection. Yesterday in church, our senior Minister, Barbara Pescan, preached a beautiful sermon, as she so often does. It was about simple connections between people, and our connection to the divine. In it she quoted the poem, Love Dogs, by the Sufi mystic, Rumi. After the sermon I gave her a hug, a long hug—she’s leaving us, retiring after 15 years—so it felt like a thank-you hug and a good-bye hug. Then, almost as if I were living in a scripted play, I went and got a cup of coffee and met my friend Steven, a thin, young, wisp of a man. He was talking to another friend, Donna, about the Chagall window at the Art Institute. (It has recently been moved, to, of all things, make way for a gift shop, moved to much less favorable light, and they were commiserating about that.) And then Steven said, that he had been standing there looking at it for a long time, maybe a full half hour. And while he was standing there, he told us he had this overwhelming sense of connection to his parents, his mother and father. As he said this, his eyes filled with tears—but he kept going with the story. Donna and I both assumed his parents must have died, but Steven went on to say that he called them the next day and told them about the window and his strange, sudden, overpowering sense of connection and they said, “Oh, sure, Steven, that makes sense. We used to take you there when you were a small boy. We went there many times. You loved that window.” Steven looked at us and his eyes now were smiling. I left to walk home and I thought to myself, This connection, just this one alone, this could nourish you for many days.
Love to you, my partners. The connection I feel with you, this too sustains me.
--Michael-Eddie
1. The Milestone. I can’t let this day go by without notice. Exactly three years ago today, January 30, 2008, I started counting consecutive days maintaining a healthy body weight. Today, three years, I celebrate 1,095 consecutive days with a sub-25 BMI.
2. The Goals. Wanted to check in on my goals for the year. I’m on track for all eleven and I’m thinking a once-a-month report will be a good thing. So, since tomorrow is the end of January, I’ll give you a report next week.
3. The Connection. Yesterday in church, our senior Minister, Barbara Pescan, preached a beautiful sermon, as she so often does. It was about simple connections between people, and our connection to the divine. In it she quoted the poem, Love Dogs, by the Sufi mystic, Rumi. After the sermon I gave her a hug, a long hug—she’s leaving us, retiring after 15 years—so it felt like a thank-you hug and a good-bye hug. Then, almost as if I were living in a scripted play, I went and got a cup of coffee and met my friend Steven, a thin, young, wisp of a man. He was talking to another friend, Donna, about the Chagall window at the Art Institute. (It has recently been moved, to, of all things, make way for a gift shop, moved to much less favorable light, and they were commiserating about that.) And then Steven said, that he had been standing there looking at it for a long time, maybe a full half hour. And while he was standing there, he told us he had this overwhelming sense of connection to his parents, his mother and father. As he said this, his eyes filled with tears—but he kept going with the story. Donna and I both assumed his parents must have died, but Steven went on to say that he called them the next day and told them about the window and his strange, sudden, overpowering sense of connection and they said, “Oh, sure, Steven, that makes sense. We used to take you there when you were a small boy. We went there many times. You loved that window.” Steven looked at us and his eyes now were smiling. I left to walk home and I thought to myself, This connection, just this one alone, this could nourish you for many days.
Love to you, my partners. The connection I feel with you, this too sustains me.
--Michael-Eddie
a hunger for nothing
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Today, and for the past few days, I started the day in silence.
It used to be I’d go downstairs to the basement, get on my stationary bike and start to ride. I tuned the TV to channel 741, a classical channel, and listened while I rode. It’s a great station because, 24/7, it plays Baroque and Classical-era music, Bach, Mozart, Haydn and the like. That’s a gift, but what’s even better: there’s no announcer, no ads, no news, nothing to interfere with the music. I’d turn the lights down low and ride away, while the music played, in semi-darkness, down there in the basement.
As I’d ride I’d read a book on my Kindle, the one my sister Jeanne gave me some time ago. I’d rest it on a clipboard that’s propped up on the handle bars. On the clipboard clip I’ve mounted a little battery-powered reading light.
So I’ve been reading and riding while listening to music. That’s been my pattern and it’s been a good way to start the day.
But a few days ago, for some reason, I just didn’t turn the TV on. I think I know why. I was getting used to the quietness and I wanted more. You have a hunger for something, or in this case, nothing, and the more you get, the more you want.
So I kept on doing my morning routine—but now without the music. That’s what I did again this morning.
Then after the ride, I sat on the floor and stretched a bit. Then I just sat still. Now, in addition to the darkness and the quiet room, my body also is quiet. There is no sound. All I can hear is the hiss of air moving in the vents. That and my own breathing. Then in my head I said the names of the people I love.
Then I came upstairs to write to you, to send you my weekly report, to say again how much you mean to me.
This day, this week, is off to a very good start.
--Michael-Eddie
Today, and for the past few days, I started the day in silence.
It used to be I’d go downstairs to the basement, get on my stationary bike and start to ride. I tuned the TV to channel 741, a classical channel, and listened while I rode. It’s a great station because, 24/7, it plays Baroque and Classical-era music, Bach, Mozart, Haydn and the like. That’s a gift, but what’s even better: there’s no announcer, no ads, no news, nothing to interfere with the music. I’d turn the lights down low and ride away, while the music played, in semi-darkness, down there in the basement.
As I’d ride I’d read a book on my Kindle, the one my sister Jeanne gave me some time ago. I’d rest it on a clipboard that’s propped up on the handle bars. On the clipboard clip I’ve mounted a little battery-powered reading light.
So I’ve been reading and riding while listening to music. That’s been my pattern and it’s been a good way to start the day.
But a few days ago, for some reason, I just didn’t turn the TV on. I think I know why. I was getting used to the quietness and I wanted more. You have a hunger for something, or in this case, nothing, and the more you get, the more you want.
So I kept on doing my morning routine—but now without the music. That’s what I did again this morning.
Then after the ride, I sat on the floor and stretched a bit. Then I just sat still. Now, in addition to the darkness and the quiet room, my body also is quiet. There is no sound. All I can hear is the hiss of air moving in the vents. That and my own breathing. Then in my head I said the names of the people I love.
Then I came upstairs to write to you, to send you my weekly report, to say again how much you mean to me.
This day, this week, is off to a very good start.
--Michael-Eddie
2011 Resolutions—finishing the list
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Dear Partners,
First off, I want to say thanks for the input I’ve received in the past two weeks as I’ve rolled out my resolutions. It’s been very helpful.
Second, I feel confident about the 7 goals I’ve already made, confident in my ability to achieve them. This is partly because I have a system which makes it easy to track my progress on a daily basis. I’ve been working this system for over three years now and so many of these goals are not new goals; they’re just refinements of existing ones. For the first 7 goals I’ve made, I’m on track, in the first two weeks of the year, toward making them. So that feels good.
Third, I feel it vital to add a few more goals, goals which, actually, will help me achieve them ones I’ve already made. These additional goals are more in the spiritual, intellectual, emotional realm.
Fourth, I’m aware that it’s important not to attempt too much. In fact, in goal-setting it’s common to over-reach and then under-perform. But here again, I have a strong sense that these goals are important enough to make them and that the minimums are reasonable enough so that I can actually achieve them.
I will say more about these new goals in future posts, explain them and give them context, but here they are. Again, I’m floating them for your review and input first and then I’ll solidify them in the next week or two.
8. Prayer/Meditation: annual average, 3 times a week
9. Journaling: annual average 3 times a week
10. Reading: minimum of 18 books this year (average of 1 ½ per month)
11. Men’s Group: Stay in the Personal Growth Group until at least July 1 of this year. I already made this commitment to myself after the men’s weekend in December so this is just recording that commitment
As always, I value your input. Thanks for being there for me. It’s good to be on this journey of personal growth.
I send you my love.
--Michael-Eddie
Dear Partners,
First off, I want to say thanks for the input I’ve received in the past two weeks as I’ve rolled out my resolutions. It’s been very helpful.
Second, I feel confident about the 7 goals I’ve already made, confident in my ability to achieve them. This is partly because I have a system which makes it easy to track my progress on a daily basis. I’ve been working this system for over three years now and so many of these goals are not new goals; they’re just refinements of existing ones. For the first 7 goals I’ve made, I’m on track, in the first two weeks of the year, toward making them. So that feels good.
Third, I feel it vital to add a few more goals, goals which, actually, will help me achieve them ones I’ve already made. These additional goals are more in the spiritual, intellectual, emotional realm.
Fourth, I’m aware that it’s important not to attempt too much. In fact, in goal-setting it’s common to over-reach and then under-perform. But here again, I have a strong sense that these goals are important enough to make them and that the minimums are reasonable enough so that I can actually achieve them.
I will say more about these new goals in future posts, explain them and give them context, but here they are. Again, I’m floating them for your review and input first and then I’ll solidify them in the next week or two.
8. Prayer/Meditation: annual average, 3 times a week
9. Journaling: annual average 3 times a week
10. Reading: minimum of 18 books this year (average of 1 ½ per month)
11. Men’s Group: Stay in the Personal Growth Group until at least July 1 of this year. I already made this commitment to myself after the men’s weekend in December so this is just recording that commitment
As always, I value your input. Thanks for being there for me. It’s good to be on this journey of personal growth.
I send you my love.
--Michael-Eddie
More 2011 resolutions –I invite your review
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Wanted to give you an update on the one resolution I announced last week and then add a few more.
1. No artificial sweeteners (AS) It’s going well. It is harder than I thought it would be but I’m doing fine. This one resolution has dramatically altered the way I eat. I don’t put anything in my coffee now. I usually drink decaf, even in the morning, and all last year I added Splenda and half-and-half. But now that I’m not doing AS I’ve just dropped the half-and-half as well. I reminded myself that for decades I drank my coffee black and so I decided to try it again. Also, it’s the 9th day of 2011 and I’ve yet to have my morning latte at Peet’s. My standard, every-day drink was a “decaf skim latte with an extra shot of espresso and sugar free vanilla”. For some reason, again, since I’m not doing the AS, I just haven’t bothered to go to Peet’s. Not once this year. Obviously I could go and have the latte without the AS, or with real sugared vanilla, but for some reason I haven’t wanted to. Consequently I’m eating breakfast at home more, usually a bowl of All-Bran with berries and banana and skim milk and no sugar or honey. I’m discovering, once again, the natural sugars in milk and fruit, lactose and fructose, a milder, subtler, and more natural sweetness.
Here are a few more resolutions I’m considering. I’ll float them this week for your review and comment. These are all program goals, related to health and fitness. In most cases these goals are modest increases and so they feel realistic. The only stretch goals in this list are #3 and #4, the push-ups and weight-range goals. The rest will require little more than doing again 2011 what I did in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
2. Average Weight: 196.3. My average weight for 2011 will be 196.3 or less. For 2008 it was 198.1; for 2009 and 2010 it was exactly 196.3 and so I feel very confident that I can do this again in 2011.
3. Total Weight Range: 6 Pounds or Less. My weight range in 2011 will not exceed six pounds. In other words the difference between my high weight and low weight in 2011 will be six pounds or less. Last year the range was 10 pounds. That’s too much. It’s not healthy. I’m not quite as confident about this one. I’m fairly sure I can do it, but it’s going to take careful attention, daily attention.
4. 50 Pushups: Sometime between now and December 31, 2011, I will do 50 pushups in one set. The most I’ve ever done before is 35. Lately I’ve been stuck at around 25 or less and I just don’t seem to be able to make progress. I will probably have to ask for help to do this since I haven’t been able to do this on my own. The reason I’m focusing on this activity is that the simple pushup requires strength throughout the entire body and is pretty good index of overall fitness.
5. Aerobic Exercise Average: 32 Minutes Per Day. In 2011 my average daily aerobic exercise will be 32 minutes or more. In 2008 and 2009 it was 29. Last year it was 30. So this is a modest increase.
6. Strength Training Sessions: .333 Per Day. In 2011 my average strength training sessions per day will be .333 or greater. In 2008 it was .306. In 2009 it was .293. and last year it was .300. So, again, a modest increase in 2011. This really means that I need to work out three times a week almost every week this year. There’s a little wiggle room in there but not much. Everywhere we’ve traveled this year I’ve been able to find a gym. In San Diego there was a 24 Hour Fitness club within a mile of our house. I’m not a member but the cost of a daily pass was just $10. So I should be able to make this goal this year.
7. Dessert Calories: 9% or Less. Once again I commit to keeping my annual average dessert calories under 10%. I realize that, having sworn off all artificial sweeteners, this may be a little tough, but after the first 9 days of 201, I have a growing confidence that I can do this.
I have other goals, personal and emotional/spiritual goals I’m working on and I may share those with you as well, but I wanted to float these program goals for your review. I really value your input. Before I declare these as firm and final targets for 2011—please –if you think I’m wimping out or if you think I’m over-reaching—let me know. Give me your take.
Isn’t it great to be in league, for yet another year, in pursuit of fitness and good health! Love and good cheer for the rest of 2011.
--Michael-Eddie
Wanted to give you an update on the one resolution I announced last week and then add a few more.
1. No artificial sweeteners (AS) It’s going well. It is harder than I thought it would be but I’m doing fine. This one resolution has dramatically altered the way I eat. I don’t put anything in my coffee now. I usually drink decaf, even in the morning, and all last year I added Splenda and half-and-half. But now that I’m not doing AS I’ve just dropped the half-and-half as well. I reminded myself that for decades I drank my coffee black and so I decided to try it again. Also, it’s the 9th day of 2011 and I’ve yet to have my morning latte at Peet’s. My standard, every-day drink was a “decaf skim latte with an extra shot of espresso and sugar free vanilla”. For some reason, again, since I’m not doing the AS, I just haven’t bothered to go to Peet’s. Not once this year. Obviously I could go and have the latte without the AS, or with real sugared vanilla, but for some reason I haven’t wanted to. Consequently I’m eating breakfast at home more, usually a bowl of All-Bran with berries and banana and skim milk and no sugar or honey. I’m discovering, once again, the natural sugars in milk and fruit, lactose and fructose, a milder, subtler, and more natural sweetness.
Here are a few more resolutions I’m considering. I’ll float them this week for your review and comment. These are all program goals, related to health and fitness. In most cases these goals are modest increases and so they feel realistic. The only stretch goals in this list are #3 and #4, the push-ups and weight-range goals. The rest will require little more than doing again 2011 what I did in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
2. Average Weight: 196.3. My average weight for 2011 will be 196.3 or less. For 2008 it was 198.1; for 2009 and 2010 it was exactly 196.3 and so I feel very confident that I can do this again in 2011.
3. Total Weight Range: 6 Pounds or Less. My weight range in 2011 will not exceed six pounds. In other words the difference between my high weight and low weight in 2011 will be six pounds or less. Last year the range was 10 pounds. That’s too much. It’s not healthy. I’m not quite as confident about this one. I’m fairly sure I can do it, but it’s going to take careful attention, daily attention.
4. 50 Pushups: Sometime between now and December 31, 2011, I will do 50 pushups in one set. The most I’ve ever done before is 35. Lately I’ve been stuck at around 25 or less and I just don’t seem to be able to make progress. I will probably have to ask for help to do this since I haven’t been able to do this on my own. The reason I’m focusing on this activity is that the simple pushup requires strength throughout the entire body and is pretty good index of overall fitness.
5. Aerobic Exercise Average: 32 Minutes Per Day. In 2011 my average daily aerobic exercise will be 32 minutes or more. In 2008 and 2009 it was 29. Last year it was 30. So this is a modest increase.
6. Strength Training Sessions: .333 Per Day. In 2011 my average strength training sessions per day will be .333 or greater. In 2008 it was .306. In 2009 it was .293. and last year it was .300. So, again, a modest increase in 2011. This really means that I need to work out three times a week almost every week this year. There’s a little wiggle room in there but not much. Everywhere we’ve traveled this year I’ve been able to find a gym. In San Diego there was a 24 Hour Fitness club within a mile of our house. I’m not a member but the cost of a daily pass was just $10. So I should be able to make this goal this year.
7. Dessert Calories: 9% or Less. Once again I commit to keeping my annual average dessert calories under 10%. I realize that, having sworn off all artificial sweeteners, this may be a little tough, but after the first 9 days of 201, I have a growing confidence that I can do this.
I have other goals, personal and emotional/spiritual goals I’m working on and I may share those with you as well, but I wanted to float these program goals for your review. I really value your input. Before I declare these as firm and final targets for 2011—please –if you think I’m wimping out or if you think I’m over-reaching—let me know. Give me your take.
Isn’t it great to be in league, for yet another year, in pursuit of fitness and good health! Love and good cheer for the rest of 2011.
--Michael-Eddie
a new year’s resolution
Sunday, January 2, 2011
I woke up Saturday morning, January 1st, and welcomed the New Year. I got on the scale as I always do. I wrote down the number as I always do. I folded a program card and put it in my pocket as I always do.
In other words I started the New Year as though it were a new day. And, in program terms, that’s all it was.
But I am making some changes this year. I have some New Year’s resolutions I’m working on but there’s one I want to share with you right now—
In 2011, I will not, knowingly, consume any artificial sweeteners. I will not consume prepared foods which contain them or add them to coffee, cereal, or any other food I myself prepare. I will not consume them in diet sodas or in any other sugar-free product, including sugarless chewing gum (the compounds here are the sugar alcohols, Xylitol and Sorbitol).
I’ve been thinking about doing this for years but this year is the year. These white powders in the little pink, blue and yellow packets—we all know they’re bad for us, we just don’t know how bad. So they’re gone. They may be gone for good, but I’m pledging zero intake just for 2011. After that I’ll re-evaluate.
I don’t want to be merely less fat than I used to be, I want to be leaner and healthier, and this is one more move in that direction.
Love to you, my partners. Here’s to a healthier new year!
--Michael-Eddie
I woke up Saturday morning, January 1st, and welcomed the New Year. I got on the scale as I always do. I wrote down the number as I always do. I folded a program card and put it in my pocket as I always do.
In other words I started the New Year as though it were a new day. And, in program terms, that’s all it was.
But I am making some changes this year. I have some New Year’s resolutions I’m working on but there’s one I want to share with you right now—
In 2011, I will not, knowingly, consume any artificial sweeteners. I will not consume prepared foods which contain them or add them to coffee, cereal, or any other food I myself prepare. I will not consume them in diet sodas or in any other sugar-free product, including sugarless chewing gum (the compounds here are the sugar alcohols, Xylitol and Sorbitol).
I’ve been thinking about doing this for years but this year is the year. These white powders in the little pink, blue and yellow packets—we all know they’re bad for us, we just don’t know how bad. So they’re gone. They may be gone for good, but I’m pledging zero intake just for 2011. After that I’ll re-evaluate.
I don’t want to be merely less fat than I used to be, I want to be leaner and healthier, and this is one more move in that direction.
Love to you, my partners. Here’s to a healthier new year!
--Michael-Eddie
I heard myself saying Never
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sometimes I overhear conversations going on inside my own head. Like this past week. I was out for a walk, alone, in San Diego, where I’ve been vacationing with the family, and out of nowhere I heard a voice asking, “I wonder when this program’s going to end?”
I paused for a split second and then without thinking I found myself saying, “Never.” It was a simple, one-word response. That was it. That’s all I said. I walked on and never thought about it again until just now.
Looking back on the incident, I think I know what was going on. It’s the end of the year. 2010 is drawing to a close. My birthday—December 31st— is almost here. I suppose everybody thinks about the future as the end of the year approaches, but with a birthday on New Year’s Eve, it’s especially true of me.
I was a little surprised to have heard the question but also very happy with the response that came and that it came so quickly. It felt as though it had arisen from somewhere within, from some deep, inherent, essential part of me. It was Michael talking to Eddie. And Michael was smiling and saying “Never.”
It reminded me of that great New Yorker cartoon where an executive is standing behind his desk talking on his cell and he’s saying, “No, Thursday won’t work. How about never—is never good for you?” I love that cartoon because it captures an irony—that sometimes, in both business and personal life, I will make an appointment to discuss doing something I have absolutely no desire to do, absolutely no intention of doing. But instead of saying no to the meeting, I say yes and then waste my time and their time because eventually I do say no.
This time, I said it right away. I said no. And not just no but never.
It’s so peace-giving, so soul-satisfying to find and articulate the settled questions in my life, to identify the things I will never do—not this year, not next year or the year after that. The answer now and the answer then will always be—Never.
And so as I approach the end of another year, I have some changes in my life I do want to make, but my program isn’t one of them. I’m not searching for a new and improved program or the latest diet or the newest food fad. I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing this year and last year and the year before that, and on and on and on.
Thanks for being there with me all this year. Thanks for being part of a never-ending supply of grace and friendship and support.
--Michael-Eddie
Sometimes I overhear conversations going on inside my own head. Like this past week. I was out for a walk, alone, in San Diego, where I’ve been vacationing with the family, and out of nowhere I heard a voice asking, “I wonder when this program’s going to end?”
I paused for a split second and then without thinking I found myself saying, “Never.” It was a simple, one-word response. That was it. That’s all I said. I walked on and never thought about it again until just now.
Looking back on the incident, I think I know what was going on. It’s the end of the year. 2010 is drawing to a close. My birthday—December 31st— is almost here. I suppose everybody thinks about the future as the end of the year approaches, but with a birthday on New Year’s Eve, it’s especially true of me.
I was a little surprised to have heard the question but also very happy with the response that came and that it came so quickly. It felt as though it had arisen from somewhere within, from some deep, inherent, essential part of me. It was Michael talking to Eddie. And Michael was smiling and saying “Never.”
It reminded me of that great New Yorker cartoon where an executive is standing behind his desk talking on his cell and he’s saying, “No, Thursday won’t work. How about never—is never good for you?” I love that cartoon because it captures an irony—that sometimes, in both business and personal life, I will make an appointment to discuss doing something I have absolutely no desire to do, absolutely no intention of doing. But instead of saying no to the meeting, I say yes and then waste my time and their time because eventually I do say no.
This time, I said it right away. I said no. And not just no but never.
It’s so peace-giving, so soul-satisfying to find and articulate the settled questions in my life, to identify the things I will never do—not this year, not next year or the year after that. The answer now and the answer then will always be—Never.
And so as I approach the end of another year, I have some changes in my life I do want to make, but my program isn’t one of them. I’m not searching for a new and improved program or the latest diet or the newest food fad. I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing this year and last year and the year before that, and on and on and on.
Thanks for being there with me all this year. Thanks for being part of a never-ending supply of grace and friendship and support.
--Michael-Eddie
a difficult program week
Sunday, December 12, 2010
This has been a difficult program week for me, at the beginning of the week anyway.
On Monday night, I had too much to eat.
While there is no precise definition of the term “binge”, honesty requires me to use the term if my behavior fits the general description: eating a large quantity of food in a short period of time and in a zoned-out, out-of-control frame of mind. (A binge has both a quantitative and qualitative aspect).
The next morning, Tuesday, the scale registered 201.2, an abnormally high weight for me. The next day, Wednesday, it was 201.6 (the highest of 2010). It’s worth noting that in the previous week my weight had been low, 191.8 (the lowest of 2010). It occurred on Saturday morning of the men’s retreat.
About the low weight: I wasn’t trying to achieve it. I don’t really know how it happened. It may have had something to do with arriving late at the retreat on Friday night and having to skip supper. But that alone, missing one meal, hardly accounts for it.
No doubt the emotional content of the weekend, even in anticipation, had something to do with it. And no doubt the emotions stirred up at the retreat also had some connection to the binge.
Here’s the good news.
1. It began Monday night and ended Monday night. I’m grateful for that. The next morning I got up and went to my desk and journaled about it at some length. In fact, since I came back from my men’s’ retreat last weekend, I’ve been journaling every day. And that is major good news. Of all the things I’ve learned in my program, this is possibly the most significant: any attempt to hide a behavior actually fortifies and perpetuates that behavior.
2. In my journaling I noted that this behavior, though rare, does occasionally recur in my life. And while I can take some solace in the infrequency, I also need to admit that it is not eradicated. I’m calling this good news because it’s good to acknowledge the truth and accept the truth. I cannot manage what I cannot or will not name.
3. I have a program and program friends who sustain me, who walk with me in my life in the joyful, easy times and also in times of distress and sadness. And I’m adding to that support network. Monday night I’m attending the first personal growth group. These are the follow-on meetings with the guys who were together on the retreat. I’m also meeting, again, with my old clergy support group which we’ve just re-constituted.
I’m grateful for all these life-giving connections. Grateful to you, my partners, for being there again this week.
--Michael-Eddie
This has been a difficult program week for me, at the beginning of the week anyway.
On Monday night, I had too much to eat.
While there is no precise definition of the term “binge”, honesty requires me to use the term if my behavior fits the general description: eating a large quantity of food in a short period of time and in a zoned-out, out-of-control frame of mind. (A binge has both a quantitative and qualitative aspect).
The next morning, Tuesday, the scale registered 201.2, an abnormally high weight for me. The next day, Wednesday, it was 201.6 (the highest of 2010). It’s worth noting that in the previous week my weight had been low, 191.8 (the lowest of 2010). It occurred on Saturday morning of the men’s retreat.
About the low weight: I wasn’t trying to achieve it. I don’t really know how it happened. It may have had something to do with arriving late at the retreat on Friday night and having to skip supper. But that alone, missing one meal, hardly accounts for it.
No doubt the emotional content of the weekend, even in anticipation, had something to do with it. And no doubt the emotions stirred up at the retreat also had some connection to the binge.
Here’s the good news.
1. It began Monday night and ended Monday night. I’m grateful for that. The next morning I got up and went to my desk and journaled about it at some length. In fact, since I came back from my men’s’ retreat last weekend, I’ve been journaling every day. And that is major good news. Of all the things I’ve learned in my program, this is possibly the most significant: any attempt to hide a behavior actually fortifies and perpetuates that behavior.
2. In my journaling I noted that this behavior, though rare, does occasionally recur in my life. And while I can take some solace in the infrequency, I also need to admit that it is not eradicated. I’m calling this good news because it’s good to acknowledge the truth and accept the truth. I cannot manage what I cannot or will not name.
3. I have a program and program friends who sustain me, who walk with me in my life in the joyful, easy times and also in times of distress and sadness. And I’m adding to that support network. Monday night I’m attending the first personal growth group. These are the follow-on meetings with the guys who were together on the retreat. I’m also meeting, again, with my old clergy support group which we’ve just re-constituted.
I’m grateful for all these life-giving connections. Grateful to you, my partners, for being there again this week.
--Michael-Eddie
Victories of the Heart
Sunday, December 5, 2010
I’ve just returned from a weekend retreat for men called Victories of the Heart. We met in a little campground in Delavan, Wisconsin.
I went up Friday evening and returned Sunday afternoon.
I arrived when it was getting dark. It was cold. The snow had not yet begun but a chill was in the air. The bonfire was burning and men who arrived before me had gathered and were standing in quiet around the fire. It was oddly moving, standing with perfect strangers without saying word. Yet it felt right. By the end of the weekend I would come to know these men and share beautiful hours with them, but then they were strangers.
After the fire ceremony I was led, alone, by one of the leaders, down a path to a tree where a torch was burning. I waited there in silence. Then after a few moments, further down the path. I stood outside a wooden house, where the leader lit a handful of gathered sage and performed a simple, Native American smudge ceremony, censing me from head to foot, and along my arms and legs, with the dark, fragrant smoke. I took this to be an act of cleansing and preparation.
After a few minutes I was led into a room where I removed my boots and my coat and gloves and scarf. And in a few more minutes, at the sound of a drum, a single, low, reverberant tone, a door opened and I was escorted to a dark room lit by a few candles on the floor. Seated before a burning fireplace were two men, one an older, big, round-faced man with a bald head and Buddha belly; the other a taller, thinner man with dark hair and dark eyebrows over kind eyes. I sat down and they extended their arms to me and we clasped hands. They asked me what I wanted from the weekend and I said, “I want closer relationships with my wife and with my three children and with my family and friends.”
I was led down the stairs into yet another room where all the men, who had gone through this same passage from the bonfire, were waiting. We were given a cup of hot mulled cider, a spiral bound book, a pen and a name tag and we were asked to sit in the semi-darkness and begin journaling about our hopes for the weekend.
That’s how it began.
It would be impossible to recount all that happened in the next several hours but most of the time, the great majority of the time, I said nothing. I was listening to other men tell about their lives, the areas in their life where they were having the greatest struggle and difficulty. The leaders helped the men to express what they wanted to express and led them through a series of assisted dramas to act it out rather than try to convey everything in words. (For people like me whose primary method of engaging the world is through the mind, this was extremely helpful).
When it was my turn, I asked for help in grieving the death of my mother—she died in 1999. I had not yet grieved. I hadn’t even begun to grieve. It was a very moving experience. I won’t recount it in detail but I was able to, I was helped to, encounter my mother, Aldoris. In a simple act, kneeling on a cushion before a figure lying on the floor, shrouded in black cloth, representing her, I was able to say things to her that I have wanted to say and haven’t said.
Like every other man there this weekend, without exception, I cried. I shed tears of anger, sadness, regret, sorrow, love. And this was cleansing and healing, because I shared these tears with men who, but a few hours before, standing around a fire in total silence, had been perfect strangers to me but who, over the course of the weekend had become my friends.
When I came home Sunday afternoon, I did share some of the experience with Kay and I know we will have many opportunities to re-visit the experience. This next Thursday night, Kay and the family will join me here in Evanston, with the men and their families for a reunion gathering.
What I have brought back from the weekend is a renewal of spirit. I’m sitting here, as I write this, Monday morning, with soft music playing. A candle is burning on the desk beside me. And I’m sharing this experience with you my friends. I’ve come to realize, again this weekend, that my primary connection to the spiritual, to the life of the spirit, is in my relationships. It is the Christian principle of incarnation of course—that what is not seen and can’t be seen can be incarnated, mediated in flesh and blood.
This weekend these men these strangers did that for me. I was hugged, and touched, and held by these men and I gave that gift also to them. And what was mediated to me and what I hope I was able to mediate to them was the great Love which amid an awful cruelty and gruesomeness and hatred and hurt everywhere—amid all this there is, there is no doubt, also great Love.
I send that love to you, my partners, my friends.
--Michael-Eddie
I’ve just returned from a weekend retreat for men called Victories of the Heart. We met in a little campground in Delavan, Wisconsin.
I went up Friday evening and returned Sunday afternoon.
I arrived when it was getting dark. It was cold. The snow had not yet begun but a chill was in the air. The bonfire was burning and men who arrived before me had gathered and were standing in quiet around the fire. It was oddly moving, standing with perfect strangers without saying word. Yet it felt right. By the end of the weekend I would come to know these men and share beautiful hours with them, but then they were strangers.
After the fire ceremony I was led, alone, by one of the leaders, down a path to a tree where a torch was burning. I waited there in silence. Then after a few moments, further down the path. I stood outside a wooden house, where the leader lit a handful of gathered sage and performed a simple, Native American smudge ceremony, censing me from head to foot, and along my arms and legs, with the dark, fragrant smoke. I took this to be an act of cleansing and preparation.
After a few minutes I was led into a room where I removed my boots and my coat and gloves and scarf. And in a few more minutes, at the sound of a drum, a single, low, reverberant tone, a door opened and I was escorted to a dark room lit by a few candles on the floor. Seated before a burning fireplace were two men, one an older, big, round-faced man with a bald head and Buddha belly; the other a taller, thinner man with dark hair and dark eyebrows over kind eyes. I sat down and they extended their arms to me and we clasped hands. They asked me what I wanted from the weekend and I said, “I want closer relationships with my wife and with my three children and with my family and friends.”
I was led down the stairs into yet another room where all the men, who had gone through this same passage from the bonfire, were waiting. We were given a cup of hot mulled cider, a spiral bound book, a pen and a name tag and we were asked to sit in the semi-darkness and begin journaling about our hopes for the weekend.
That’s how it began.
It would be impossible to recount all that happened in the next several hours but most of the time, the great majority of the time, I said nothing. I was listening to other men tell about their lives, the areas in their life where they were having the greatest struggle and difficulty. The leaders helped the men to express what they wanted to express and led them through a series of assisted dramas to act it out rather than try to convey everything in words. (For people like me whose primary method of engaging the world is through the mind, this was extremely helpful).
When it was my turn, I asked for help in grieving the death of my mother—she died in 1999. I had not yet grieved. I hadn’t even begun to grieve. It was a very moving experience. I won’t recount it in detail but I was able to, I was helped to, encounter my mother, Aldoris. In a simple act, kneeling on a cushion before a figure lying on the floor, shrouded in black cloth, representing her, I was able to say things to her that I have wanted to say and haven’t said.
Like every other man there this weekend, without exception, I cried. I shed tears of anger, sadness, regret, sorrow, love. And this was cleansing and healing, because I shared these tears with men who, but a few hours before, standing around a fire in total silence, had been perfect strangers to me but who, over the course of the weekend had become my friends.
When I came home Sunday afternoon, I did share some of the experience with Kay and I know we will have many opportunities to re-visit the experience. This next Thursday night, Kay and the family will join me here in Evanston, with the men and their families for a reunion gathering.
What I have brought back from the weekend is a renewal of spirit. I’m sitting here, as I write this, Monday morning, with soft music playing. A candle is burning on the desk beside me. And I’m sharing this experience with you my friends. I’ve come to realize, again this weekend, that my primary connection to the spiritual, to the life of the spirit, is in my relationships. It is the Christian principle of incarnation of course—that what is not seen and can’t be seen can be incarnated, mediated in flesh and blood.
This weekend these men these strangers did that for me. I was hugged, and touched, and held by these men and I gave that gift also to them. And what was mediated to me and what I hope I was able to mediate to them was the great Love which amid an awful cruelty and gruesomeness and hatred and hurt everywhere—amid all this there is, there is no doubt, also great Love.
I send that love to you, my partners, my friends.
--Michael-Eddie
a three-step process for mental stability
Sunday, November 28, 2010
I’ve had a good week in several respects. My exercise program continues to be strong and my weight, though somewhat elevated, is about where it should be.
But I’ve had an excessive amount of dessert calories. When this happens I find it useful to follow a process, a three-step process, which often returns me to stability.
Step 1: Don’t bury
Over the years I’ve learned that, when I try to hide, bury or ignore them, issues morph into problems. But when I face them squarely, when I shine even a little light on them, issues lose their steam and become non-issues.
Step 2: Don’t worry
I’ve learned, too, that managing my anxiety is crucial to long-term success and mental health. It doesn’t help to fret and worry . It doesn’t help to pathologize my behavior—Oh, my god, I’m a sugar addict! What does help is a calm and careful look at what’s actually going on. Then, a review of my options. What actions can I take, right now, to return to a more moderate course? I don’t spend a lot of time asking why: Why did I eat that much dessert this week? Partly it’s the holidays and partly it’s emotional turmoil. But the funny this is: I know I’ve been through many holidays and much higher stress levels without relying this much on comfort food. Just knowing that, just saying that, gives me great confidence. The other thing is, I really enjoyed the desserts! Indulgence—every so often—is good for the soul.
Step 3: Climb a tree.
If I’m lost in the woods, the best thing I can do is get to higher ground. From that vantage point, above the trees, I can assess my current location and chart a course to safety.
In my program, climbing a tree means looking out beyond this one week or even this one month. It means taking a look at averages. I can see, for example, that my dessert calorie average for this week is 21%. But for the current month it’s 13% and year-to-date it’s just 9%. Now, that’s higher than last year, but still in the healthy range.
I don’t know exactly why this works, but it does. It helps to have a history to look back on, a documented, black-and-white record of what I’ve been through. And it helps to know that, for long-term success, perfection is not required.
So that’s it. That’s the assessment. Thanks for being there for me. I feel better for having shared this with you all.
--Michael-Eddie
I’ve had a good week in several respects. My exercise program continues to be strong and my weight, though somewhat elevated, is about where it should be.
But I’ve had an excessive amount of dessert calories. When this happens I find it useful to follow a process, a three-step process, which often returns me to stability.
Step 1: Don’t bury
Over the years I’ve learned that, when I try to hide, bury or ignore them, issues morph into problems. But when I face them squarely, when I shine even a little light on them, issues lose their steam and become non-issues.
Step 2: Don’t worry
I’ve learned, too, that managing my anxiety is crucial to long-term success and mental health. It doesn’t help to fret and worry . It doesn’t help to pathologize my behavior—Oh, my god, I’m a sugar addict! What does help is a calm and careful look at what’s actually going on. Then, a review of my options. What actions can I take, right now, to return to a more moderate course? I don’t spend a lot of time asking why: Why did I eat that much dessert this week? Partly it’s the holidays and partly it’s emotional turmoil. But the funny this is: I know I’ve been through many holidays and much higher stress levels without relying this much on comfort food. Just knowing that, just saying that, gives me great confidence. The other thing is, I really enjoyed the desserts! Indulgence—every so often—is good for the soul.
Step 3: Climb a tree.
If I’m lost in the woods, the best thing I can do is get to higher ground. From that vantage point, above the trees, I can assess my current location and chart a course to safety.
In my program, climbing a tree means looking out beyond this one week or even this one month. It means taking a look at averages. I can see, for example, that my dessert calorie average for this week is 21%. But for the current month it’s 13% and year-to-date it’s just 9%. Now, that’s higher than last year, but still in the healthy range.
I don’t know exactly why this works, but it does. It helps to have a history to look back on, a documented, black-and-white record of what I’ve been through. And it helps to know that, for long-term success, perfection is not required.
So that’s it. That’s the assessment. Thanks for being there for me. I feel better for having shared this with you all.
--Michael-Eddie
Sunday, November 21, 2010
We’ve all heard stories of holiday shoppers who dropped surprises in the red kettles of the Salvation Army during the holidays, like hundred-dollar bills, gold doubloons or wedding rings. Well this morning I did something similar.
In church they were taking the offering, but as I was distracted by the music from Gregory our pianist, I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out what I thought was a check and dropped it in the offering plate, only to find I’d deposited my program card on which I’d written the date, November 21, 2010, and my weight, 195.8.
In a split second I exchanged the check for the card, and passed the plate on to the usher standing in the aisle, but it got me thinking, this being the Sunday before Thanksgiving—
I’m grateful today for that program card and all it represents. And I give thanks for you, my friends, who are standing with me, who want what I want. What a privilege it is to share this journey with you.
Thank you!
--Michael-Eddie
We’ve all heard stories of holiday shoppers who dropped surprises in the red kettles of the Salvation Army during the holidays, like hundred-dollar bills, gold doubloons or wedding rings. Well this morning I did something similar.
In church they were taking the offering, but as I was distracted by the music from Gregory our pianist, I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out what I thought was a check and dropped it in the offering plate, only to find I’d deposited my program card on which I’d written the date, November 21, 2010, and my weight, 195.8.
In a split second I exchanged the check for the card, and passed the plate on to the usher standing in the aisle, but it got me thinking, this being the Sunday before Thanksgiving—
I’m grateful today for that program card and all it represents. And I give thanks for you, my friends, who are standing with me, who want what I want. What a privilege it is to share this journey with you.
Thank you!
--Michael-Eddie
autobiography in five short chapters
Sunday, November 14, 2010
In my reading this week, browsing in old notes I’d taken at a 12-step retreat from some years back, I came across this poem by Portia Nelson. It brought back good memories of those early days of recovery.
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
Chapter One. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the pavement. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to get out.
Chapter Two. I walk down the street; there is a deep hole in the pavement. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place, but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the pavement. I see it is there. I still fall in. It's a habit. But now my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Chapter Four. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter Five. I walk down a different street.
Where is the decisive turning point in her life? It’s not in Chapter Four. Now, that is a turning point, literally, because that’s where she takes a new route, walking around The Hole. And it’s not in Chapter Five, though, here again, she takes a different route—an entirely new street. But for me the first turning point, the decisive turning point, is in Chapter Three when finally she says: It is my fault.
The genius of the 12-step movement is that it lured me in with the disease metaphor, implicit in which was the exculpatory clause: It’s not your fault. I needed that. But shortly after I entered the rooms I learned the real truth: It is my fault. I really believe that all the meetings and all the steps and all the reading and phone calls and retreats—all of it was a preparation for, and a prelude to, those four words.
Because when I stop blaming, when I stop believing that it’s the fault of my parents or my genes or my circumstances or bad luck or karma or religion or spouse or friends or fast food or sugar or parties or holidays or any other Person, Place, Thing or Idea—When I stop telling lies I start getting well.
Adam in Eden said: “The woman you gave me gave me the fruit..” (Notice how he double-deflects here, blaming both Eve and God.) It’s the oldest lie in the oldest book.
This week I want to be telling the truth: It is my fault. Full stop. Period.
This is the truth that sets me free. And it is a liberating truth because once I have uttered it, I can turn away from the street with The Hole in it, from Sheol Street.
And then, as if by design, another avenue opens up to me—avenue of avenues—which leads to others, to loving acceptance, assistance, companionship, hope and the pleasures of productive work. In the Big Book they call this road the Road of Happy Destiny.
Dear friends, fellow travelers, how good to be on this road with you!
--Michael-Eddie
In my reading this week, browsing in old notes I’d taken at a 12-step retreat from some years back, I came across this poem by Portia Nelson. It brought back good memories of those early days of recovery.
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
Chapter One. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the pavement. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to get out.
Chapter Two. I walk down the street; there is a deep hole in the pavement. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place, but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the pavement. I see it is there. I still fall in. It's a habit. But now my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Chapter Four. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter Five. I walk down a different street.
Where is the decisive turning point in her life? It’s not in Chapter Four. Now, that is a turning point, literally, because that’s where she takes a new route, walking around The Hole. And it’s not in Chapter Five, though, here again, she takes a different route—an entirely new street. But for me the first turning point, the decisive turning point, is in Chapter Three when finally she says: It is my fault.
The genius of the 12-step movement is that it lured me in with the disease metaphor, implicit in which was the exculpatory clause: It’s not your fault. I needed that. But shortly after I entered the rooms I learned the real truth: It is my fault. I really believe that all the meetings and all the steps and all the reading and phone calls and retreats—all of it was a preparation for, and a prelude to, those four words.
Because when I stop blaming, when I stop believing that it’s the fault of my parents or my genes or my circumstances or bad luck or karma or religion or spouse or friends or fast food or sugar or parties or holidays or any other Person, Place, Thing or Idea—When I stop telling lies I start getting well.
Adam in Eden said: “The woman you gave me gave me the fruit..” (Notice how he double-deflects here, blaming both Eve and God.) It’s the oldest lie in the oldest book.
This week I want to be telling the truth: It is my fault. Full stop. Period.
This is the truth that sets me free. And it is a liberating truth because once I have uttered it, I can turn away from the street with The Hole in it, from Sheol Street.
And then, as if by design, another avenue opens up to me—avenue of avenues—which leads to others, to loving acceptance, assistance, companionship, hope and the pleasures of productive work. In the Big Book they call this road the Road of Happy Destiny.
Dear friends, fellow travelers, how good to be on this road with you!
--Michael-Eddie
a long weekend
Sunday, November 7, 2010
It’s Sunday night. I’m still at work. It’s been a busy week at work and an even busier weekend. I worked all day yesterday and most of today. We did a major move of offices, getting ready for two new employees and it was a lot more work than I’d thought. Plus our tech guy was out yesterday with dental surgery. Which means I had to do stuff I didn’t really know how to do. Which means it takes longer.
I’m tired. I’m emotionally drained. And the week ahead is looking pretty grim too. Lots of things coming due, year-end work, etc. And it doesn’t help that I’m also in the middle of some emotional turbulence. If I was singing I’d be singing the blues.
So, here’s my report this week: I’m on program. That’s it.
I’m feeling down but I’m glad that lousy feelings are, to the program, irrelevant. That feels good.
I also feel good about the work I’ve done here at the office. I like how it looks.
Thanks for being there for me. I haven’t talked to any of you this week, but I know you’re there. Thank you, my friends.
--Michael-Eddie
It’s Sunday night. I’m still at work. It’s been a busy week at work and an even busier weekend. I worked all day yesterday and most of today. We did a major move of offices, getting ready for two new employees and it was a lot more work than I’d thought. Plus our tech guy was out yesterday with dental surgery. Which means I had to do stuff I didn’t really know how to do. Which means it takes longer.
I’m tired. I’m emotionally drained. And the week ahead is looking pretty grim too. Lots of things coming due, year-end work, etc. And it doesn’t help that I’m also in the middle of some emotional turbulence. If I was singing I’d be singing the blues.
So, here’s my report this week: I’m on program. That’s it.
I’m feeling down but I’m glad that lousy feelings are, to the program, irrelevant. That feels good.
I also feel good about the work I’ve done here at the office. I like how it looks.
Thanks for being there for me. I haven’t talked to any of you this week, but I know you’re there. Thank you, my friends.
--Michael-Eddie
1,000 days of maintenance
Sunday, October 31, 2010
This week I passed a significant milestone. Tuesday, October 26 marked the 1,000th consecutive day on which I’d recorded a sub-25 BMI (anything under 205 pounds).
As you may recall, on April 9, 2007, I started this new phase of my program. I had gained 70 pounds and in a pique without really knowing what I was doing, made the commitment to track my weight and calories for three years.
It took me a while to drop that 70 pounds, but on Jan. 30, 2008—that was the first of what would be 1,000 consecutive days of maintenance.
It’s been 33 months since that first day. The chart below shows my average monthly weight in that time span.
In business you want chart lines to go up—for profit and quality. You want them to go down—for debt and defects. But in weight maintenance you want just the opposite. You want the line to get flat and then stay flat. Which is a pretty good definition of maintenance: flat-lining it.
The chart looks at a full 33 months, from Feb 2008 to Oct 2010. But in the last 23 months, since December 2008, my average monthly weight has varied by just one pound, exactly one pound! The highest value was 196.9, the lowest, 195.9.
That’s cool. I like being a flat-liner.
If you like numbers—and I do—it’s fun to look at them. It’s comforting to see that long red line, a straight, flat road. But maintenance has other, more practical rewards.
Just today I was putting away my summer clothes and taking out the wools and cords of winter. I smiled as I lifted a hanger from the rack. On it hung a pair of brown corduroy slacks—this is probably the 3rd season I’ve worn them. I’ve never had a clothes history like this. It’s a new experience for me.
Thanks for your help in making this happen. Just about every week I say thanks for your support. And that’s because just about every week I’m aware of how crucial it is. I don’t take it for granted. I don’t. Thanks for your love and friendship and encouragement.
--Michael-Eddie
This week I passed a significant milestone. Tuesday, October 26 marked the 1,000th consecutive day on which I’d recorded a sub-25 BMI (anything under 205 pounds).
As you may recall, on April 9, 2007, I started this new phase of my program. I had gained 70 pounds and in a pique without really knowing what I was doing, made the commitment to track my weight and calories for three years.
It took me a while to drop that 70 pounds, but on Jan. 30, 2008—that was the first of what would be 1,000 consecutive days of maintenance.
It’s been 33 months since that first day. The chart below shows my average monthly weight in that time span.
In business you want chart lines to go up—for profit and quality. You want them to go down—for debt and defects. But in weight maintenance you want just the opposite. You want the line to get flat and then stay flat. Which is a pretty good definition of maintenance: flat-lining it.
The chart looks at a full 33 months, from Feb 2008 to Oct 2010. But in the last 23 months, since December 2008, my average monthly weight has varied by just one pound, exactly one pound! The highest value was 196.9, the lowest, 195.9.
That’s cool. I like being a flat-liner.
If you like numbers—and I do—it’s fun to look at them. It’s comforting to see that long red line, a straight, flat road. But maintenance has other, more practical rewards.
Just today I was putting away my summer clothes and taking out the wools and cords of winter. I smiled as I lifted a hanger from the rack. On it hung a pair of brown corduroy slacks—this is probably the 3rd season I’ve worn them. I’ve never had a clothes history like this. It’s a new experience for me.
Thanks for your help in making this happen. Just about every week I say thanks for your support. And that’s because just about every week I’m aware of how crucial it is. I don’t take it for granted. I don’t. Thanks for your love and friendship and encouragement.
--Michael-Eddie
sometimes I feel like a man with two heads
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Recently on Animal Planet I saw a double-headed snake. They are rare but they do exist. Usually they don’t live for more than a few weeks but some have known to survive and even bear normal offspring.
The one I saw was maybe two feet long and its every attempt to move was fraught with conflict. Once I watched, amazed, as the left head tried to go left around a boulder while the right head strained to go right. The left head won out (as it usually did) and the snake went left.
That’s why I need you. That’s why I write this report on Sunday and check in with you during the week. It feels a little strange to keep doing this after ten years of recovery, but I know me. It’s true, after ten years, my right head is much stronger and I’m grateful for that, but that doesn’t mean I quit working the program.
I can go along for months and months and everything is great. I don’t feel any obsession. I don’t feel any compulsion. I look over at my other head and it’s dragging along with its eyes closed. Asleep? Dead? And then suddenly, often when I least expect it, the compulsion returns and I find myself making a hard left, headed for trouble.
Sometimes I can’t peg it, I can’t link the return of compulsion to any event or circumstance. But often I can. Often it returns in times of emotional turmoil. Like one time recently, I struggled with a particularly painful relationship issue. I dealt with it, in the short term, by chewing gum. I watched myself engaged in this compensatory behavior. It was a little comic, to tell you the truth, the chomping and chewing, but it was better than eating. And in a few hours I found I could breathe again and deal with what I had to deal with. But for a while, the left head was awake, pulling my whole body along. So, while I gathered my wits and my strength, I gave the left head something to chew on.
Now, I know there are better ways of dealing with emotional turmoil, but sometimes I don’t choose the better way. What I could have done is pick up the phone and make a call and talk to you. Or sit down and record my feelings. Or just sit still and feel them. Because, ultimately, that’s what the calling and the journaling and the meditation really accomplishes: feeling what I’m feeling. Which all leads to the final act—let go, release, surrender, accept, love.
Just writing that last line—I found I was breathing easier—let go, release, surrender, accept, love.
Peace to you, my partners. I wish you well.
--Michael-Eddie
Recently on Animal Planet I saw a double-headed snake. They are rare but they do exist. Usually they don’t live for more than a few weeks but some have known to survive and even bear normal offspring.
The one I saw was maybe two feet long and its every attempt to move was fraught with conflict. Once I watched, amazed, as the left head tried to go left around a boulder while the right head strained to go right. The left head won out (as it usually did) and the snake went left.
That’s why I need you. That’s why I write this report on Sunday and check in with you during the week. It feels a little strange to keep doing this after ten years of recovery, but I know me. It’s true, after ten years, my right head is much stronger and I’m grateful for that, but that doesn’t mean I quit working the program.
I can go along for months and months and everything is great. I don’t feel any obsession. I don’t feel any compulsion. I look over at my other head and it’s dragging along with its eyes closed. Asleep? Dead? And then suddenly, often when I least expect it, the compulsion returns and I find myself making a hard left, headed for trouble.
Sometimes I can’t peg it, I can’t link the return of compulsion to any event or circumstance. But often I can. Often it returns in times of emotional turmoil. Like one time recently, I struggled with a particularly painful relationship issue. I dealt with it, in the short term, by chewing gum. I watched myself engaged in this compensatory behavior. It was a little comic, to tell you the truth, the chomping and chewing, but it was better than eating. And in a few hours I found I could breathe again and deal with what I had to deal with. But for a while, the left head was awake, pulling my whole body along. So, while I gathered my wits and my strength, I gave the left head something to chew on.
Now, I know there are better ways of dealing with emotional turmoil, but sometimes I don’t choose the better way. What I could have done is pick up the phone and make a call and talk to you. Or sit down and record my feelings. Or just sit still and feel them. Because, ultimately, that’s what the calling and the journaling and the meditation really accomplishes: feeling what I’m feeling. Which all leads to the final act—let go, release, surrender, accept, love.
Just writing that last line—I found I was breathing easier—let go, release, surrender, accept, love.
Peace to you, my partners. I wish you well.
--Michael-Eddie
had a little talk with Eddie today
Sunday, October 17, 2010
brother, David, sometime ago, sent me this joke which he said he got from one of those laugh-a-day services. I tell you this so you won’t think the personal references in it are really personal. Here it is:
“An overweight business associate of mine decided it was time to shed some excess pounds. He took his new diet seriously, even changing his driving route to avoid his favorite bakery. One morning, however, he arrived at work carrying a gigantic coffee cake. We all scolded him, but his smile remained cherubic. "This is a very special coffee cake,” he explained. “I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning, and there in the window was a host of goodies. I felt this was no accident, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have one of those delicious coffee cakes, let me have a parking place directly in front of the bakery. And sure enough,” he continued, “the eighth time around the block, there it was!”
I thought of it today as I had a little talk with Eddie, as every now and then I find I must do. Eddie is my sweet tooth—which means he’s part of me. When my consumption of ice cream goes up I have to take action. Chiding or fussing or criticizing doesn’t work with Eddie. It doesn’t help to chew out your own sweet tooth. I’ve learned over the years to take a more collaborative approach.
So this morning, Eddie and I both laughed at the joke and then I said, “You know, bud, this is getting out of hand; our numbers are up, again.” (Our goal is to keep them under 10% of an estimated 2,300 calorie a day diet).
I said, “I make these commitments and then when I don’t follow through I don’t feel good about myself. And it’s not good for our health. Plus I have to report these numbers every week to my partners…”
Eddie gets it. Deep down he knows I’m serious about this. I am not giving up. Also he knows the power of partnership, and accountability. I can tell by the look in his eye he knows he’s outnumbered. He knows he doesn’t have a prayer.
Thanks, my partners, my allies in good health. You’re the best.
--Michael-Eddie
brother, David, sometime ago, sent me this joke which he said he got from one of those laugh-a-day services. I tell you this so you won’t think the personal references in it are really personal. Here it is:
“An overweight business associate of mine decided it was time to shed some excess pounds. He took his new diet seriously, even changing his driving route to avoid his favorite bakery. One morning, however, he arrived at work carrying a gigantic coffee cake. We all scolded him, but his smile remained cherubic. "This is a very special coffee cake,” he explained. “I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning, and there in the window was a host of goodies. I felt this was no accident, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have one of those delicious coffee cakes, let me have a parking place directly in front of the bakery. And sure enough,” he continued, “the eighth time around the block, there it was!”
I thought of it today as I had a little talk with Eddie, as every now and then I find I must do. Eddie is my sweet tooth—which means he’s part of me. When my consumption of ice cream goes up I have to take action. Chiding or fussing or criticizing doesn’t work with Eddie. It doesn’t help to chew out your own sweet tooth. I’ve learned over the years to take a more collaborative approach.
So this morning, Eddie and I both laughed at the joke and then I said, “You know, bud, this is getting out of hand; our numbers are up, again.” (Our goal is to keep them under 10% of an estimated 2,300 calorie a day diet).
I said, “I make these commitments and then when I don’t follow through I don’t feel good about myself. And it’s not good for our health. Plus I have to report these numbers every week to my partners…”
Eddie gets it. Deep down he knows I’m serious about this. I am not giving up. Also he knows the power of partnership, and accountability. I can tell by the look in his eye he knows he’s outnumbered. He knows he doesn’t have a prayer.
Thanks, my partners, my allies in good health. You’re the best.
--Michael-Eddie
What we have here is a seeming difficulty
Sunday, October 3, 2010
In 1779, Dr. David Samwell was sailing with Capt. James Cook, the famed British explorer. Samwell was the ship’s surgeon. One afternoon he looked out over the waves and was shocked to see Hawaiian children—on surfboards! He’d never seen such a thing. In his journal he wrote: “We saw with astonishment young boys and girls about nine or ten years of age playing amid such tempestuous waves that the hardiest of our seamen would have trembled to face.”
But Samwell, far from attempting to rescue the children, far from accusing the parents of child abuse, immediately seizes on the lesson: “So true it is that many seeming difficulties are easily overcome by dexterity and perseverance.”
What he saw was this—that his seaman could surf too, despite their terrors. That the only difference between his men and those kids was this: the boys and girls had practiced (thereby achieving dexterity) and had not stopped practicing (thereby achieving perseverance).
That made me think—
How is it that we have gotten to the point in this country where permanent weight loss is now this huge, complicated, formidable task? Why? Because rather than focusing on solutions we are repeating popular nostrums like: Diet’s Don’t Work. In so saying, we have allowed a seeming difficulty to become a real difficulty, for some, an impossibility.
The result of this shift in consciousness is that many have given up. So much so that hundreds of thousands of adults and teens—and now even some children—are undergoing bariatric surgery, gastric bypass surgery.
I thought: we are like the ship’s crew, reduced to trembles, scared to death. And that’s a tragedy because it’s not difficult. The fat, as they say, is in our heads.
Just as certainly as Hawaiian kids can surf, any kid can lose weight and keep it off. What it takes is practice and perseverance. That’s it. That’s all. It isn’t magic. It’s not even mysterious. But before we start practicing we must stop lying. We must stop repeating the myth that diets don’t work.
If I stop putting gas in my car and my car stops working, I could say Cars don’t work, but that would not be true. Cars do work as long as we maintain them. So, too with most weight loss programs. Diets do work. It’s dieters that don’t.
This week I take with me this vade mecum, this prescription from the good ship’s doctor: “So true it is that many seeming difficulties are easily”—I just love that word!—“easily overcome by dexterity and perseverance.”
So, dexterity to you, mates. And perseverance, too!
--Michael-Eddie
In 1779, Dr. David Samwell was sailing with Capt. James Cook, the famed British explorer. Samwell was the ship’s surgeon. One afternoon he looked out over the waves and was shocked to see Hawaiian children—on surfboards! He’d never seen such a thing. In his journal he wrote: “We saw with astonishment young boys and girls about nine or ten years of age playing amid such tempestuous waves that the hardiest of our seamen would have trembled to face.”
But Samwell, far from attempting to rescue the children, far from accusing the parents of child abuse, immediately seizes on the lesson: “So true it is that many seeming difficulties are easily overcome by dexterity and perseverance.”
What he saw was this—that his seaman could surf too, despite their terrors. That the only difference between his men and those kids was this: the boys and girls had practiced (thereby achieving dexterity) and had not stopped practicing (thereby achieving perseverance).
That made me think—
How is it that we have gotten to the point in this country where permanent weight loss is now this huge, complicated, formidable task? Why? Because rather than focusing on solutions we are repeating popular nostrums like: Diet’s Don’t Work. In so saying, we have allowed a seeming difficulty to become a real difficulty, for some, an impossibility.
The result of this shift in consciousness is that many have given up. So much so that hundreds of thousands of adults and teens—and now even some children—are undergoing bariatric surgery, gastric bypass surgery.
I thought: we are like the ship’s crew, reduced to trembles, scared to death. And that’s a tragedy because it’s not difficult. The fat, as they say, is in our heads.
Just as certainly as Hawaiian kids can surf, any kid can lose weight and keep it off. What it takes is practice and perseverance. That’s it. That’s all. It isn’t magic. It’s not even mysterious. But before we start practicing we must stop lying. We must stop repeating the myth that diets don’t work.
If I stop putting gas in my car and my car stops working, I could say Cars don’t work, but that would not be true. Cars do work as long as we maintain them. So, too with most weight loss programs. Diets do work. It’s dieters that don’t.
This week I take with me this vade mecum, this prescription from the good ship’s doctor: “So true it is that many seeming difficulties are easily”—I just love that word!—“easily overcome by dexterity and perseverance.”
So, dexterity to you, mates. And perseverance, too!
--Michael-Eddie
the man in the mirror
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Kay and I spent the weekend in Chicago celebrating our wedding anniversary. We had a few entertaining evenings, Thursday a symphony, Saturday, a play. But most of the time we just relaxed together and talked, while walking along the lakeshore or dining at some of our favorite eateries.
At one point we visited an old haunt of mine, a clothing store, Rochester Big and Tall, just a few blocks from our hotel. I needed a pair of dress slacks so I began going through the racks, trying things on. I did find a pair of pants but then I thought it would be nice to get a sport coat as well.
I never did find one. There wasn’t a single 42 Long in the store. But I did find a size I’d worn before, a 52 Long. I lifted it off the hanger and held it up. I put it on and laughed as I wrapped myself in it as if in a blanket, a king-sized comforter. I was like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes.
Today I’m grateful for Kay, for 38 beautiful years of loving and learning to love. As she stood there taking this picture, we laughed and said again what we’d said so many times before: We’ve been together through thick and thin.
--Michael-Eddie
Kay and I spent the weekend in Chicago celebrating our wedding anniversary. We had a few entertaining evenings, Thursday a symphony, Saturday, a play. But most of the time we just relaxed together and talked, while walking along the lakeshore or dining at some of our favorite eateries.
At one point we visited an old haunt of mine, a clothing store, Rochester Big and Tall, just a few blocks from our hotel. I needed a pair of dress slacks so I began going through the racks, trying things on. I did find a pair of pants but then I thought it would be nice to get a sport coat as well.
I never did find one. There wasn’t a single 42 Long in the store. But I did find a size I’d worn before, a 52 Long. I lifted it off the hanger and held it up. I put it on and laughed as I wrapped myself in it as if in a blanket, a king-sized comforter. I was like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes.
Today I’m grateful for Kay, for 38 beautiful years of loving and learning to love. As she stood there taking this picture, we laughed and said again what we’d said so many times before: We’ve been together through thick and thin.
--Michael-Eddie
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