"We all need to begin to improve, starting from where we are (not from where we
should be, or where someone else is, or even from where others think we are)."
Eppy wrote: I have come to rely rather heavily on some SAD foods again (mainly chocolate and ice cream) and they have been my crutch as I have a dh who has been in Afghanistan for 10 months now, and the before mentioned SAD items have been my companions when I get lonely.
Thanks!
Hi Eppy! So GLAD you're back. "Welcome Home" from the outer darkness back into the LIGHT!.
You have struck a note here from a "life-song"
of mine, that I know so well. I "recognized" myself in your post, and resonated to it. Please take anything that is useful for you from this response to your post (and just leave the rest!)
I have written personal journals for many years. I find for me that it helps to go back periodically and re-read from time to time what I have written, and I sometimes get an insight
about myself or my current LifeStyle program or my particular "Stinkin' Thinkin'" -- that helps to motivate me to change what I recognize I need to change. --something
I Wrote. and "believed" at the time I wrote it.
I thought of that when I read the above part of your post --about how I can often tell myself the strangest, erroneous, even self-destructive things and convince myself that they are true--esp. about some "thing" (esp. harmful food choices and coffee) or some "process" (esp. my exercise program and "relationships') that has become habitual or an addiction, or an area where I
feel (even tho' I know "feelings are not facts"--I often forget that wisdom) loss or hurt or confusion. For myself, I've learned to call that way of thinking my "magical thinking".
I've been the "one-left-behind" with both an Air Force husband when I was very young and very scared, and with two babies; and later with a world-traveling aerospace engineer husband when I mostly then just felt abandoned; even by my parents when I was a baby and they divorced; and by my Father when he committed sucide when I was a young teen; and by my beautiful mother when she died ravaged, younger than necessay, --an ugly and painful death from alcoholism. I know the loneliness.
BUT!
!!
---If I may share a little experience, and hopefully a little strength and hope, I can promise you that chocolate and ice cream are not a "true" crutch. (A crutch is something one leans on for SUPPORT, an aid
to help one walk and move forward.) Our off-program addictive food "crutches" may cause us eventually to
need a
real crutch, or wheel chair, or hospital bed, to support our weight or our sick or pained bodies.
I took myself to that point. Food has served as my Good Girl's "drug of choice" throughout my life. I "knew better". I sometimes
knew far more than I
did. --A lifetime of learning ignored and dumped in a moment of "stinkin' thinkin'", when that voice that lives rent-free in my head started telling me I "deserved it", or that "just this once won't hurt", I caved sometimes. Some people can do that, and get right back on track. I have the make-up of an "addict". For me, "One bite (sip) is too many, and 500 are never enough." I'm off and running, and out of control, and "think" I don't know how to stop.
My little 10-yr.-old grandson bought me a beautiful wood, hand carved cane with his own money, to help me be able to walk at all, when the pain was so bad from arthritis that I screamed out loud sometimes, even tho' I didn't mean to. --and had to sleep on my right side every night with a pillow propped between my knees, and would wake myself up screaming in pain because I turned the "wrong way" in my sleep.
Again, I speak from difficult experience, having harmed my body so much with sugar and dairy and coffee/caffeine addiction, that I was scheduled by two different doctors for total hip replacement surgery. Like you, I refused the surgery and got back to my best-health-program-that-I-knew at that time, and I e-mailed Dr. McDougall for input, and am pleased to say that a couple years later, I am walking strong and proud and pain-free
without any surgery. I can start the pain and immobility again within about three days of choosing to eat dairy, sugar, coffee, etc. and for some reason, diet sodas.)
This is harsh. I don't like it, but I think it is true that when we start thinking something that is harmful to us, to our bodies, to our future , harmful to our lives--is a "friend" or a "support" or a "companion" or a "cure" for loneliness, we are thinking the same way an alcoholic or drug user thinks. These things that harm us, cause us to be sick, destroy our health and prepare us for needing surgery and have our body parts cut out, or to gain unhealthful weight, ... are not
the best companions to choose, --ever! AND THEY FOOL US!
The temporary "high" fools us. Seduces us. Then we crash. --or one day we step out of the stupor and step onto the scale and...
, or find our emotions even worse than before the indulgence or binge, or find a copy of shocking lab reports in our trembling hands, or find ourselves--like me--scheduled for "immediate surgery". --and somehow, we find a way to forget what caused these responses, and eat/drink more of them to "make it go away." It doesn't go away. I was told if I didn't have that surgery two years ago, that I would not be able to walk in a year.
Dr. McDougall sent me references to reports on Arthritis symptoms being relieved, and documented cases of Arthritis actually being
reversed! --and, of course, about the Arthritis/Diet connection. (I don't have the references any more.)
It's my belief that you and I are not alone. Once before, I posted here about the "addiction"/food disorder problems among many in our society, and it was not well received here at that time. Time has passed, and more are coming back and coming forward with "the process/behavior/seduction/emotional" problems around food. I think that's a good thing--to shed light on the dark places, and LOOK, without shame, at what needs to be changed, and find ways to change those things (which may be different for different ones of us). --and find support for those changes. True support.
I am deeply appreciative of your post. I hope you will post frequently and ask for what you need and share your experiences with us.
I also wish for you healthful and healthy "companions" to help assuage your concerns and loneliness you must face daily with a husband in Afghanistan, and with the Gall Bladder issue resurfacing. I find a lot of healthful, useful support in AL-Anon meetings, to help me with uplifting companionship and my isolation and loneliness, and to help me to "accept the things I cannot change", and to help me find the Courage and stick-to-it-tive-ness "to change the things I can"--and to be around "aware" people to call me on my "Magical Thinking", and to help me know the difference (of what I can change and what I can't, and tips on and support for how to change the things I can.)
Much of that same kind of support can be found here on this board.
I am happy for you that you had the courage to come back and to post your truths, and are ready to start from where you are. We can't do everything at once, but
we can do one thing at once, one day at a time.
I have these reminders posted on my wall where I see them every day:
"First Things First"
"One Day At a Time"
"Easy Does It"
"This Too Shall Pass"
"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."--Stephen Covey
and the "Serenity Prayer":
"
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference."--Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
--and, repeating from the opening, a lifelong quote that has helped me through ever-so-many detours; and inspired me to get up, brush myself off, and once again begin my own personal journey from where I am at that moment, --and without "shoulding" on myself, is this from a favorite author of mine, Stephen Covey, from his 1970 book,
The Spiritual Roots of Human Relations:
"We all need [can benefit from] to begin to improve, starting from where we are (not from where we should be, or where someone else is, or even from where others think we are)."
by Eppy » Sun Nov 26, 2006 8:55 pm 
