A new old plan

As if 24+ inches of snow on Saturday wasn't enough, now we're supposed to get 12-18 more tomorrow evening into Wednesday. Why wasn't I consulted about this? The snow is pretty and cool (ha!) and all that, but enough is freaking enough. Hopefully we'll have a snow day Wednesday, though with this job, who knows?

This morning, every single school district in this county, the 2 neighboring counties, and the states of Delaware and New Jersey EXCEPT US had either 2 hour delays or were closed due to the still pretty jacked-up roads from snow and ice. The big roads are fine, but smaller ones definitely aren't. I couldn't believe it when my agency's name didn't scroll across the bottom of the news announcing at least a delay. When I got here, my sentiments were echoed by my fellow working masses. Peaople were/are angry! At least there are only a spattering of clients in my program who made it in, so I have time for important tasks like bill paying, blogging, reading, knitting and goofing off on company time. Not a good PR move by the powers that be! Overall employee morale took a downward turn with this.

I'm please to announce that will be my only rant today. How I wish I knew how to insert a smiley face :D!

I had a good weekend that flew by way too fast. But that's nothing new. My food was decent, though not as clean as the last 3 days of last week. Today I'm tightening it up again. Super tight. Writing it all down, weighing and measuring amounts, and no sugar, flour or nuts. I had an excellent and ample lunch of a big salad with 6 sliced large black olives. Everything else was rabbit food, and yummy. I had 4 ounces of turkey breast with it, and 6 oz of green beans. The dressing was 1 Tbs of olive oil plus some lemon juice (I'm really loving this dsg) only, with a little salt and pepper. I was full immediately after, but now, 45 minutes later my stomach was gnawingly empty feeling, so I had 2 clementines. I think it's going to be a hungry afternoon, but that's alright. I can and will sustain through.

This Saturday, the 13th, is our 28th wedding anniversary. Friday night, Tom and I going to a new BYOB in Swarthmore that is supposed to be great. Obviously my BYO won't be alcoholic, but I will cart in a couple of large bottles of Pellegrino. Hubby is pretty indifferent to alcohol, so it bothers him not one bit to drink Pelli. It's really wonderful that he supports me like that. When I first got sober, I'd forever nag him, "Go ahead and have a beer or wine...", and finally he told me to knock it off because he was perfectly happy drinking milk! No lie - if we go to the swankiest priciest restaurant Philly has to offer, he gets milk. (There are some swanky spots that don't even have milk!) Funny, because milk is one of the only things I can't stand. Hate it. Use only about 2 tsp. on cereal to barely moiten it on the rare occasions I have a bowl of Go Lean. hmmmm - Didn't I just digress again...

That evening (of the anniversary din din), I want to eat what I want and simply enjoy it. This may or may not include dessert, depending what's on the menu. I know that if I overeat or binge this week and don't drop at least a couple of lbs from last week's gain, I won't enjoy my meal the same way. So for this week, part of my motivation is our anniversary dinner. Hey - there's no bad reason to not binge. I need all the little perks and bribes I can give myself!

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On to a more pressing matter - I'm feeling very serious and determined to stop my frequent lapses into overeating or bingeing. To that end, I've decided to use a 12-step program tool that can be very helpful and useful in understanding ourselves and our patterns. The 4th of the 12 steps is : "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves". The purpose of this step is to really investigate, with pen and paper (probably keyboard and screen would be okay these days) the behaviors and characteristics that may be contributing to our out-of-control behaviors. They call it a "moral" inventory I think because this originated with AA, though all other 12 step programs use the same steps. With alcohol, morality (or lack thereof) did often play a role in our drinking.

This step is dealt with and formatted in detail in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as the step book, fondly known as the "12 and 12". I did my AA 4th step when I was about 6 years sober (much later than many folks do it, but sooner than others), and it was very helpful in looking at myself, my motivations, and my subsequent drinking behavior. Well, 12-step food programs, like OA, also have formats for doing this work. It's been gnawing and nagging at me for a long time that I need to do something to get at the core of why I keep sabotaging myself and not getting below 192 on this weight loss journey when I know in my heart of hearts that I want to. The reasons aren't necessarily deeply psychological, though they might be. But since I've been stalled since late August on weight loss - yoyoing between 192 and 202 - it's time to pull out more stops. I ordered an OA 4th step inventory guideline about 2 years ago, which I haven't so much as flipped through. Now I'm going to do it, with the help of a sponsor from AA who is in a food fellowship as well.

This won't be easy, and I expect I'll run into plenty of resistance within, but I am committed to this. I've known I needed to do this for a long time. It doesn't have to be voluminous. It does have to be honest. And as it says in the step itself, "searching and fearless". I am feeling almost deperate to get at "what's eating me" so that I can deal and move on. I can no longer pretend my eating is a mere bad habit. It's part of a bigger picture in my life of real addiction that I've had such excellent recovery from through AA work. But more is required now, and I'm ready. Plus, this will give me something to work on when my knees shorten my workout time!

Didn't mean to go all serious, but this is as serious a matter as I face right now. I want to get better for real. FOR REAL. If I can stop drinking for 18+ years, I can conquer this realm as well. But finally I get that I'm going to have to work as hard for food recovery as I did for alcohol recovery. I'm excited and ready.