So, here I am. Welcome to Act Boldly, my new blog. Before I go into a lot more detail, let me start out with two caveats.

First, this isn’t the start of my journey, which you might infer from the tagline in the banner above. Actually, I think my journey started in infancy, when my well-meaning, but very young, parents discovered that they could take me to parties, feed me a bottle or two, and I’d quite happily sleep on the coats until it was time to go home.

The whole backstory may appear later. My real struggle began in early puberty. At age 47, that means I’ve been dealing with overeating for well over 30 years now. Last year, I hit my bottom, and probably was close to 400lbs. Who knows? Where was I going to go to get weighed? My last official weight was back in 2003 or so, when I pegged 372 on a doctor’s scale.

Anyways, the good news is that I feel that I’ve turned an important corner. I’m now spitting distance from 300. I feel optimistic for the first time. But there are still struggles, and I’ve still got a lot to do. Hence this blog. While I’ll be thrilled if others read it and appreciate it, it’s mostly because I really need an outlet aside from my weekly therapy.

But before I go into more detail, the second caveat. The picture up top of the adorable little girl? It’s not me. It’s off a free stock photo site. I actually think I was pretty cute at that age as well, but I wasn’t quite prepared to put my own photo on this site. At least not yet. So I went hunting for an image to represent what I wanted Act Boldly to be about, and found this one. It’s perfect.

I had toyed with the idea of including the phrase “rediscovering joy” into the banner thinking of the natural joy that children feel (and express) before they learn to suppress it. The phrase wound up not working, but at least I have the sentiment of it in that wonderful photo. I like it so much that I’m seriously thinking about going the whole CafePress thing and putting it on tees and coffee mugs.

As far as identifying details about me, for now, I’m going to pretty much stay low-key. And I’ll probably go the Washingtonienne route and identify people by initials (though my stories will pale in comparison).

But what I can offer is my 30+ years of experience. And hopefully you’ll share with me as well. I know enough about nutrition to teach the subject, so this blog will be far more about the behavior of overeating than it is the nuts and bolts of diet and weight loss.

For example, I just had lunch with a colleague who had a gastric bypass in the last few months. Now, I’ve never seriously considered gastric bypass. In fact, I’m pretty much negative on the concept. I’ve always subscribed to the Rational Recovery idea that I do (or ought to) have considerable control over my hands and mouth, and think that permanently altering your stomach because you don’t have that control is pretty darn radical.

Anyways, back to my colleague. He’s done well with his bypass, but I was saddened a bit by his choices for lunch. Salad, with regular dressing, fruit, and a bag of potato chips. Potato chips?! Now, I’m not one of those rigid people who says no junk food ever, but to me, this was a bit sad. He went on the bypass because he has young children, yet it seems to me that something is still leading him to make some poor choices.

My current premise is that the better way to manage overeating is to choose to be HEALTHY.

If you’re choosing health, potato chips just aren’t going to be on the menu that often. If you’re choosing health, it doesn’t become a trauma to attend a holiday party or go on vacation. And if you’re choosing health, you don’t need annoying stick-thin trainers to treat you like you’re a child.

But how do you choose health?

Aye, there’s the rub. IMO, no one’s got a usable answer to that question. A single chapter in either of Dr. Phil’s or Bob Greene’s books on emotional overeating won’t do it. Therapy seems to be one really slow road (my sister has been seeing hers for over 10 years, with minimal progress). And I don’t think that removing your stomach or intestine is the way to do it either.

At the same time, I’m also not a friend of Bill’s. I’ve been to OA, but it didn’t click for me. Maybe it’s my own bias (I know it works for some), but I can’t really wrap my brain around the whole 12-step thing. I’m spiritual, but I just couldn’t do that “higher power” thing, even when it was whatever you wanted it to be. I’m a bigger fan of Stanton Peele, but also like some of the modified step programs, like Charlotte Kasl’s.

My current thinking is that overcoming overeating is like learning to ride a bicycle. There are some laws of physics involved (the real physiological issues of insulin resistance, for example) that need to be understood and planned for. But more importantly, the way to overcome overeating, like learning to ride a bike, is to choose to do it (”I want to learn to ride a bike”), see that others can do it, and then persist until you master it.

The good news is that once you’ve mastered it, you don’t forget. The real problem we overeaters face (IMO) is that we’re far more easily discouraged than our children, and we give up after failing a few times. Or more likely, we don’t solve the real problem (overeating) and instead get on the diet/binge cycle enough times that our relatively manageable weight problems turn into weight traumas (and trust me skinny people, there are real traumas being 200lbs overweight).

So why do it? My sister and I were talking about the common belief that no one would choose to be gay given how poorly gay folks are treated in our society. Yet those of us who are grossly obese, for all intents and purposes, choose to be this way.

I know that it’s not easy. And it may not feel like a “choice” to someone who really truly is struggling. If it was just a matter of eating less and exercising more, we wouldn’t have a billion-dollar industry trying to “fix” us all.

I currently think that the biggest problem we face is applying the wrong solutions (e.g., diets, gastric bypasses) to the problem of overeating. At this point, I should probably say that though I have a masters degree, it isn’t in nutrition or psychology or anything relevant. So all I’m offering is my experience. As they used to say in the old Usenet groups, “your mileage may vary.” But years ago, I used to think (and to some extent still do) that in 100 years or so, society will look back at the way we dealt with weight and eating issues the same way we look at some of the horrific medical “treatments” for problems a century or so ago.

Where is the “first, do no harm” in the weight industry? (See The Obesity Myth for more on this subject.)

Ultimately, I don’t want to be thin, I want to feel good. And so, I’m currently practicing what I call the Abe Lincoln philosophy:

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.

How I feel is largely dependent on what I do. Eating crap, watching too much TV, not taking care of myself is no way to find life after compulsive overeating. I’m learning that, by gosh, the more I do for myself, the better I feel. And it’s not something that I’m beholden to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or any bariatric surgeon.

So, my journey hasn’t just started; it’s already been life-long. But I still think there’s lots to learn (and there’s at least 150lbs still to lose). Act Boldly is going to be my place to vent, explore, and play. I hope you like it. Feel free to email me at actboldly@REMOVEMEgmail.com (remove the obvious text from the address) with comments, suggestions, or complaints. I look forward to hearing from you!