Just a quickie during lunch (really more of a placeholder for later).
This may be a bit of a duh, but it occurs to me that it’s worth thinking about the differences between impulses and compulsions.
For example, I consider that I’ve been pretty much on track since Sunday. That makes today day 5. However, I had […]

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, and I long ago gave up giving up things for Lent. But there’s something about spring, especially here in DC, that inspires me.
I lived nearly twenty years in Boston, so a New England fall still has to be my favorite season, but spring in DC is pretty close. […]

Post-recovery, I started to try and respond to the most recent comment in the intellectual dishonesty thread. I typed up a few paragraphs, and debated about a comparison to religion and abortion before thinking better of it, and just trashed my response.
But watching yesterday’s Oprah got me thinking about this in a different way. […]

Earlier this week, I talked about my a ha moments in my journey of choosing health. A number of people had very interesting comments, and a discussion about the pros and cons of “personal responsibility” led me to consider a different concept: one of personal power.
Here’s the difference I see:
personal responsibility: Accepting responsibility for […]

Last Sunday, Amanda asked the following in a comment on the persistance post:

I’m just wondering, since I can’t seem to “get it” myself…what got you to the moment when overeating ended and the new lifestyle began? I mean, the real moment, the light bulb that you knew would never burn out?

I sat on this […]

Wow…I’m reading the archives of the Health At Every Size blog, and came across an item talking about orthorexia nervosa:

It’s great to eat healthy food, and most of us could benefit by paying a little more attention to what we eat. However, some people have the opposite problem: they take the concept of healthy eating […]

The Diet Cure arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I started skimming this afternoon. What I read was really very interesting, so I’m going to experiment with its recommendations and report back later this week.
In the meantime, I’ve been holding on to a couple of snippets related to comfort that I thought worth logging here. Now, […]

So, as I mentioned, I had my last therapy session last week. While there, I mentioned that I was interested in coming up with a flow chart of sorts to try and account for the different places people are with their weight loss or compulsive overeating.
For example, so far I see the questions being […]

So yesterday’s Oprah was interesting. The topic was why women let themselves go. This was mostly code for why women let themselves get fat. Yes, there was a bit of discussion about putting hair in ponytails and not putting on makeup. But given how easy those problems are to fix, I don’t think this would […]

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the aspects of my “plan” is working to find a positive answer to Einstein’s reputed question: “Is the universe friendly?”

Albert Einstein once said the most important question a human being can ask is “Is the universe friendly?” Think of that for a moment. How […]

Over on advoc84justice, Grace is describing her experiences with OA and its version of the 12-step program. Re step 1 (We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable.), Grace writes:

Can anyone who weighs 350 pounds really believe they are in control of their eating? …
I was not in control […]

There’s another great post from Deepak Chopra over on Huffington Post that’s really interesting. Any amateur psychologist knows that part of our problem on Earth is our sometimes ornery ego. The highest aspiration for a Buddhist is to basically meditate so that one realizes there is no ego–that there is no “I” (a realization I […]

First, a lighter note from Judd Apatow (of The 40–Year-Old Virgin fame):

My daughter Maude was 5 when she realized that Barney had only one expression. She couldn’t stop laughing when she noticed this. She ran around the living room with this psychotic Barney smile which never changed, and then started saying, “I’m happy. I’m sad.” […]

Okay, so over the last few days (here and here), I’ve started to try and clarify and explain what I’ve been doing that has so far been working well for me.
As I mentioned, my premise from the start was to stop overeating–and presumably then lose weight–by choosing health. But getting started was seemingly an […]