Destination Discipline

I was sitting in traffic this morning when I heard that country music star, Trace Adkins, had relapsed after 12 years of sobriety. He was headlining a cruise and attacked a Trace Adkins impersonator. I wonder what that looked like, but I digress. He immediately got off the boat and went into rehab. I can imagine his humiliation. I wondered what triggered the impulse to drink again. Was he having marital trouble? Was it work stress? Or was he simply tired and sick of saying no to the voices in his head that screamed for a drink?

Life has its way of throwing us curve balls. It takes so little to trigger the impulse to reach for a familiar vice. That thing, whatever it is, that comforts us when our world turns sour. Like a warm blanket on a cold night, it has the power to numb the pain, if only for a moment. We get there by rationalizing the indiscretion away. I’ll only have one. I’ve been so good and I deserve it. I stopped once. I can stop again. And before we know it we are in the devil’s grasp and he is squeezing us black and blue.

Addiction is much more prevalent in our society than we would like to admit. From video games, television and iphone apps, we all have something we “depend” on. People tell me all the time I need to watch Downton Abbey, but the spooky crack-addicted gleam in their eye keeps me away. Besides, I don’t want to sit on my couch for 3 days to catch up on previous seasons.

Sometimes I get really down about my food issues and start down a dark path. I begin to wish I could eat whatever I wanted and not get fat. Then I consider the thin people who can eat endless donuts without gaining and ounce and I find myself feeling bitter. Before I know it I’m chuffing cookies and saying “So long cruel world” as if I really have problems. Yes, vanity does drive me to watch what I eat much more than feeling good. I freely admit that gaining 10 pounds really does a number on my brain.

Besides, I’ve been gaining and losing the same 10 pounds for a year now. I guess this is what they call maintaining one’s weight. I don’t like it. It’s old now. Why can’t I restrain my urges 100% of the time? And why am I so insecure that when I do gain the weight I feel as if I’ve grown a third eye?

As I contemplate my weaknesses and the daily struggle to live a healthy lifestyle, I know I must examine the truths I have learned over the past 4 years. Prolonged self-indulgence does not ensure happiness. Undisciplined behavior leads to reckless(and unhappy) living. Self-control is a badge of honor that reveals strong character. These hard fought truths remind me why I cannot sink back into the depths of addiction. No matter how badly I want those cookies, they are not ever, and I mean EVER, going to fill me up. The hole in my heart cannot be filled with food and I must address the endless ache there rather than eat. It’s like getting a shot of Novocain. It might numb the pain for a while but it doesn’t fix the cavity, which will continue to rot the tooth until it is extracted.

I was 24 years old the first time I lost the weight. I lost 125 pounds and gained back 140. I gained because my heart was broken and I kept trying to mend it with food. Guess what? It doesn’t work. I have tried for years to fix my problems with food. The only thing food-medication has ever given me is more problems. So this struggle to stay healthy is right and noble. No matter how bad I feel, I know food will never fix me. It will only make me worse. But the terrible truth is that without food I will die, so I am forced to live my life on a teeter-totter, trying to balance the good with the bad and not tilt too far in the wrong direction.

If you are on a path of addiction today and can’t get a handle on it, ask for help. I know that I have a God who is bigger than my desire to eat and He helps me keep my priorities in the right place. He does fill the holes in my heart and gives me peace and joy besides. I couldn’t fight this battle without Him. I struggle the most when I push Him to the side. Because the real truth is, food is not my fundamental problem. My heart is. And when I try to soothe my heart with food I get very, very lost.

Today I said a prayer for Trace Adkins. I hope that he finds his way and is healed of his terrible addiction. And I know I certainly have one thing to be thankful for….Thank God I’m not a celebrity! I couldn’t handle having my struggles analyzed and made fun of while blurry fat pictures of my person were distributed and dissected by the media.

Well, hello winter! Hello cold air! Goodbye fresh air! It was nice knowing you. I prefer stale air anyway. I prefer to be trapped inside with 3 ornery children and a humongous stash of left-over Christmas cookies. I know I have the will power to resist them. After all, I’ve been resisting them for over 2 months now. And then I got the flu. And I felt like garbage, so I caved and began to nibble, munch and whole-heartedly devour every crumb I could get my hands on. Pretty sad, huh?

Better yet, after being trapped in the house for several days we found that the wonderful, cold, winter weather can killed my car. We cannot get it to start no matter how much jump-starting we try. And then there is the issue of our bathroom remodel project, which is not commencing nearly as fast as any of us want it to, making hot showers/baths impossible. These are fun times in the life of the Wolfinbarger clan. Fun times, let me tell you!

This morning my Kindle fell off the elliptical and to it’s demise so the books I was reading are now in limbo. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Thank goodness I have some library books stacked up. Now if only the stir-crazy kids would let me sit still long enough to read them.

And since the pounds are piling on(I still can’t believe how fast!) I think I will go outside to walk/run them off. Oh, wait. I can’t. It’s lung-freezing cold out there.

Um.

Dog-gone-it.

Anticipating this chain of events(I know myself all too well), I ordered a step aerobic workout dvd. I waited and waited and when it finally arrived, oops! They sent the wrong one. I was really angry. The nice people at Amazon refunded my money but it took me another week to get the right one ordered. Still, yesterday, after the third day of the Cookie Apocolypse, the Low Impact Low Barre workout dvd by Cathe Friederich was better than nothing. The only necessary items were a chair, some weights and a resistance band. She emphasized, in the beginning, that this routine was one that dancers typically do to strengthen their muscles. And since I always wanted to be a dancer, I went for it with gusto. The workout was 74 minutes long and very challenging. By the time we got to the ab work I couldn’t lift my legs and had to improvise with crunches. I can’t remember the last time I worked so hard. It was extremely fulfilling when I finished without dying. And today I am sore in places I didn’t know existed so I know I got a really good workout.

Then today, bless our post-lady, she brought me the dvd I actually ordered. It was like second Christmas! I popped it in straight away so I could see what I was in for when my buns stop throbbing(from yesterday’s torture routine). I love step aerobics! And I love Cathe Frederich. But within ten minutes my heart sank. They don’t call it advanced step aerobics for nothing. I figure it will probably take me a year to learn it. Still, I am pretty excited to try. Besides, anything is better than the monotonous elliptical machine. Even spinning around in confusion and trying not to trip over my aerobic step!

I hope everyone is staying warm and dry. And God bless all the creatures trying to survive outside in the cold! As for the Wolfinbarger’s, we are facing our problems head on. Though I had to miss work today because of my dead vehicle, and though my children are trying to maim each other, I am in good spirits. I have a warm fire, Richard Simmons biography, “Still Hungry After All These Years” and Fox News. But if anyone would like to rescue me from the cookies, you are welcome to come visit. And when you leave, I swear I wouldn’t notice if you took one of the beastlets with you. And if I did, I promise not to tell the authorities…

I had great fun over the holidays but Monday hit with a hard clash and sent me trudging back to the office. I forgot my breakfast. I forgot my jewelry. I even forgot the password to my workstation. That is how thoroughly I checked out of work. While working through the piles of email today, I felt my mind drift to the great books I read over my break. I love vacation for reading. I feel like I learned a lot and had fun. So I decided to share all my learning’s with you, my humble readers.

I found a cookbook at the thrift shop titled, “The Never Say Diet Cookbook” by Richard Simmons. It is arguably the best reading cookbook I have ever picked up. In fact, I stayed up way past bedtime last night to continue reading. That man has more personality in his pinky than I do in my rumpus and that’s saying something. Yes, Mr. Simmons seems like a wacky weirdo who sells cheesy workout tapes and hams it up for the camera. But in reality he totally gets the weight loss conundrum we all face and shows us how to practically live a healthy lifestyle. He calls it the “Live-it” instead of a “Diet” because he intends for the reader to stay on this life-plan for, well, life. His main points are eat less and exercise. But he has some very funny anecdotal quips:

When introducing you to meats he says”

“I sure hope you like chicken because chicken likes you.”

When going through things you will need in the kitchen:

“This is your sink. Your sink is your friend. You wash your fruits and veggies here. The sink is your baptismal font where you will start your Live-It life anew.” (this had me cracking up!)

And then he takes you through how to clean out your fridge and freezer.

“Now let’s look up in the freezer. Oh my God, no! Frozen Milky Ways? Three different kinds of ice cream? A Sara Lee pound cake? Hawaiian Punch popsicles? I can’t believe my eyes, TV dinners? Well, excuse me, folks, we’ve obviously taken you into an X-rated freezer.”

He does a whole stint on your new morning routines with pictures of stretches(remember leotards?) And then cinched it with this quip about morning snack breaks:

“I’m cleaning up this town, and you are on my hit list. That means I’m going to come over and personally hit you if I see you put one more crumb to your mouth between breakfast and lunch.”

Can I just admit it? I love Richard Simmons. Everything he writes makes complete and total sense. I love his “I don’t count calories” approach and truly wish I had run across this book and its predecessor earlier in my journey. My only beef with the cookbook is his approach to low-fat meals. I have never bought into the low-fat craze and until only recently loved to eat my share of whole milk dairy products. I do love that in the early 1980’s he was promoting whole grain pastas, long before they were popular. Oh, and the recipes look fantastic!

The other book I have been reading is called “Grain Brain” by David Perlmutter. I don’t know if I can adequately put into words how I feel about this book. Part of me still thinks a dairy free/gluten free lifestyle is for kooky health nuts. But most of what Dr. Perlmutter presents by way of various medical studies makes complete and total sense to me. His correlation between whole body health and brain inflammation is startling(a word he uses quite frequently). I started reading this book after I began my little experiment with cutting out dairy and gluten and much of what he writes seems applicable to me. He recommends a diet high in (healthy) fats and low in gluten and carbohydrates. And while I think studies can be biased, in my humble opinion, the research presented in this book definitely addresses rise of gluten intolerance in the American population, among other things.

Here are a few things I have learned from this book:

1) Alzheimer’s is preventable via dietary changes early in life.

2) Cholesterol is a critical brain nutrient essential for the functions of neurons. (what does this say about low-cholesterol diets? Are we starving our brains with low-cholesterol diets?)

3) Food sensitivities(and resulting inflammation) are usually a response from the immune system.

4) Sugar is Toxic(wait-I already knew that!)

5) Brain Inflammation can cause anxiety, depression, seizures, and migraines(among many other things).

So this book is not really just about grain, but about preventing disease in general. I find it extremely informative with a lot of facts(by way of studies) to back up the information presented. More importantly, the information just makes sense to me as I work towards conquering my food addiction.

When not obsessing about living a healthy lifestyle,(the other 10 minutes of my day) I have read several novels. I love a good fiction book. I picked up Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine which was fabulous, and The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, by Andrew Sean Greer. With so much good fiction on the market I find myself completely satisfied. Now if only I could finish my book.

One other random tidbit of note: Trader Joe’s is awesome. I’ve seen people go on about this chain and I never bought into the hype. I am utterly sold. I discovered their Simply Lite gluten free/dairy free/sugar free 50% cacao bar and fell in love. They have so many amazing products that fit my lifestyle and it makes me so happy. I especially love their coconut chips. So even while abstaining from cookies, pies and other various holiday desserts, I was completely happy and not at all deprived.

Once I try one of the Richard Simmons recipes I will post the recipe with pictures. And you may hear more about Grain Brain as I’m only 62% of the way though(God bless Kindle which enables me to read while riding the elliptical of doom!)

Happy Monday, y’all!