bearing blog

Normal eating vs. disordered eating.

Christy P.  pointed me to a blog item/discussion thread at the NYT Well Blog asking "What Is 'Normal' Eating?"  I started to read through the 150+ responses and after a short while got very fatigued with "arrrrgh!  how wrong most of these people are!" feelings, and had to stop.  It is a good question, but I don't think there is much wisdom to be found there in the answers.  Maybe you are interested, though -- so here it is.  

I will use it for a springboard to write about something I've been thinking lately.    I've been mulling over whether it is at all helpful to think about overeating -- garden-variety overeating, not obviously disordered behavior like binge eating -- as a mental illness (an organic one -- body chemistry is involved)  in and of itself.

I started wondering about that as I was reading through (and participating in) the discussion at Megan McArdle's.  A lot of people, both the obese and the anti-obese, are obsessed with "blame" -- Should we blame obese people for their obesity?  Should we avoid blaming them?  Should we blame the food processing industry?  Advertising?  Is blame counterproductive?  Are overeaters rational actors in an unhealthy environment?   Who's responsible for obesity?

These facts are unassailable:

 - Rigorous control of one's behavior, when it really is rigorous, reverses obesity.

 - Most people who attempt such rigorous behavior don't actually succeed in producing it long-term.  Some think they do and are wrong.  Others are aware of their repeated failure.  

 - It is really, really, really difficult for people to eat less than their bodies tell them they should.  

Whatever our eventual philosophy turns out to be, I think we must refuse any line of thinking that either leads us into "self-control is useless" OR into "obese people must have no self-control."  The first is contradicted by facts, and also rather insulting to human agency and free will.  The second is contradicted by the claims of many, many obese individuals, and also rather unkind and insulting to specific humans.  Let's be charitable and take people at their word when they say they are trying hard, okay?  And at the same time let's recognize that a portion of the people who try hard really do succeed, and their hard work and success is not meaningless, okay?

Which is why I keep coming back to the overeating-as-mental-illness model:

 - It's individual:  no two people can be treated exactly alike.

 - It's not immutable:  hard work, often extraordinarily hard work, and treatment, has successfully treated it.

 - Yet not everyone can overcome it:   many people have to live with and compensate for it their whole lives.

This leads me to two conclusions:

 1.   It is dishonest and dangerous to 'normalize' overeating (that is, to say it's just another kind of "normal")  in a misguided attempt to make sufferers feel better about themselves or to remove stigma.  It is and always will be intrinsically disordered (to borrow a phrase from another field of human behavior) to eat, over long periods of time, more food than is necessary for physical health. 

 (I say "over long periods" because it's pretty obvious that humans rationally anticipate future scarcity by building up fat stores, and also that it's normal human behavior since time immemorial to use food in social celebration during special feasts.  Neither of these, however, describes the constantly grazing, every-plate-looks-like-Thanksgiving behavior that characterizes the overeating I see around me.)

2.  And yet, it is unfair, unkind, and unhelpful to shame and blame people, or categorize them as lazy or without self-control, because they have not succeeded at the kind of drastic, long-term change that would reverse obesity.  It's really hard.  I don't say it's impossible because some succeed.  But many don't.  It doesn't mean they can't.  It does mean that it's asking more than most people can handle without a significant commitment of resources that they might, reasonably, be unwilling to make.  

We know better now than to shame people because they can't handle, say, bipolar disorder or drug dependence on their own.  We know, too, that it's not pointless to try to encourage people to do the hard work of regaining control of their lives.  Maybe we need a similar sort of sanity about overeating.

What does this have to do with normal eating?  Well... 

I question whether "normal eating" is really what recovering overeaters need to be shooting for.  I'm not sure it's possible to eat normally, once you've been a compulsive overeater, just as most people agree that it's not possible for a recovering alcoholic to use alcohol like a "normal" person.  I think it will always be somewhat artificial, never natural, for me to consume the amount of food I physically require.  I am able to celebrate with food, to enjoy it as a social interaction, to feast; but always with a kind of calculation and attention, like a diabetic who must remember to measure blood sugar and apply corrections to the daily insulin dose.

Appropriate eating -- healthy eating -- for a recovering overeater is not the same as for someone who naturally eats "normally."  Part of the reason  that so many people in threads like the one at the NYT blog are so wrong wrong WRONG-- is because they fail to see that normal behavior is not what's best for abnormal people, and the corrections that abnormal people need to make are, well, ridiculous to try to apply to the whole population, especially the healthy ones.

Dosage.

You've heard the expression "to self-medicate with food," right?  Generally thought of as a bad thing.  Emotional eating and all that.  Causes you to envision a lonely woman plowing through a pint of ice cream straight from the carton, or some such thing.

It's not all bad, really.  Food does affect your mood, because it does affect your body.  And sometimes it's simpler than that.  

You have a sore throat?  A cup of hot tea with a generous dollop of honey will really do you good.

Low on iron?  Have some beef at every meal.

Pregnant lady with a sudden attack of nausea at bedtime five hours after dinner?  TRY EATING SOMETHING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

So as I was downstairs in my pajamas finishing off my bowl of plain yogurt and blueberries, which I wasn't exactly hungry for but I thought might help me feel better and get to sleep, I found myself wandering into the kitchen to refill my bowl.

Now why am I doing this?  I wondered, even as I scooped into the yogurt carton.  I wasn't hungry to begin with.  I ate what I served myself, and I had a good reason for it.  Now why am I in here getting more?  I  considered it carefully as I started in on the second bowl, and hit on the reason:

Because I don't feel better yet.

That's it.  That's the reason.   I'd decided to eat something because I hoped it might quell the nausea long enough for me to get to sleep.   Well, here I am thirty seconds after finishing my bowl of yogurt, and I still don't feel all the way better, so I'm eating more.

Funny!  I *might* give it a chance to work, before I give myself a double dose.  If I have a headache, do I swallow a couple of painkillers, think, "Nope, headache still there," and use what's left in my glass to swig down a couple more?  If I have a cough, do I take one spoonful of cough syrup, then go back for seconds when I'm still hacking a couple minutes later?  

No, maybe the problem with self-medication with food isn't so much that we use food as a drug.  Maybe we should use it more like a drug -- when we have a problem that food might solve, take the smallest dose necessary, and wait for it to have an effect (or not) before trying something else.  Why should it be different from any other?

Long-distance self-optimization.

Latest thing I have learned about myself:  When on a long car trip, it's better to pick where we are going to have meals ahead of time.   As in, identify a particular chain restaurant at a particular exit in a particular town, and drive there for dinner.  Flexibility has its benefits, but it doesn't suit my particular brand of food insanity.  (We can, of course, stop for the rest of the family to get snacks if it takes us longer to get there than we expected.  And we can change the plan, but that doesn't undermine the importance of having a plan.)

If we don't have an exact plan, then as dinner time approaches I find myself obsessively scanning the horizon for blue highway signs labeled FOOD, and frantically running my mind over the possible combinations and things I could order at the various chain restaurants along the way.  Should we go to a McDonald's where nothing's really great for you but I have a well-developed, reliable strategy?  Or should we go to a Chili's where theoretically I could order something quite healthful but there's a chance that I could be distracted by the choices and wind up talking myself into a giant mushroom swiss burger or something?  Trapped in the car with little else to do, I find I can't think of anything else.  By the time I'm actually sitting down in front of a table, I've lost all my control.

But the last time we made a several-hundred-mile car trip, I made a plan to go to a specific restaurant in a specific city, which we expected to reach around dinner time.  (I had coupons even!)  And I discovered that I didn't obsess over the signage at all.  "We're going to stop at the such-and-such at Exit n and that's that," I told myself, and instead of focusing on the blue FOOD signs I found I was focusing on the tiny green mileage signs instead, which wasn't so bad, and when we got where we were going I knew exactly what to expect and what my strategy would be, and I did fine.   I chose healthful items and had a non-excessive amount, including a small dessert, and felt satisfied and guilt-free.

I think it's important to perform this sort of experiment on yourself from time to time.  The results might not be applicable to others, but hey, you're only responsible for optimizing you, not them.

Do it for its own sake.

The article linked to in this blog post at "and sometimes tea" completely meshes with my experience:  Exercise does not actually help you lose weight very well on its own, but it's worth doing anyway.

This is why it is so important to exercise for the sake of exercise, and completely forget about exercising in order to lose weight.  It is worth doing even if you don't lose a single pound.  It would be worth doing even if it made you GAIN weight. 

(Thanks to reader Charlotte for the pointer)

(not-a-medical) Doctor Bearing is in...

Got an email from a reader asking my advice.   OK, I'll throw it out there, because I think it's a great question.  And it's not too far off from where I was a couple of years ago -- I wasn't as fit, but my other health markers were always good.

Here is my problem and I hope you have some encouraging words:

Everyone says, "Don't focus on losing weight, just get healthy." My problem is that I feel healthy! My blood pressure is good (120/60 or lower), I have a naturally muscular build (strong legs, strong arms), my cholesterol is fine. I actually enjoy exercise although I admit that I have struggled with making it a regular part of my routine. I go on and off the wagon, usually off during stressful periods but I have even started to change that since I know that exercise helps considerably to keep anxiety and stress levels down. So, really... I just need to lose weight! Realistically based on body frame size, height, BMI, and recommendations from my doctor...about 40 pounds. But I FEEL healthy and don't have any physical indications that I'm not. We have been using a Wii Fit since June and even though it tells me I'm OBESE, I also have the top scores in everything from step aerobics to sit-ups to ski jump.

I know I need to change my eating habits and deal with my emotional eating tendencies and I am taking steps to do that but I get so frustrated when people say "You should focus on getting healthy and not the weight," because right now, my weight is the only thing unhealthy! 

Sometimes I get discouraged because I think I'll never be able to do it. I look at how many overweight people there are in the world and I think I'm doomed. My husband is great about not letting me sink into that pit of despair. Do you have any advice you could offer?

The first thing you might do, if it interests you, is read a little bit about the benefits of exercise and of being physically fit even if you're overweight.  There's a lot out there and much of the information is conflicting, but it might help you be at peace with the blessings of being fit and healthy in and of themselves.  Here are a few articles:

"Is it okay to be fat if you're fit?" (Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide 2005)

"Fit and fat?" (Forbes.com 2005)

"Fit and fat: US Study shows it's possible" (Reuters 2008)

"Health at Every Size: New Hope for Obese Americans" (USDA Agricultural Research Service 2006)

A few books have been written on this too.  I mentioned The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos.  I have also heard good things about Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin (still waiting for it to come from the library).  Both are capable science journalists.  

Next.  What to do?

I think you've already got the answer:

I actually enjoy exercise although I admit that I have struggled with making it a regular part of my routine. I go on and off the wagon, usually off during stressful periods but I have even started to change that since I know that exercise helps considerably to keep anxiety and stress levels down. 

It strikes me that the obvious next step for you is to make exercise a regular part of your routine.

Does it seem like you should tackle the eating habits first, or at the same time?  It depends on your personality, but I am biased towards building one habit at a time.  I, too, struggled with unhealthy eating patterns for years and years.  It was not until after I had been swimming twice a week for six months, not until that habit was really good and strong, that I finally could take the steps to get control of my disordered eating.

You could look at it this way.  Forty extra pounds, in and of themselves, might be bad for you, and losing some of them might be good for you.  (It's not as certain as you might think.)  But the habit of regular exercise, which you CAN start now and continue for the rest of your life, is practically certain to improve your health. 

Why not make that change first?  

Change is worth it for its own sake. Can you believe that? Can you want it?

Interesting discussion on weight and diet over at Megan McArdle's.  I participated as "bearing." 

I chose to press a different point, but I really do agree with many of the principles of the HAES (Health at Every Size) movement mentioned by commenter "silentbeep."  Health is more important than weight and appearance, and focusing too much on weight instead of healthful behaviors (particularly exercise for its own sake) can discourage people from making changes that really matter.   Weight is an imprecise and maybe even harmfully misleading proxy for overall health and especially cardiovascular health.  Permanent, significant weight loss is difficult, is shown to be achieved in only a tiny minority of attempts, and is maybe not as important for health as people think it is.  Overweight people are treated poorly, and lots of folks think they deserve it, and that's wrong and unhelpful.

Where I part company is this idea that (a) people shouldn't want to lose any weight, nor try to; and (b) if they do try to, "science has proven" that they will likely gain it back anyway.  So you should definitely tell everyone who's lost a lot of weight that they will just gain it back.

(I tell you, chronic dieters just can't win.  Thinness moralists assume they don't have the moral character to stick to their plans, and HAES moralists assume they don't have the moral character or intelligence to break the cycle of self-hatred and accept themselves as they are.)

There is one persistent fact that flies in the face of the "you can't lose weight and keep it off" crowd:  Some attempts succeed.  There are real people walking around who really lost a lot of weight and really kept it off for years.  I have a long way to go before I can count myself among them, but they exist.  The National Weight Control Registry is trying to keep track of them and learn what makes their experiences different from so many others. 

(I often think of my uncle, a retired pipefitter and plumber who was diagnosed with Type II diabetes at least ten or twelve years ago.  He quit smoking, gave up sugar, took up gardening and canning his own vegetables, lost an enormous amount of weight... and today at 65 he looks great.  I haven't written about him here before, and hadn't even thought much about it, but the truth is that his achievement has been a quiet inspiration to me.  I'll have to tell him that the next time I see him!)

One thing I notice in these discussions is a failure to discriminate among several distinct issues.  These four questions, for example, are very, very different:

1. "How can we make the population less overweight?"
2. "How can we make the population eat more healthfully and get more exercise?"
3. "How can a person who wants to lose weight permanently be helped to succeed?"
4. "How can a person who wants to make a permanent change for healthier eating and more exercise be helped to succeed?"

I have little patience for making people, or populations, do anything.  Especially since, as has been convincingly argued, few people in long-term studies achieve permanent change; public policies designed to put the population on a diet are probably hugely wasted effort (there is still room to experiment with nudging the external incentives around -- I'd like to see a change in the structure of agricultural subsidies, for one thing).  So much for #1 and #2.

As for the difference between #3 and #4...

But having been through it myself over the past year, I can attest to the power of desiring to change behavior for its own sake.

Imagine the difference between someone who "wants to lose weight" and someone who...

• finds himself staring at the grocery cart, thinking "I'm sick of eating all this processed stuff...  I want to learn how to eat, prepare, and enjoy real food for a change."

• decides "I spend too much time staring at a screen... I need to get outside more."

• wants to set a good example of healthful living for her children, sharing fun physical activity and learning to cook good food together.

• realizes she wants to become an athlete, and can if she is willing to try.

• realizes that she eats far more food than she needs, and that she feels out of control of her food, and that she's tired of it and wants to stop.

I think people with these real desires have a real chance of permanent change, and so support for those who fall into category #4 is probably worth a great deal of effort.   I can't prove it, but it's my suspicion that the desire to change behavior from within, for its own sake, is the key to success; and that the desire to change appearance and "to do what's necessary to achieve that" (that is, wanting to change the behavior only because it might help change one's appearance) is a marker for likely failure. 

I think few people can keep doing what they don't want to do in the absence of immediate and ongoing reward; and that numbers going down on the scale might be enough reward, but that numbers staying the same on the scale probably aren't, at least not for long.  But lots of people can do what they really want to do, even if it's hard.

So maybe people should stop looking for inspiration that tells them "You can do it!  You can stick to a diet and exercise plan to lose weight and keep it off!"  And they should start looking for inspiration that will convince them "You want to do it!  You want to permanently change your eating and activity to something that's heathier...  whether you lose weight and keep it off, or not."

On being a supportive husband.

When people compliment me on the weight I lost last year, I always take care to give credit to Mark for being very, very supportive.

Mark refuses to take much credit.  He says it's very easy to be supportive of me.  Here is his algorithm, according to him:

1. Listen to me when I wonder out loud why the scale is not doing what I want it to do 
2.  Ask, "Have you been sticking to your habits?"
3. Listen to the answer 
4. Say, "Well, there's the reason the scale isn't doing what you want it to do.  Go back to your habits." 
5. Wait for a chance to say "See?  I told you things would improve if you went back to your habits." 
6. Repeat as necessary  

Of course, this doesn't include all the cheerful schedule-arranging and child-minding he does for me so I can swim and run every week without fail, but I guess he doesn't mind that.

Must be time to listen to him some more (image courtesy of babyfit.sparkpeople.com):

Have I been off my basic background of habits?  Yes.  Namely, I haven't been interested in vegetables and I have mainly been making up the difference with hot buttered toast.  

The last couple of days I've tried to correct this with lots of green veggies.  I'm having the most success with steamed leafy greens, so maybe as boring as it is I'll just try to eat a bag of collards or spinach every day.     And I can go back to my extra habits too -- they're all still really good habits, even for a pregnant person.  

Vague habits are hard to keep.

At nearly 13 weeks pregnant, I have gained 7 1/2 pounds.  That's an okay rate -- I am supposed to gain between 25 and 30 lbs in a whole pregnancy, so I guess I'm on track for that -- but I still feel panicky every time I see a new number on the scale.  I just cannot stop myself from expecting to be back at BMI = 31 six months after having this baby.

Deep breathing, don't worry about the scale, concentrate on habits.  Like measuring all my food.

A friend said to me the other day as we cooked together in her kitchen that she was working on one good habit at a time, and that right now the habit was "portion control."  That's a good habit for anyone to develop, especially someone nursing a brand new baby as she is -- it's a fundamental habit for healthy eating, but in and of itself it's not "dieting" and so working on it isn't likely to deprive her of the nutrients she needs to keep up her strength in such a taxing time of life.  

I mused about it though -- a little bit out loud there in the kitchen as I juiced lemons and minced cilantro, and later over the next couple of days.  I was thinking about it just now as I used a 2/3 cup measure to scoop out my yogurt for my midmorning snack.  

"Portion control" isn't really a single habit.  It could mean a lot of different habits, or some combination of them all.  Think about it:  You might mean that you never take seconds, i.e., you control the number of portions.  Or you might mean that you know exactly how much you eat of everything (whether you stick to a plan or not).  Or you might mean that you plan to eat a certain amount of everything and you actually "control" yourself so that you actually do eat that much.  Or you might mean that you plan to eat a certain number of helpings of things.  Lots of different ideas.

It strikes me that if you're going to work on a habit, you'd do well to abandon a vaguely worded term like "portion control."  Better to sit down and write out the details of the new way you'd like to do things.  A standard operating procedure, so to speak.

I will always plate my food using measuring cups and measuring spoons so that I know I have served myself an appropriate size serving for each kind of food.  I will carry a set of measuring spoons and cups with me for use at restaurants.  

Something like that.  

There are obviously other features of "portion control" that you could include.  For instance, you could decide what is the appropriate size serving of each kind of food (one easy way is to use whatever serving size is listed on the label; another is to use a published system like the one in this book).  You could incorporate an actual "diet" plan by allowing yourself a certain number of these servings per day or per week, or by holding yourself to another rule like "no seconds."  You could increase your awareness by keeping a food diary.  

Or you could just work on the micro-habit of always transferring food from package, to measuring device, to plate, to mouth.  The food has to contact the measuring device and the plate on the way to your gullet.  A simple rule.  You could call it the "three-transfers" rule.  

  Original packaging ---->  Measuring device ---->  Plate or bowl  ----> Gullet

Notice that all by itself, this rule does away with eating chips out of the bag and licking raw cookie dough off the spoon....

I have slacked off on a lot of my habits since beginning this pregnancy.  I am trying hard not to "diet," and to eat when I think I need to eat (careful!  I am good at convincing myself I "need to eat" when I don't), but there are a number of habits that are harmless for pregnancy and not really linked to "dieting."  This is one.  I don't have to limit how much yogurt I eat, but I might as well be aware that I've had about two-thirds of a cup, you know?

Smart snacking.

The August 2009 issue of Real Simple magazine has an article I heartily endorse, called "How to Snack Smarter."   It's on page 148 of the dead-tree version and isn't yet online, but will probably appear on the website in a few weeks.

Among the reasons suggested for distributing your daily food intake among a few snacks are that it helps you eat less at mealtimes (I have definitely experienced this), it ensures you get all your vitamins (I certainly eat more fruit than I would otherwise), it puts you in a good mood, and it foils cravings. 

(The author also says that snacking "keeps your metabolism going" and "can help your body burn a few calories;" a lot of what I've read elsewhere indicates that people tend to eat enough extra calories when they snack to make up for that one, so I would take that with a grain of salt.)

Regular snacking -- and by "regular" I mean "at the same time every day," not "constantly putting food in my mouth" -- was definitely part of my strategy while I was losing 40 pounds last year, and it continues to be part of my strategy in this newest pregnancy.    It isn't the solution for everyone -- the "anti-snacking" No-S diet has worked well for at least one friend of mine.  But if you do choose to harness the power of snacks to enhance your health and happiness, some suggestions from the article and from me:

• "Experts suggest choosing a snack that has roughly 100 to 200 calories (a meal should start at about 300)."  I agree.  That's about the right size.  Anything more and you've added a meal.  

• Not sure how many calories are in that stuff you want to eat?  My rule of thumb has always been to limit the size of the snack to about an ounce.   Look, the worst possible case -- an ounce of pure fat --- is 260 calories or so, and you aren't going to eat an ounce of pure fat for a snack. 

• Calcium's hard to get, so "[seek]" out snacks rich in the mineral---for example, ... yogurt or almonds."  Both are staples for me. 

• "[A] fruit or vegetable in every meal and snack."  I do this when I can.

• "[W]hen cravings attack, have a plan for giving in intelligently."  I have learned pretty well to put off my cravings until my next scheduled snack, which is never that far away.  Because my overall diet is so healthful, there's room for some of almost anything.  

•   If you choose protein bars or granola bars:  "Look for a bar that has 150 to 200 calories, at least four grams of protein, and four or more grams of fiber."  I swear by Kashi TLC Crunchy Granola Bars, Chewy Granola Bars, and Fruit & Grain Bars.  The Roasted Almond Crunch variety, for example, has 180 calories, 6 grams of protein, and 4 grams of fiber.  The Dark Chocolate Coconut variety is awesome.  Another nice thing about these smaller bars is they're about the right size for a toddler's breakfast on the go.

• Make your snack a balance of carbs, fats, and protein.   

• "Make it feel like a small meal, with multiple components."   I cannot stress the importance of this one enough, and I'd also add:  take the time to prepare it attractively and put it on a plate (or a portable container) and have it sitting down, in a moment of relative peace if you can manage it.  If you're eating one kind of food out of the package it came in, you're grazing, not snacking.  NO CHIPS OUT OF THE BAG.  If you're going to eat some chips, put some on a plate and give yourself a little dollop of dip or something, or make a little plate of nachos.    

•   I suggest scheduling your snacks and, once you figure out a schedule that works, sticking to it.  I have a snack at 10:30 and another at 3:30 or so.  That's what I need.

• Oh yeah -- remember that when you add a snack somewhere, you have to subtract food from a meal somewhere else, or you're not doing yourself any favors.   

  

A couple of dozen snack suggestions are sprinkled throughout the article, things like "One whole-wheat English muffin with peanut butter," "Greek yogurt with chopped walnuts and honey,"  "Two slices of deli turkey and a handful of grapes."  They are good suggestions, except that they are all low-fat, and I don't believe in low-fat eating, especially for snacks, when cheese, chocolate, lattes, and nuts are so handy and delicious.  Fortunately it is not hard to add fat to most of the suggestions.

One of my favorite snacks is hard cheese cut into tiny cubes with sliced fruit and a few pecans -- finger food, but a really nice combo.  I just now had a Wasa cracker (another staple of mine) spread with cream cheese and topped with sliced tomato and melted Muenster.  A full-fat latte is another snack indulgence I love.

Immediate results.

I'm sitting in an Eat Street diner called the Bad Waitress, musing about inflation.  Remember the Five Dollar Milkshake in Pulp Fiction?  This place has milkshakes for $5.25.  (Bananas in your milkshake will set you back an additional dollar).

Waiting for my eggs Benedict.  I just finished my morning swim, so I think I've earned it.  It comes with asparagus.  That's a vegetable.  (UPDATE:  Two stalks?  That's a garnish, not a comes-with.  Sheesh.  Oh well, it was REALLY good hollandaise.  I'm not going to have to eat lunch now, I'm sure of it.)

Thinking about habits and about outcomes.

What do you really want to change about yourself?  I mean -- among the things that you could change.  Really.

I know I have a long list.  I wish I reflexively, automatically, responded to my children by strengthening connections, not rupturing them.   I wish that desire for the Lord, rather than duty, would draw me to prayer several times a day.  I wish that my irritation at an untidy house didn't get in the way of welcoming people into my home;  I wish I was more generous to my friends.  I wish I had a better grasp on how much money I spend.  I wish I knew how to teach my children love for Jesus as well as I think I know how to teach them theology and logic.  I wish I didn't waste any time sitting in front of the computer each day.   The list goes on.

Once I would have said "I wish I wasn't so heavy and out of shape."  I don't say that anymore.  So:  hope.

And skill.  I have a theory -- still untested -- that I can apply something I learned with the heavy/out of shape thing, to all those other wishes and longings.  It's the meta-advice that I do dispense to people who really mean it when they ask me, "How did you lose the weight?  How can I not be so fat anymore?"  And that is to let go of the outcome, as much as possible----let go of what you want to BE ---and concentrate on the relevant behavior---what you DO.   Yes, I had weight loss on my mind that whole time, how could I not?  But I tried to put all my mental effort, self-blame and self-praise, onto the habits of regular exercise and control of my eating.  I tried to want those things for themselves.  And as time went on I did want those things for themselves.  That has made the difference.  I am now the sort of person who wants to wait for a nibble till lunch.  I am now the sort of person who looks forward to a vigorous swim.

This is the insight I would like most to share with people who ask me how I did it, how to do it.  A lot of the answers are "I don't know."  I simply don't know why last year and not any of the 20 years before that.  I don't know what changed.  Some grace, I think, an answered prayer, but I would never want to suggest that your problem is that you haven't prayed the right prayer or prayed hard enough.  But I do sincerely believe that cultivating the desire for new behaviors -- not slavishly adhering to behaviors because I thought they would gain me my far-off desire -- was a truly new, truly different, ultimately successful strategy.

It's sort of like "fake it till you make it."  I tried to behave like a healthy, athletic person, and to want to do the things a healthy, athletic person would do, rather than just wish I were healthy and athletic and hope that this wish would drive me to do the right things.

I've wondered in this space before if it is possible to MAKE yourself want something.  The more I think about it, the more I think the answer is yes.  Some things are probably harder to want than others.  But why not try?

Can I apply this to the other things I would like to change about myself?  Probably not all at once, but I could pick one thing and work on it.  Take my response to the children.  I cannot make myself be patient and self-giving.  I can resolve to change behaviors, and I can really want to change them.   Here is an example, a tiny one.  I have an image in my mind of myself that I do not like.  It comes from a day when my five-year-old got a hold of the camera and walked around the house taking pictures -- you know the kind, all the furniture slightly distorted from the kid's-eye view.  There are several pictures of me in that set.  They are all pictures of my back, hunched over the computer.  I do not want my kids to think of me as focused on the computer.  In the picture, it is impossible to tell whether I am reading blogs, or writing email to good friends, or planning the school day.  The kids don't see this.  All they see is my back to them.  I know I do not want to spend their lives with my back to them and my face turned to the computer screen.  If I concentrate on this image, I think I can make myself feel dissatisfied with looking at the screen instead of them.  I think I can make myself want to save the computer time for the blocks I have set aside for it, for early mornings, for the after-lunch recess, for daddy's bedtime story time, for Saturday mornings at the coffee shop.  I think I can make myself want to turn it off when the first child comes stumbling and yawning down the stairs wanting breakfast, so that the first thing he sees is a smile and a good morning, not "Aaagh!  What are you doing up already!?"

"I will be more connected" -- overwhelming, open-ended, vague.  "I will learn to keep the computer in its place --" much more do-able.  And more immediate, too.  At the end of the day I can feel good about having turned it off when I was supposed to and saved it for the right time, even if I don't feel any more patient or connected or different in any way than yesterday.  And the next day is another day.  And then there is another, a string of opportunities for success as long as life lasts.