bearing blog

Just like a movie.

Q.  What do these two films have in common?

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First:  The 1981 miniseries adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited:  The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.   This British production ran for 11 episodes and starred Jeremy Irons  as the somewhat awestruck protagonist of "no family or money" who becomes entangled in the intense family drama surrounding wealthy and eccentric school-chum Lord Sebastian Flyte.  Themes of aristocracy, addiction, decadence, and redemption dominate.  The series won several prestigious awards, including BAFTA television awards for best drama series, best costume design, and best actor, and numerous Golden Globes and Primetime Emmy awards in the U. S.

 

 

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  Second:   Tropic Thunder, a 2008 movie directed by Ben Stiller, in which Robert Downey, Jr. appears in blackface. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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If you guessed, "These are the  two movies personally recommended to the author of this blog by the authors of DarwinCatholic Blog during a jambalaya-fueled, nine-children-strong sleepover, complete with a midnight power outage that necessitated burning their Advent wreath down to waxy nubbins so we could see well enough not to spill our drinks," well, then, you win.

Somewhat improbably, I suppose.

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"This is great, Dad!  It's just like a movie!" exclaimed my twelve-year-old when Darwin and Mark brought some candles up to the bedroom that my two oldest boys were sharing with us.

"Yeah!  And now's when the monster should come and get us!" chimed in my nine-year-old. 

No monsters, sad to say, but I think it will have been memorable nonetheless.

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Despite never going to any official convention-type gatherings, I have been lucky enough to meet several other bloggers (or mail-list colleagues) in person by now.  Blogging is an exhiliarating hobby for a semi-recluse like me; to myself I seem more expressive in writing than in person, certainly more comfortable.   I love getting to know other people through text, and it's always a little intimidating meeting them in person -- because I know that sometimes there are surprises, wow-your-voice-doesn't-sound-anything-like-I-imagined-it moments.

Not always, mind you.  Some of the people I've met have meshed seamlessly with the picture in my head created by their online persona.  But there are enough discrepancies to be jarring, and that makes me wonder what kind of impression I produce when I am "finally" met face to face.

Having met the Darwins, kids and all, for two multi-hour visits (about a year apart) now, I have discovered something:  Time resolves these discrepancies.

 Having gotten to know their online personae pretty well in years of blogreading, I had  had a real "wow, you're different from how I imagined you" moment on that first visit.  The second time, though, the dual images before us ---- the real people who welcomed us into their big old house and let our kids pack down the snow in the driveway with their sleds, and the husband-and-wife blogging team we know from the combox -- seemed to me to waver and cross, to come together and make more sense.  Maybe it was me loosening up (like I said, I'm intimidated by these first-time meetings), or maybe it was the chance to read Darwin Catholic Blog for a year while hearing the real voices of the narrators in my head, or maybe it is just the effects of a few hours' conversation.

I wonder if it's related to an odd thing I noticed:  When you're heading out to meet a blogger in person for the first time, and you're on the road with your cell phone and you've got their number, and you need to say "hey, I'll be just a couple minutes late, you'll know me because I'm wearing a red hat"--- doesn't it seem like it would be wrong, a major faux pas, to call them on their cell and make them answer it and listen to their voice?  You send a text or an instant message, don't you?  Doesn't it feel impossible to do anything else?  Am I right?

Brief story about the adoption of teenagers.

Here is a short, hope-affirming story about the adoption of teenagers in Minnesota. Some of the metrics have improved a lot in the state, perhaps brought about by these changes:

Some of the state's progress has to do with its diversion programs, which keep families intact and children out of foster care. But state officials believe the adoption process is quicker and more aggressive as well. In two years, the state has halved the number of kids seeking adoptions who reach age 18 without parents. And over the past decade, the state has reduced the time it takes to move children from state guardianships to finalized adoptions from 24 months to 16 months.

County workers now ask older foster children about influential relatives, teachers or other adults in their past and follow up with those adults to see if they'd consider adoption. Private agencies, hired by the state, assist counties in finding matches for adoptive children, and recruiting families even if they had stopped pursuing adoption. Pre-adoption classes emphasize the needs of teens and dispel myths that they don't benefit from adoption as much.

The article highlights one adoptive family, headed by a widowed mother of a younger teenager.

I almost can't imagine the difficulty of welcoming an older child with a troubled, loss-filled past into my family. The article left me wanting to know more about the families who are making it work, and the ones who are struggling, in my state. And it left me wondering about the outcomes -- those that can be measured and counted, and those that can't -- for adults who were adopted as teens.

 

Some closure in Indianapolis.

Because I have an unhealthy interest in the investigations that follow upon things that blow up, I have been following the story from Indianapolis about the house that exploded -- in an extraordinarily, unusually powerful natural gas explosion -- on November 10. (It's been on Twitter under the hashtag #indyboom since thirty seconds after the explosion, later supplemented by the somewhat less gauche #indyexplosion after it became clear that people had likely died.)

Arson and murder charges were filed a couple of days ago against the homeowner, her live-in boyfriend, and the boyfriend's brother, who apparently blew up the house in order to split the insurance money.

This lengthy article from the Indianapolis Star details what has to be one of the most boneheaded criminal scheme (in the sense of the criminals' almost guaranteeing that they'd be caught) ever. It would be laughable, if it weren't for the fact that two neighbors lost their lives, other neighbors were injured, 31 houses were destroyed or condemned, and about 60 more houses were damaged.

The piece seems to be a pretty good example of in-depth reporting, assuming that the facts as reported are accurate. I hope the affected families will feel one step closer to justice by Christmastime. Spare the young daughter of the homeowner a thought or prayer if you can; she will have a tough Christmas.

The semiannual gluttony retrospective, part IV: sticking to it through the ups and downs. ALSO comparison to nicotine.

Intro to this series. Part I. Part II. Part III.

Sometimes I forget, but most mornings I still weigh myself. I keep a homemade Excel chart on the bathroom counter (next to the other chart); I pencil in a little dot. Each graph lasts a calendar month. At the end of each month I file away each graph in a three-ring binder.

It is hard for me to let go of data.

Despite that, I try to maintain a certain distance from the numbers. The numbers aren't my target; behaviors that keep me mentally and physically healthy, and non-gluttonous, are my target. The numbers only serve as a signal that my habits and behaviors are working -- and only in one particular way. I know this intellectually, but I have to work at it to believe it.

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So let's say that I have observed my weight creeping up. (Hypothetically, ahem.) That's the wake-up call to deal with habits that I already know have been slipping. Gluttony creeping back in:

• second servings just because I can,
• eating the children's leavings,
• joining in on bedtime snacks just because everyone else is,
• feeling full and still going because there's still some pleasure to be had on the plate.

I start paying attention to all these, keeping a pack of gum in my pocket and leaving the serving dishes in the kitchen and so forth, and invariably the weight dips back down the first couple of days while I am focused.

What happens next is kind of funny.

If I stay focused, and the weight keeps going down, a little voice in my head urges me to make an Akron U-turn. "Look how great I am doing! I guess I don't really have to change my habits after all! My numbers are lovely! I can go back to big portions and extra chocolate at bedtime!"

(As I wrote on the Akron U-Turn post, this is certifiably insane. X causes Y, therefore Y is inevitable.)

If I don't stay quite as focused, and the weight pops back up -- maybe not as far up as it had been, but not dropping quite so fast -- a little voice in my head urges me to give up since "it isn't working anyway." This is also certifiably insane, and is in fact the exact opposite argument being made by the Akron U-Turn voice.

Picture on my shoulders -- not the angel and the demon, but a skinny demon and a fat demon. They take turns. The skinny demon's line is "You're doing great! You can afford to be a little gluttonous!" The fat demon's line is "Give it up! You might as well be a glutton for all the good this is doing you!"

I am telling you, there is part of my brain that will try anything, including the complete suspension of logic, in order to get more cake.

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I guess there are two counter-thoughts I could be having here.

When the number on the scale makes me happy, I can think: "What I am doing is working well. Keep it up."

When the number on the scale makes me worried, I can think: "I know what I need to do. I have done it before."

So I am working on that.

One thing that is definitely getting better is the long-term view. I keep coming back to that. Because this is a rest-of-my-life thing, it is okay if the trends are really, really slow and slight. I don't really care about getting quickly back to my target. I only care about not getting farther away and making course corrections that nudge me back to where I am going.

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As an almost but not entirely unrelated matter: there was a thread on the front page of reddit today about smoking cessation. The question went like this:

Ex-smokers of reddit, what was your motivation and/or technique for giving up?

First, I think this person was right to post the question to /r/askreddit (which is a general-interest subreddit) and specifically asking "ex-smokers," rather than posting to /r/stopsmoking and getting answers from a lot of people who are still struggling with their addiction.

And I thought to myself -- where would people struggling with nicotine addiction be if mostly they just turned for advice to people who haven't (yet) successfully quit, or to people who never had an addiction in the first place? It seems pretty obvious that while they are not the only source of useful advice for would-be quitters (the medical profession probably has at least some), those who've been addicted and managed to quit would be a good population to turn to. Learn from the proven.

The same thing could be said for the battle against gluttony and sloth (and by extension, excess adiposity). It is really surprising how much of the popular narrative is devoted to pointing out that few people succeed permanently, without rounding up a bunch of successful losers and trying to learn from them.

That being said, I noticed as I was lurking on the reddit "how did you quit?" question that there was a great deal of variety in the answers. One swore by antidepressants, another warned against them. Many said that cold-turkey was the only way, others thought that cold-turkey approaches were doomed to fail and advised keeping a pack of cigarettes around to ease the really bad cravings. E-cigarettes and patches were common tools, but some didn't find them helpful at all. For some, a "wake-up call" was all they needed (becoming a father, coughing up a wad of black stuff, counting up the yearly cost) and for others, mental effort alone wasn't enough.

I have never been addicted to nicotine (never smoked a cigarette in my life, in fact), so I can't directly compare the two experiences of kicking nicotine and kicking gluttony. However, I was struck by the similarities evident in the list. Highly personalized approach; the necessity of learning to deal with physical suffering; the way it gets slowly better with time, even though relapse is always a sobering possibility; the knowledge that even though it is hard, some people do succeed, every year.

In praise of banal little posts.

I've not stopped posting on Facebook* (and occasionally on Twitter) even though my blog is really anemic right now.  I seem only to have little, short things to say.

Facebook is derided for good reason because it's full of people announcing ordinary things.  I daresay that a large number of the FB posts I see fall into the following categories:

• I just got off work!  Or I will soon.  Or I won't for a while, poor me.
• I'm having an alcoholic beverage!
• I'm about to eat something!  Here is a picture of it.
• Can you believe this interaction I just had with another human being in the real world? 
• I have children.
• I saw something in the news, and I have an opinion about it.

You know, I don't mind this.  Banal small talk is much of what our loose networks of relationships are built on; some more strongly, some less, and you don't find out the strength until, out of necessity, something more than banal is called for.

But you know what?  It's like that in real life even with normal, three-dimensional relationships.  The more you see someone, the smaller the talk can be sometimes.  

I have been co-schooling with H. for years and years now, and a lot of our conversations are about something she cooked for dinner two days ago, or what small thing is driving me crazy, or our plans for the weekend.  Occasionally we get to sit down and plot out next year's literature class or troubleshoot one another's battle against chaos, but mostly it's the little updates.  Staying in touch with each other and each other's children.

I have been married for fourteen years now, a good marriage if I may say so myself, and some weeks it seems as if the exact same exchanges happen across the breakfast table day after day after day.  They are for the most part happy, loving exchanges that reinforce the essential goodness of the phenomenon that is us.  Some of them involve inquiries about when the minivan will be taken in for service and whether our daughter was given her medication on time yesterday.  

Internet friends, it's okay if the only post of substance you made this week was to explain the new recipe you tried.  (Even better if you said what you did for side dishes and how you got your kids to eat it without complaining.) I'm paying attention.  

Sometimes the mommyblogs can get you down, what with all the exuberant bragging about things that went well.  FB seems to be more populated with the wry wisecracks about normal life.  I kind of like that. 

Once I visited the home of someone I knew well from the Internet, someone whom I thought of as kind of an amazing person, a superstar in the crunchy homeschooling breastfeeding homebirthing world.   It was the first time I'd met her in real life, and she had invited me and my kids for lunch while I was in town.  I was a little bit in awe, to tell you the truth, as I knocked on her door.

She welcomed us in and performed an act of generous hospitality for us for which I will forever be grateful:  she served us boxed macaroni and cheese.

("Annie's Naturals," of course.  But still.)

And that business being out of the way, we sat down and had a great conversation, getting on with the business of knowing and getting to know.  Which is about not worrying whether your presentation is perfect or your wit sparkling:  it's jumping off from the points that present themselves in your ordinary life, seeing where they can take you.

 

 

 

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*I intentionally keep my friend list pared down on FB, and regularly prune it.  I am unlikely to approve a friend request from a blog reader unless we have met in real life or otherwise Go Way Back (or unless I am a squealy fan of your own blog, a category specially created for Simcha Fisher).  It's nothing personal; that's just what I use it for.  You're welcome to follow me on Twitter where my handle is my real first and last name, no spaces, but I'm not very active there as of yet.

The semiannual gluttony retrospective, part III: Keeping motivated in the face of okayness.

MrsDarwin kindly obliged me with a question on my introductory post:

I really appreciate your maintenance/reminder posts, since I'm kind of at the same stage you are (though with less exercise). I'm at a basically acceptable weight which I maintain without much trouble -- I could stand to lose five pounds and tone up, but on the other hand, my clothes fit in a mostly flattering fashion. But I need the constant reminder not to be complacent. You should write about "keeping motivated in the face of okayness." 

This is really the crux of maintenance, and it can even be the crux of initial weight loss, too.  Remember the Akron U-Turn?  I think it's common to use "hey, I'm doing pretty well!" as an excuse to undermine ourselves by going back to undesirable behaviors.

Some good habits have persisted in the face of my okayness, and some have drifted away.   What's the difference?  I think a lot of it has to do with having created "bright lines" around some behaviors:  some rule I've stated to myself, even gone public with here on the blog or in my family. Something that It's not okay to eat a whole pizza.  A normal breakfast can contain one egg, but not two.  The right dessert size for me is about as big as two Oreos.  I don't go through a drive-through to get a snack.    I go to the gym at least twice a week.   

You have to strike the right balance when it comes to these:

• they have to be something that you really want to adopt permanently, with few exceptions.  
• They have to be something where it doesn't matter if you're doing "okay" -- for the rest of your life you want to live with these bright-line boundaries, no matter what your dress size.   
• And you have to know when to define your bright line around a "never" (in my case, "never eat a whole pizza") and when to define it around a "normal" that can be excepted on special occasions (like the two-egg thing; if I'm starving, I'll order a big fat omelette at a restaurant, but I think of it as a splurge, a deviation).

The hard part is creating the bright line in the first place.  I may think I want to stop doing a certain behavior, but often I find that I don't really want to.  I've tried to establish "I never nibble off the kids' plates after lunch" and it hasn't worked very well.  On the other hand I might well be able to establish "I make the kids scrape their own plates into the trash after lunch," now that I think about it.   So maybe part of it is carefully choosing which behavior to enclose in those bright lines.

Right now the "okayness" I struggle with is in the physical activity.  I'm in pretty good shape compared to the average woman my age; training at a higher level is not feasible right now because of my other responsibilities, so I have no reason to set a stringent goal; even Mark can't run faster or longer than I can because he's recovering from an injury, so I haven't got the motivation to keep up with him.   I still go to the gym twice a week, and try for three times, but I haven't been pushing myself very hard lately; I've told myself "I only have to run for twenty minutes and then I can quit," and pretty often when I get to the end of the twenty minutes I do quit.  For a while there I was running at a peak speed of 7.2 mph at intervals, and these days I go "meh" and set the treadmill at 6.0 and try not to think about it till I'm done.  Well, I didn't draw the bright line around a certain number of minutes or a certain speed; I drew it around showing up twice a week.  And I faithfully show up twice a week, but I don't work very hard right now.  

Why the backsliding?  I think I feel a little bit overwhelmed with things right now -- look how badly my blogging has fallen off -- and so it's harder to say "no" to the voice that says, "You're sick of this treadmill and you could just get off and go take an extra-long, extra hot shower."   My solution to this has been to run less and swim more, since I hate to run and love to swim.  It works.  At minimum, I want to keep running enough that I don't hurt myself when I do run, and one run every week or two seems to do that.  

Anyway, I still have to take a good hard look at my habits and clean them up now and again, because where I didn't draw a bright line they occasionally veer into "old bad habit" territory.  One way I'm doing that right now is by keeping a food diary and counting up the calories -- it's not a permanent habit, it's a diagnostic tool to find the places where I can improve.  Mostly it reminds me of things I already learned:  I don't need a snack between breakfast and lunch.  An afternoon snack with a little protein in it is generally a good idea, but it doesn't have to be big.  Second servings at dinner is something I have to be careful about.  All these things I know, but it's really easy -- when things have been going well -- to trick myself into thinking I'm in pretty good shape -- I can afford to splurge often enough that the "splurge" creeps back into becoming an everyday thing. 

Anyway, I think the best defense against the "okayness" problem are bright lines -- boundaries which are meant to stand no matter how "okay" you feel.  They can be somewhat porous and can have exceptions -- but the point is that they define a lifelong norm.  I find that wherever I've managed to establish them, they have remained.

The dark side.

In the middle of the night my nearly-three-year-old nursling kicked and struggled off the blankets and then burbled, "Mommy milk."

"Coming up," I murmured and started to roll over.

At which he sat up and declared loudly, "Mommy?  You're my lifesaver."

Or perhaps it was "light saber."

And then he latched on and fell right to sleep.  As did I.

I'm glad to still be co-sleeping with this little guy.  Two of my other three kids were already going to sleep in another bedroom by this age.  There are definitely pros and cons to getting them out and sleeping on their own -- but having done it both ways, I like keeping them with me, especially when they talk in their sleep.

Semiannual gluttony retrospective, part II. The numbers.

So I haven't been doing that "weight control chart" for a long time now. I still weigh myself most mornings, and every few days I write it down because I want to keep a long-term record (and if nothing else, there's a height and weight check-in on the NFP charts, so I will at least have one data point per month). I stopped doing that thing where I would start following more rules when I had so many data points (weight readings) that were in such-and-such a range, etc. It was worth a try, but it was really too involved to keep up with.

I have been thinking more and more about the most useful attitude to have toward the numbers: the weight on the scale, the dress size, and even the calorie count (or WW points or carb grams---whatever countable food metric you might be considering).

Coming into the start of my fifth year of weight control, I am even more strongly convinced of a particular way of thinking about these numbers. I have pointed out before that "the numbers" are not under your direct control. Behavior and habit development are under your direct control; the numbers aren't. If weight/size control for health is your desire. the numbers are useful -- not as goals or targets, because you cannot really aim at them -- but as diagnostics to evaluate existing habits and behaviors.

The sequence goes like this:

• Check the numbers
• Decide to develop a particular habit that seems it might be helpful
• Set goal to "hit" the habit by repeatedly practicing the behavior until habit is established
• Once habit is established, check the numbers again
• If the numbers are good (or at least not worse) and the habit is pleasant or tolerable, keep the habit; if the numbers are worse or the habit is intolerable, choose a different habit.

The important thing here is that if you're going to freak out and feel like a failure, don't do it because the numbers are bad. Focus all concern about failure, all motivation to succeed, on the behavior. Not on the numbers. The behavior is what you can control. The numbers are an indirect effect.

 

One of the things I am even more sure about is that even the number of calories you consume counts as a metric, not a behavior. I know it seems wrong, because theoretically you ought to be able to directly control the number of calories you put in your mouth. But it is so foreign to human relationships with food to calculate calories before eating them, and it is such an intrusion into normal eating behavior to do it, and it is so difficult to keep up long-term (not to mention being pretty inaccurate) that I really think it needs to be considered a metric, something that is indirectly affected by the choices you make throughout the day.

 

Even if you take the step of counting calories before you eat them, using a calorie counter to make a plan and then trying to stick to it all day, you still need to employ direct behavior strategies, and whether you consume the number of calories you planned or not is an indirect result of all the choices you made that day. One of them was the choice to count up the calories and put together the meal plan, of course. But there were many others: did you measure your food every time? did you take steps to avoid temptations? what did you do when you had to make an unexpected substitution? At the end of the day when you count up all the calories, the number you actually ate is a measure of whether your decisions were useful or not.

 

In other words: don't berate yourself for eating 1,972 calories instead of 1,300 calories. Measure it, write it down, work on the habits, and then some day in the future try measuring again and see if, with a similar effort, you manage to get closer to the 1,300.

 

I find that periodically spending a week or so pre-planning my portions in order to hit a certain calorie range is a good way to remind myself of the portion sizes I actually need, so I do this from time to time. (I am doing it this week; the semi-annual gluttony retrospective is here for a reason, after all). But I try really hard to think of the behavior goal as "I will sit down every evening for a week and pre-plan my portions and foods to the best of my ability to predict them, and at each meal I will measure portions and make corrections to the plan to reflect reality." I don't think of it as "I will eat no more than 1700 calories each day." Because ultimately, unless I moved into a locked laboratory, I can't just make that happen. I don't eat calories; I eat food, things like strawberries and cheddar cheese and turkey sandwiches and Twix and margaritas. The calories are an abstraction, and they are not worth getting upset about. I just use them, from time to time, to tell me if my habits are helpful or harmful.

Semiannual gluttony retrospective, part I.

First of all, here is my maintenance cred.

This is me in 2008, near the end of my weight loss...

...and this is me a couple of weeks ago, wearing the same clothes and attempting to reproduce the pose (no belt, though):

I think I weighed about 109 pounds in the 2008 photo.  I probably weighed 114 in the 2012 photo.  Truth is, I like myself better at 114 than at 109.  The giddiness has been replaced by a quieter and more long-lasting satisfaction.

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Let's talk first about whether maintenance is getting "easier" as time goes on.

The challenges change, that's for sure.  My mental health has improved.  When I first changed my way of eating (WOE as they call it on the various boards -- not my favorite acronym the Internet has produced), I had done little but exchange one kind of disordered eating and disordered movement for another:  I'd gone from slothful gluttony to hyper-control-freaky rigidity.

 I'm not saying I regret that, because the second set of disorders got me where I wanted to be.  But they took a while to fade.  

The improvement is here:  When my weight is within limits, well under control, I can just... live.  No counting, no stressing.  Eat when I am hungry, etcetera.  I do normal things like occasionally nibble on the kids' leftovers, but I don't feel compelled to clean their plates for them.  I sometimes have seconds of something tasty, without guilt, but I don't eat six helpings.  I might eat that extra slice of pizza now and then.  Sometimes, when I'm busy, I skip going to the gym and I don't worry that it means I will never go again.

Nowadays, I only get that panicky must-count-all-my-calories, guilt-over-the-sensation-of-fullness, must-get-to-the-gym-before-all-else, lie-awake-fretting-about-whether-I-can-still-control-myself-sufficiently feeling when my weight goes up to 115 or if I wear a pair of pants that feels tight as I go about my day.

I am unsure as to whether I should consider its persistence a feature or a bug.

Probably it causes me to do the right thing, i.e., moderate my eating and maintain my healthy weight, for the wrong reason, i.e. PANIC PANIC PANIC PLEASE DON'T LET ME HAVE TO BUY BIGGER PANTS AND PLEASE DON'T LET ME SEE "TIL that smartypants bearing is fat again" ON THE FRONT PAGE OF REDDIT OR EVEN /r/catholicism PLEASE.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons has always been my specialty.  Never could quite figure out how to make the wrong reasons go away.

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Despite how I really feel and behave, I know the attitude I aspire to have.  Even if I pruned away the vanity and the fear of shame that largely keeps me in line, these thoughts --- if they remained --- might be enough:

• I want to keep my body strong and healthy as I grow older, in the context of unpredictable twists and turns of life and genetics, so that I can keep doing what needs to be done.  "Living out my state of life, the best I can under the circumstances," you might say.
• I don't want to be a glutton.

The longer I keep this up, the more obvious it becomes that my "wrong" reasons for working hard to stay at a low weight actually fight against these better desires.  The more I focus on the number on the scale and the fit of my clothes, the more tempted I am to slide back into bulimia -- not conducive to the long-term health I say I value -- and to a different sort of gluttony, the kind where I worry constantly about food, get all high-maintenance in restaurants, and snap at children because they ate my special yogurt that I was saving for my 3:30 p.m. snack.

Because one thing I've learned through the past four years is that there are eating disorders that keep you fat and eating disorders that keep you thin, but they're still disorders.  There are gluttonies that keep you fat and gluttonies that keep you thin, but both are no good way to live.

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So it's still hard to keep mentally and spiritually healthy with respect to food.  Still very hard.  I think I have the right target -- I know what is right -- and maybe it will go on being hard to hit that target, but at least I can see it and I can keep aiming for it every day.  I accept this cross.

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I noticed that certain old bad habits are easy to slide back into, and other old bad habits I have still never touched.

The ones that are easiest are the ones that are common to lots of people, especially the ones that aren't necessarily bad for other people who maintain their healthy weight without difficulty.

I have the misfortune of being a small person.  I calculate my maintenance calorie target to be something like 1800 calories per day.  This is not a lot.  The average American caloric intake in 2003 was 2,757 calories, according to the USDA.  And I live with a man who needs roughly 2,800 calories per day to maintain his weight, according to the roughest calculator that takes gender, height, weight, and activity level into account (here, scroll down to Method #2).

If I take my cues from people around me, I'm basically sunk.  And it's really easy to take cues from people around me.  The weight-gaining habits that I find easiest to slip into don't sound like bad behavior, they sound like normal-people behavior.  That's because they are normal-people behavior:

• Filling up my plate
• "Hey, can I have a few of your fries?"
• Pouring a full glass of beer or wine with my dinner
• Taking a second serving at lunch or dinner 
• Sharing a bedtime snack with the family
• Building meals on a foundation of whole grains
• Letting the number of vegetable/fruit servings per day slip below six

These are normal things for people to do and I cannot do them regularly without gaining weight.  Because I am a small person and I can only burn 1800 calories a day.  But because they are normal things for people to do, and because my kids and husband do all of them without trouble, it is really easy to slip into the habits.  Heck, it barely even counts as gluttony except that I know better.

The kinds of things that I don't ever slip into, that I find easy to avoid now, are the things that I firmly think of as gluttonous for the average person.

• I still don't eat meals between meals.  If I have a snack, I'm good about keeping it small.
• I still don't go through drive-throughs to get a snack.  I keep almonds and granola bars in my car.  I stick to those, and most days I never touch them, but if I need them they are there.
• When Mark goes out of town for four days, I still don't order an entire medium pizza and eat it sadly in front of the computer after the kids go to bed. 
• I still don't eat two or three eggs for breakfast.  (Unless I have just come from the gym and am in a breakfast restaurant on a Saturday morning after 8 AM and they have eggs Benedict and they won't sell me a half order.  I have found that in this circumstance it is useless to resist; better just to compensate with a lighter lunch.)
•  I still don't devour an entire box of cereal or sleeve of saltine crackers at one sitting. 
• I still cut small servings of desserts, doughnuts, etcetera.   (Taking seconds is an easy habit to fall into.  Cutting big pieces is not a habit I have a problem with.)
• I can't remember the last time I have gone on a binge through the pantry.  I may be cured of lonely binge eating.

There's nobody around me who regularly does any of these things (except that Mark eats big snacks, but I can mostly deal with that one).  I think of a drive-through as a Bad Place To Get A Snack.  I have internalized the idea that eating a whole pizza by yourself is bad.  I believe that desserts are best enjoyed in small portions.   These are hard to slide into without noticing.

I still eat shredded cheese out of the bag, though.  There's just a lot of shredded cheese around here.

I'll write more later.

The semi-annual gluttony retrospective.

Well, it's that time of year again.

In May and November of every year --

yeah, I'm a little late this holiday season, but at least I made it to the crucial "between Thanksgiving and Christmas" metric --

I write a few posts about the maintenance of my 2008 weight loss.  

I do this for a couple of reasons.

First, it gives me the opportunity to clean up the links to old posts about gluttony, weight loss, and weight maintenance.  Taken all together, the posts about gluttony and weight loss and such form a lengthy and growing series, and it's one that gets a lot of hits.  I can see from the stats that often someone comes to read through the whole thing.  I like to keep it maintained if I can.  (Right now it's a little ragged.  I'll let you know when I get it all fixed up.)

Second, it gives me a needed semi-annual accountability fix.  It always seems that right about every six months, I've started to slide a bit, and writing publicly about my lazy bad habits generally shames me into paying attention to them again long enough to do me some good.  This is a long-term project and it needs regular upkeep, even as the frequency of upkeep has dropped quite low.

Third, time has refined and tested many of my theories and ideas about how to defeat gluttony and, secondarily, how to resist gaining the weight back; also, how to maintain mental health and raise children with healthy attitudes toward bodies, food, and fitness.  As I stumbled along, I got a lot of things wrong or at least not quite right, and as I get older and learn things, I like to go back and see what I used to think and write, and ask myself if I have learned anything new.  I want to find places where I was wrong, and point them out here in this space, maybe go back and update old posts.

Readers:  

• what would you like to see here in the next few posts?  
• any stories from the trenches you'd like to share?
• recommendations of articles or books?  (A few people have sent me some already that I've saved for this)
• any questions?

The combox is yours.

 EDITED TO ADD:   Really, only one comment or question?  Maybe I've finally exhausted the topic!