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The answer depends on the question.

A friend of mine asked me a week ago, "So, how important do you really think exercise is for weight loss?"  I gave a rambly off-the-cuff answer, but I wasn't satisfied with it.  Let me try again.

Research data does exist about the subject.  But the kind of data that's out there is not the sort that can be translated into advice for everyone.

Some of it reports a relationship between exercise and immediate weight loss; some of it reports a relationship between exercise and long-term weight maintenance.  Some of it compares cardiovascular-type exercise to resistance-type exercise.  Some of it reports what happens when totally sedentary people take up very minimal exercise; some of it reports what happens when people who move around during their normal lives introduce sessions of intense exercise; some of it reports what happens when people who already exercise in sessions add more sessions.  Some work studies people who are generally healthy, some work studies people who are ill or frail.  Clearly not all of the results are relevant to each person.

And then, what comes out in the headlines isn't necessarily what the researchers were studying.  Check out this apparently decent article in The Guardian:  "Why exercise won't make you thin."  The article reports:

In what has become a defining experiment at the University of Louisiana, led by Dr Timothy Church, hundreds of overweight women were put on exercise regimes for a six-month period. Some worked out for 72 minutes each week, some for 136 minutes, and some for 194. A fourth group kept to their normal daily routine with no additional exercise.

Against all the laws of natural justice, at the end of the study, there was no significant difference in weight loss between those who had exercised – some of them for several days a week – and those who hadn't. (Church doesn't record whether he told the women who he'd had training for three and half hours a week, or whether he was wearing protective clothing when he did.) Some of the women even gained weight.

But if you go to the journal article abstract, you will find no mention of weight loss.  The study's authors apparently felt that the really important result was the relationship between exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness.  (There is one.)

Finally, the numbers are not really simple enough to be distilled into headlines without losing some subtlety.  Let's say that "New study shows that X is superior to Y when it comes to losing weight."  This may mean that the average weight loss in the X group was significantly more than the average weight loss in the Y group.  Or it might mean that a greater percentage of the X group than of the Y group achieved some criterion for "success." But often there are some individuals in the Y group who outperformed individuals in the X group for some unknown reason.  How do you know which group you would do better in?  You don't, unless you try X and you try Y.

So:  Most of what you read in the papers may as well be ignored as acted upon.

That being said, I am personally convinced of this:

Exercise is next to useless for weight loss.  If there is an effect, it is so small as to be not worth the time and effort anyone puts into weight loss.  If the only reason you want to exercise is to lose weight, don't bother.  Seriously. 

(I've written about this before.)

But.

Why do you want to lose weight?

If any part of that is "Because I want to be healthier" --- or "stronger" --- or "able to do more things" --- or "longer-lived" ---

--- then exercise will give you that, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT LOSE ANY WEIGHT AT ALL.

I can't stress this one enough.

Mark told me about a paper that he saw presented at a conference that, while I cannot link to it, will do for an illustration.  The research subjects were overweight people who increased their exercise for the study.  Rather than just presenting averages and standard deviations and the like, the presenter showed data for all the individuals.  A few gained weight.  Most lost very little weight or no weight.  Some lost a significant amount of weight.  But all of them increased their muscle mass, and all of them increased their lean-to-fat body ratio. 

Yeah, some people will lose weight after they start exercising.  Good for them.  But why not just start with the assumption:  "Exercise will probably not help me lose weight, but it will definitely make me healthier."

So fess up.  If you are the sort to say you don't care so much about your appearance, but you want to lose weight because it's good for your health... well, if that's true then the only logical response is to get some exercise.

Or even if you DO care about your appearance, AND you want to lose weight because it's good for your health, then the only logical response is STILL to get some exercise.

"But wait," you might be saying.  "I do only care about my health, but we all know that simply being obese is so very bad for my health, that if I stay obese I'm going to be unhealthy anyway.  I should try to lose weight first, and if exercise won't help me lose weight or might even make it harder to lose weight, then it'll actually be standing in the way of better health."

Bzzt.  Very, very little evidence exists for the assertion that being obese, alone, causes health problems.  Correlation has been demonstrated.  Causation, not so much.

Exercise will definitely make you healthier.  Losing weight will not definitely make you healthier.

So.  Let me distill this into a handy Q&A.

***

Q.  I want to lose weight, so should I be getting regular exercise?

A.  Yes.

***

Q.   If I want to GAIN weight, should I be getting regular exercise?

A.  Yes.

***

Q.   Let's suppose I don't give a flying fig newton whether my weight goes up or down or stays the same.  Should I be getting regular exercise?

A.  Do I really have to answer that?  

Q.  Yes, just for the sake of completeness.

A.  Yes.

Q.  That's what I thought you would say.

A.  Glad to oblige.

Q.   Okay, this is what I REALLY meant to say. I'm not getting regular exercise, and I'm not losing weight as fast as I want to.  Will it help me lose weight if I get more exercise?

A. I can't be sure, but probably not.

Q.  Is that bad news or good news?

A.  Yes.

Wanted: Honesty.

At Whatever, science fiction author John Scalzi has some good things to say about finding the time to write.  

As I read it, I thought that it really applies to anything people say they "want" to do.

So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

If your answer is “yes,” then the question is simply when and how you find the time to do it. If you spend your free time after work watching TV, turn off the TV and write. If you prefer to spend time with your family when you get home, write a bit after the kids are in bed and before you turn in yourself. If your work makes you too tired to think straight when you get home, wake up early and write a little in the morning before you head off. If you can’t do that (I’m not a morning person myself) then you have your weekend — weekends being what I used when I wrote Agent to the Stars.

And if you can’t manage that, then what you’re saying is that you were lying when you said your answer is “yes.” Because if you really wanted to write, you would find a way to make the time, and you would find a way to actually write. Cory Doctorow says that no matter what, he tries for 250 words a day (that’s a third of what I’ve written in this entry to this point), and if you write just 250 words a day — the equivalent to a single, double-spaced page of text — then in a year you have 90,000 words. That’s the length of a novel. Off of 250 words a day. Which you could do. On the goddamned bus. If you really wanted.

This is why at this point in time I have really very little patience for people who say they want to write but then come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they don’t have the time. 

I particularly liked the line:  "If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.”"  Rings true, no?

I hear it about homeschooling from time to time.  I occasionally hear "I would like to homeschool, but there's no way I could do it, I don't have the patience, etc."  This is a good example, because believe me, every one of those obstacles has been overcome by many, many people who really wanted to homeschool their kids.  Or, lacking a desire, who really believed it was what they ought to do.  There is nothing wrong with not wanting to homeschool your kids, by the way.  And it's not what everyone ought to do.   But again, honesty about it.

And I hear it about regular exercise -- much more commonly than about homeschooling.  "I want to exercise, but I don't have the time."  Same thing.  Whatever your obstacles, whatever your set of obstacles, other people have had them, and some of those people -- the ones who really wanted to -- have gotten through and over and around them.  

The doing is the measure of the wanting.  "Doing" might involve planning and preparing, but it implies action of some kind.  Without action, so-called wanting is only vapor and wind.  Not wanting at all.

Which makes me think that a good resolution to make might be to stop saying "I really want to do X" when the evidence demonstrates that I don't.  And that means facing up to some truths about who I am, because don't we all measure ourselves in part by what we imagine ourselves doing, rather than by what we really do?  And couldn't that truth set us free?

Like this:  

• I don't want to read stories to my children every day. 
• I don't want to go to Mass except on Sundays.  
• I don't want to turn off the computer every night as soon as my husband gets home.
• I don't want to take public transit instead of my car.
• I don't want to grow kitchen herbs in containers.
• I don't want to stop feeding the kids convenient and cheap packaged cookies for tea snacks.

What don't you really want to do?

Pounds of vegetables, because you asked.

I have my receipt in front of me, and I can report that I bought about 37 pounds of fresh produce today at the store.  Plus three pounds of frozen vegetables, a can of pineapple tidbits, and a can of basil-garlic tomato paste.

I just picked up my quarter-beef, which will last me a while, so it's not too surprising that the only meat I bought was in a package of hot dogs and four cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (don't look at me like that, we start school next week and I need lunch to be reeeeeeeealllly easy).  The other processed foods I bought were Cheerios (baby now on solids -- must have Cheerios), hot dog buns (natch), and some frozen cheese pizzas and frozen french fries (see above re: lunch).  Then there was some milk, eggs, cheese, and yogurt, peanut butter, coffee, and baking powder.  That's it.  Total bill $122.66, enhanced a bit because I bought a few organic items.

But understand that I have a nice big pantry that we stocked up with canned-good and dry-good staples some weeks ago.  I never buy things like dish powder or toiletries at the grocery store, either.

Finally where I want to be, again.

Almost seven months after the baby was born, I've finally returned to my intended postpartum weight.  

Interestingly enough, it took me longer to lose those 28 pounds than it took me to lose the 40 pounds I lost in the first place, back in 2008.  What's the difference?  Well, I didn't really have a sense of urgency -- once I saw that the weight was coming off without too much difficulty, I felt content to let it happen slowly and with less effort.  I didn't regard it as a health problem -- postpartum weight is normal, after all.  I didn't do much other than stick to my habits (with some allowance for the need to eat and drink enough to keep up with breastfeeding) and watch the chart I was keeping, to make sure the weight kept going down.

Which means I am in maintenance again.

I am going to try staying at 112, four pounds heavier than I was before I got pregnant.  I figure I ought to be carrying a little more weight just because I'm nursing a young baby.  And, truth be told, I thought I looked too thin at 108.  Where I am now, my clothes fit fine but the edges are a little softer, I hope.

I feel so much more confident entering maintenance this time than I did last time.  Back then I was pretty bewildered by it (see here, here, here, here...)  But now I think I finally know what I am doing.  

I'm still working on the "printable version" project, by the way, but it's one of those few-minutes-here, few-minutes-there things.

Results.

If I could only learn to live in the moment, I'd have a much easier time running races.  I spent the first two miles of my 5k worrying about the big hill that I was going to have to climb in the third mile.  I'd seen it as soon as I rounded the first bend -- the half-marathoners, who got to go first of course, were running up that long, low hill and down the other side.  No, it didn't look too steep, but it was so long!

It's not that I was afraid I couldn't run up the hill -- more like anticipating a needle stick.  You know it's coming and it won't be fun.

So I sort of gritted my teeth and worried about the hill.  I was worrying about climbing the hill when I passed the one-mile mark.   I was worrying about climbing the hill when I rounded the turnaround.  I was worrying about climbing the hill while people passed me and I tried to find someone I could pace myself against.  Finally I spotted a woman wearing a bright pink top and with a long thick braid of red hair falling down her back -- she was going about as fast as I thought I could go, so I fell in behind her and tried to keep up.  I worked for a while and nearly caught up before she picked up the pace.  Another woman with a brightly colored hair band barely passed me -- I thought, maybe I can stay between these two?  And that's what I worked on, staying in front of Hair Band and behind Red Braid. 

Somewhere in there I felt a sort of ka-chunk in the pit of my stomach followed by a wave of desire to fall to a walk.  It's a weird feeling that has hit me in all three races -- a very sudden feeling of emptiness.  It feels like I suddenly get hungry, I told Mark later -- "Weird," he said.  (He claims that running makes him lose his appetite until a good while after he's done.) 

I don't know, maybe that's the moment when I suddenly run out of available muscle fuel?  Who knows.  It's a mini-bonk.   "Oh no," I thought, "and I haven't climbed the hill yet!"  Except that when I looked around I realized I was already almost to the crest of the hill -- the folks not far ahead were already starting to spill over the downhill.   It had snuck up on me when I wasn't looking.

I made a mental note to add incline to my training runs, at the end, where I fear it the most.

"What's your strategy?" Mark had asked me before I started. 

"Boring, steady pace."

"That's right!  Keep it steady, and then you'll sprint to the finish!"

"I don't sprint."

"Come on!  It's a downhill finish!"

"It flattens out before the end."

"I'll watch for you about a tenth of a mile from the end so MJ can cheer you on."

So, there I was, running steady, and now going downhill.  I tried to swing my legs long and easy, resting them after the climb (which must have tired them out at least some, even though I didn't notice it at the time.  Right?)  Red Braid was still in front -- I could see her as she spat on the ground, stepped on the spit, her shoe peeling it up from the pavement.   I thought maybe I could run the same pace as the downhill all the way to the end.  I could see the road sign (40 mph) that I knew was half a block from the end.  And then I could see the clock.  The first two digits were a two and a six -- no, a seven!

I watched the clock counting up:  27:14, 27:15, 27:16.  "Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen," I heard myself puffing.  I picked up the pace, even as I thought, "I am not going to make it."  Meaning my goal of twenty-seven-something.  But a few steps later I realized that I had temporarily forgotten how many seconds there are in a minute.  Sixty, not thirty.  Okay then!  And I crossed the line.

I gave the finisher's medal to my daughter for her fourth birthday today.

UPDATE:  Data:  My chip time was 27:27 -- a full minute faster than the last time I ran.  I came in #82 overall out of 241 runners -- #35 out of 165 females, and #28 out of 126 females younger than forty.  

I beat twenty-three of the 53 males younger than forty.

Me!

Tomorrow's run.

Last night our family went to the gym, as we usually do on Thursdays.  I've been swimming on Thursdays, running on my other two days a week, but last night I ran because it was my last workout before tomorrow's 5K.

My "tapering" run, so I got to have an easy run.   "How fast should I go?" I asked Mark, and he suggested I run two-thirds of my usual pace.   I feel kind of cheesy calling one workout "tapering," but since I only run twice a week, one workout will have to do.

After I finished my last run -- by the way, I've finally gotten my running back to where it was when I got pregnant -- just in time for the baby's half birthday -- I was so happy.  "Only one more workout, an easy one," I thought.  "And then I run the 5K, and after that I can go back to swimming most of the time and running only occasionally.  Yay!"

Yep, I still kind of hate running.

I barely broke a sweat during my "easy" run yesterday. It was almost like sitting on the couch watching Alton Brown on the treadmill TV.  I told Mark so.

He must have detected a skeptical note in my voice.  "After an easy workout, you'll be much better prepared to go all out for the finish on race day!" he said cheerfully.

"I don't like going all out," I complained, thinking about the yucky feeling of having already run fast for twenty minutes and having many minutes left.  Thinking about the clock counting down on the treadmill and how often I look at it and think, What do you mean only forty seconds have passed since the last time I looked at the clock?

He laughed at me.

The truth is, I really can't lose tomorrow.  It is my third 5K ever.  My two previous times were 28:24 (not pregnant) and 28:27 (several weeks pregnant).  If I do better than that tomorrow, great.  If I do worse, then, well, I just had a baby!  Also, last time I was in the 30-34 age group, and now I'm in 35-39, so what do you expect from a geezer like me? 

(But I admit I would really like to manage 27:something.)

Still thinking about printable version.

I am still looking around for blog-slurping options that will let me easily produce a printable copy of the gluttony posts, but I haven't found them yet (at least not for TypePad).  

 I may have to do this manually.  Ever the perfectionist, I am stomping hard on the part of me that is chirping, "No problem!  I'll just manually convert all the material into LaTeX!  I'm sure I remember how to do it, after all, I finished my thesis only 6 years ago!"

What I'm getting at is that, if I do put it together manually, I'll probably use the opportunity to organize the material at least somewhat.  I think someone suggested I put it together thematically, but with themes that generally progress chronologically.   Maybe so.

Another question I had.  Do I own comments on my blog, or do commenters own comments on my blog?  I've never had a tagline that asserts ownership or copyright of the content of comments, so I was wondering.  I would prefer to include comments, if I won't get in trouble for it -- but then again, maybe the comments aren't all that important?

More questions about the printable version.

Have you commented yet on the post about what sort of "printable version" of my gluttony/weight loss/fitness posts you'd most like to see?   If not, please do.

So far it looks like most people are interested in what's probably the simplest option:  I should just string the posts together chronologically and put it in .pdf form. 

I could probably do that without too much trouble even on my own.

But does anyone have any recommendations for online services that would automate the process?  I googled around a little bit and there do seem to be some blog-to-book things out there.  Darwin recommended Lulu, and I will be checking it out -- any more ideas?

Resolution.

See my cliffhanger post for background.

How can I use what I've learned about gluttony and apply it to the other besetting imperfections in my life?

I've been turning the problem over in my mind especially as I lie in bed at night, waiting to fall asleep.  And a few days ago, just as I was drowsing off, pondering, I had a small thought that seemed promising and then as I tried fitting its connections into the various slots in my problem I found that it seemed to work.

I got up, somewhat astonished, and went downstairs for a glass of water, and in a bleary moment of worry that I would have forgotten my little thought in the morning, I scrawled one word on a sticky note and left it where I knew I would see it in the morning.

Once, when I was heavy, the fundamental problem was that I was inordinately attached to food, and suffered from a fear of going without "enough" of it. I had to learn how to practice detachment from food so that hunger -- the state of waiting for food -- would not make me anxious.

Well, the analogy comes from the fact that my current fundamental problem is also one of attachment.  I am inordinately attached to time.  I keep trying to call it "mine."  My time.  I own it.  I should be able to make it do what I want.  I reach ahead into the minutes, hours, and days, and assign an expectation to each slot.  Because each day I get 24 hours that I think should belong to me by rights.

And of course, that's simply not true.

I need to practice detachment from time, the way I once needed to practice detachment from food.

Because attachment to "my" time underlies all the problems I've written about, the difficulty with prayer, the distancing myself from my children's problems, the irritation with being interrupted, the anxiety about changing plans.  Just as I once feared hunger, I also fear running out of time, not having enough time.  I used to hoard food; I still jealously guard my time, always trying to do something extra to save it for later, spending it with difficulty.

"Mom, can I paint?"
"No. It takes too much time to clean up."

"Mom, can you read me a story?"
"No.  I am getting ready for dinner right now."

"Mom, can you play a game with me?"
"No.  It's my break time."

* * *

How can I take what I've learned about detachment from food and apply it to detachment from time?  Well, there are a number of similarities here.

(1) Both are "things of this world" that will pass away.  As hard as it may be to imagine eternity without, say, hot fresh pizza, the fact is that there are a finite number of pizza slices I can and will eat before I kick the bucket.  It's hard to imagine eternity without time in which to do stuff, too.  And yet, though I like pizza and I like to keep busy, I'm supposed to enjoy this afterlife thing?  I suppose one possible response is to try to eat as much pizza and get as much stuff done as I can, here on earth, but it's plain that another response is to learn to let go of both.

(2) It is impossible to go cold turkey from time or planning.  Just as the person with food attachment issues may not solve them by declining to eat food ever again, the person with time-attachment issues may not solve them by declining to allocate time.  Everyone has to eat something; and everyone has to spend time doing something.  So it is not an issue of "quitting" so much as it is an issue of learning to live peacefully alongside and in the stuff.

Blessed are the efficient, for they shall get all their paperwork in on time, and that shall give them a chance to catch up on the laundry.  Hm, doesn't quite have a ring to it.

(3)  Both are fundamental and fear-based imperfections that feed a set of destructive habits.  In  the case of gluttony, fear of hunger led me to habitually eat too much at meals, to eat snacks I didn't need, to hoard food, and generally to think too much about food all the time.  In the case of attachment to "my" time, fear of running out of time leads me to spend what ought to be my leisure time and my family time working or planning.  It leads me to refuse to respond to children who interrupt me at my work, because I've already decided what to do with that block of time.  Just as I used to like the sensation of eating too much, I recognize that I derive pleasure from working or planning.  Both allayed fear.

(4)  Here is why I alluded to mom-blog angst in the previous post.  I don't know for sure what drives anyone else to find faults with themselves.  But I do know something about ME that might apply to others too.  Just as the invisible fear of not having enough food was the root cause of many bad habits, this fear of not having enough time, underlies a host of seemingly different visible faults.  Instead of attacking everything at once, then, it should be possible to make progress on every visible related imperfection by working slowly and steadily on that root of fear and attachment.

(5) Previously, I tried to deal with the visible problem in ways that actually worsened the underlying cause.  When I dieted to lose weight, I became MORE obsessed with food, and especially with "getting enough nutrition" and "getting enough to feel satisfied."  When I have wrangled with time in the past, I have tried to do it through ever-more-finely-divided scheduling:  Not enough time with the kids?  Put them in another block on the schedule!  Some scheduling is necessary, obviously, just as nutrition is necessary for the dieter, but a schedule is not going to solve the problem of undue attachment to control over my time.  If anything it feeds the notion that I CAN control and own time that "belongs" to me.

(6)  In both cases, it was disgust with the behaviors themselves, with the bad habits, that awoke me to the need for change.  I didn't really detach from gluttony because I wanted to lose weight.  I did it because I was tired of eating so much.  Well, I am also tired of saying NO, I'M BUSY to everybody so much.  I want to stop now, please, even if it will be hard and will require me to fight temptation.

* * *

So how will I do it?  

Well... How did I detach myself from food?

I worked at the level of the habits, changing behavior first.  I hoped that I could teach myself that I didn't have to fear hunger. But I knew that even if I never stopped fearing, I still had some control over my behaviors and my habits, so I started there.

I did experiments on myself to see what worked.

I talked and wrote about my new habits, a lot.  I described the successes and I described what I learned from the setbacks.  I kept it front and center in my attention.

I read books:  how-to books and memoirs.  Sometimes I gleaned tips and tricks, but mostly it was a way of keeping my attention on what I was trying to change.

Knowing I had the rest of my life to practice new habits, I didn't hurry.  I worked on just a few habits at a time, not everything at once, and I took very small steps.

* * *

I don't know for sure if this will "work."  When I was learning how not to be a glutton, I didn't write openly about it until my weight started to come off.  I wasn't willing to take the risk of being proven a coward and a quitter.

It's a little different now. I have some hope, based on my previous experience.

So.  Habit number one.

Starting right now, unless I'm driving, I will look at my children when I talk to them and when they talk to me. 

That's it.  That's my first baby step.

Here we go. 

St Francis de Sales, pray for us.

 

A deliberate cliff hanger.

Surf the Catholic mom blogs and it doesn't take long to gather a lot of angsty I'm-a-bad-mom links.

(I was going to post some, but I decided I don't want the mombloggers in question to think I am picking on them.)

 And what do you see? 

I spend too much time on the internet.  I spend too much time on the phone.  I need to take more time out for prayer in my day.  I need to stop reading about other people's lives.  I need to be fully present to my children.  I need to be more fully present to my spouse.  I probably should be taking the kids to daily Mass.  Maybe I should take a break from blogging.  Maybe I should go on a diet.  I should really re-subscribe to Flylady because my house is a mess.  I should really unsubscribe from Flylady because I can't keep up.  I need to bake more cookies.  I need to celebrate more feast days.   I need to sign up for a holy hour. 

I need to be more loving.  I need to be more devout.  I need to be more motherly.  I need to be more devoted.  I need to be more available.  I need to be more organized.  I need to be ...

... more...

... everything.

Everything at once.

Stop the madness, people.  Stop it now.

  * * *

I've been hinting for a long time that I want to explore the possibility that what I learned about gluttony through my weight loss could be applied in other areas of my life.  

Here:   

Is the "answer" to overcoming temptations of all kinds really for the "inner self" -- the one who "takes delight" in moral or correct or healthy or Godly behavior -- to set up the kind of structure around the "members" that cajoles them to behave?  To offer to the weak flesh, in return for good behavior, the short-term goodies it craves?

And here:

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. 

And here:

I didn't gain willpower overnight.  But I did, it seems, gain a will.  And the will to live differently was enough to drive me to find a way around the obstacles, the impulses.  It was suddenly so obvious to me that to follow these urges would still feel good, but would be the opposite of what I desired -- those paths would not just take me the opposite direction from what I desired, they would BE the opposite of what I desired.  I wanted to feel the steeper trail beneath my feet, not just the smooth downward grade.  I wanted more than the view from the top.  Though the effort would hurt, I wanted to climb. 

That desire is something that seems to have come out of nowhere, a pure gift; the closest thing I have ever come to understanding what grace is.  I believe there is more yet I can learn from it.  I believe I know what I am to do with it next. 

Will I?

And here:

I keep hinting about wanting to use what I've learned to defeat gluttony, to combat my next most besetting vice, which is letting this leisure-time activity of mine (and it's really not just internet use -- reading in general is part of it too) consume my attention.  It's possible that part of the problem is overconsumption, devoting too much time to it, and I guess I haven't exhausted the possibilities of self-limitation of total hours.  But honestly, I don't think it is "total time" that is the trouble.  It's the totality with which I get absorbed, even in taking a very short break to check e-mail or to dash off a quick blog post.  It's the reluctance to be interrupted.  I think Jen may have put her finger on it a bit in her post. 

Part of my vocation as mother demands that I make myself available to be interrupted when my children need something from me.  I am terrible at this.  Yes, I also need to train my children not to interrupt me for trivial matters, but you know, I want to be a mom who says "Sure, I'll read you a story" or "Yes, I'll help you settle that argument" or "Okay, I'll feed you breakfast."  I don't want the first thing I say to my kids in the morning to be "Aaaargh!  What are you doing up already?  It's not even seven o'clock yet!"  Even if I'm not done with my blog post.

I am struggling with how to put the pieces together for a strategy to change myself.  If I can do what I've already done, what can't I do?  But I still am not sure how to go about it.  I feel like I need a plan.

It wasn't just a plan I needed.  I needed a unifying theme.  I couldn't quite wrap my mind around exactly HOW the things I wanted to change could be analogous to the thing I DID change.  I know I don't want my children to remember me constantly staring at the computer screen, I know I need to say "Yes" more often, I know I need to be cheerfully interruptible.  And I had an inkling that the gluttony thing, what I've learned there, is meant to serve that higher purpose.  But I couldn't quite see how.  I have been thinking and praying about it for a many weeks, hoping that something would come clear to me.  Something that would show me how to get started, as clearly as that long-ago epiphany (May 13, 2008) when I woke up and decided to try being hungry for a change.

And a few nights ago, I think it did come to me.  I think I see where this has been going, all along.

More on this later.