I guess to some extent it is inevitable; if I'm going to try to change my behavior, I have to become more conscious of how I'm behaving. By now, a lot of my unhealthy eating patters are essentially automatic. If I don't make the effort to bring my food choices out into the conscious part of my brain, where I can evaluate them and make intentional decisions, then next thing I know some subconscious part of my brainstem will have made a tray of brownies and eaten half of them.
To some extent, this is the purpose of an eating plan: to bring my eating behavior out of the dark crawlspaces of my brain and up into the living room where I can keep an eye on it. Sometimes, though, this self-monitoring process can run amok. The line between conscious awareness of behaviors, and self-conscious hypervigilant over-scrutiny isn't always entirely clear.
For one example, I recently heard someone talking about "exercise bulimia." Now, I certainly have been exercising more lately. Instead of 3 or 4 times a week, I'm exercising more like 5 or 6. I wanted to get more weight lifting into my patterns, and I've managed to do that. Inspired by the triathlon coach who runs our spinning class, my wife and I are planning to start swimming lessons and get ready for a triathlon this Spring. So the question is, is this a healthy exercise pattern, or a newly emerging manifestation of my compulsivity around food, activity, and body weight?
It's not an easy question to answer. What are the criteria? I know what the end outcomes are: if this is a compulsive behavior, it will eventually wind up making me and the people around me miserable. But how do I know if I'm on that path, or on a path that leads to balance, health, relationship, and accomplishment?
The Wikipedia article on exercise bulimia has a list of warning signs. Exercising while injured or sick? Check. I've got a mild head cold, and I'm about to head off to the gym as soon as I'm done typing this. Defining self-worth in terms of performance? I don't know. I certainly do get a sense of accomplishment when I'm stacking more weights on the machine than I used to, or when I have to up the pace on the treadmill to maintain the same level of exertion. Is that really pathological? It makes me feel good, but surely it's an exaggeration to say that I'm defining my self-worth in terms of my treadmill setting.
For the record, I haven't been calling in sick to work so I can exercise, or defining myself as a special "elite" athlete. But what about "scheduling life around exercise?" Well, certainly I have made adjustments to my daily and weekly schedules to accommodate exercising.
I think this is why 12 step programs have sponsors. Sometimes when you're the one doing the behaviors, it is nearly impossible to draw the line and distinguish between healthy behavior and not. If I wasn't an expert at self-deception, I wouldn't be a compulsive eater in the first place. A sponsor, by virtue of being someone else who doesn't live in my head, can recognize when my behavior is going haywire and when it isn't; when I'm fooling myself and when I'm not.
Whether it's a sponsor, an accountability group, or a professional counselor, I think it's essential to put the monitoring function - or, perhaps, the function of monitoring the monitoring - on the outside perspective of a supportive Someone Else.
30 October 2010
16 October 2010
Getting Out of the Comfort Zone
One of the things they're always saying on the New Life Ministries radio program is "We don't want to make you feel good. We want to make you feel bad... bad enough to go out and do something to change your situation."
I have found some truth to this. We don't generally make big personal changes because we're feeling wonderful. In fact, most of us - certainly me - will bend over backwards and go to a lot of trouble to avoid changing, unless the status quo becomes really intolerable.
The flip side of this is that making big changes is never going to make us feel good - at least, not right away. The first reaction we're going to have when we make a change is discomfort.
One thing people will often say when they're frustrated with an ongoing problem is "I've tried everything!" Speaking for myself, what that usually means is that I've tried everything that's in my comfort zone. I've tried all the ways I usually try to cope with problems. The catch is, if it's an ongoing problem, it's probably caused in part by my habitual ways of coping, and the solution is just about guaranteed to lie somewhere outside my comfort zone.
Despite many promptings from the Spirit, I had a lot of resistance to the idea of going to a 12-step group. The objection that was most often on my mind was that I didn't want to be tied to another scheduled activity - another weekly errand - in an already overscheduled week. I think, looking back, this was mostly just a kind of opposition to going outside my comfort zone. I didn't want to turn my time over to Overeaters Anonymous any more than I wanted to turn my will over to God, or turn my feelings and problems over to a group of strangers.
I think, in the future, I should bear this in mind. When there's a solution to a problem that I'm feeling resistant to - a solution that I really, really don't want to think about - that's probably the one that's going to help me most.
I have found some truth to this. We don't generally make big personal changes because we're feeling wonderful. In fact, most of us - certainly me - will bend over backwards and go to a lot of trouble to avoid changing, unless the status quo becomes really intolerable.
The flip side of this is that making big changes is never going to make us feel good - at least, not right away. The first reaction we're going to have when we make a change is discomfort.
One thing people will often say when they're frustrated with an ongoing problem is "I've tried everything!" Speaking for myself, what that usually means is that I've tried everything that's in my comfort zone. I've tried all the ways I usually try to cope with problems. The catch is, if it's an ongoing problem, it's probably caused in part by my habitual ways of coping, and the solution is just about guaranteed to lie somewhere outside my comfort zone.
Despite many promptings from the Spirit, I had a lot of resistance to the idea of going to a 12-step group. The objection that was most often on my mind was that I didn't want to be tied to another scheduled activity - another weekly errand - in an already overscheduled week. I think, looking back, this was mostly just a kind of opposition to going outside my comfort zone. I didn't want to turn my time over to Overeaters Anonymous any more than I wanted to turn my will over to God, or turn my feelings and problems over to a group of strangers.
I think, in the future, I should bear this in mind. When there's a solution to a problem that I'm feeling resistant to - a solution that I really, really don't want to think about - that's probably the one that's going to help me most.
12 October 2010
Gory Scripture
Some scripture verses present an image that is difficult to embrace. One of these for me has always been Mark 9:47 - "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire" (KJT). Other translations differ slightly on the "offend:" some say "if thy eye causeth thee to fall into sin," or "causes you to stumble..." But they're all quite consistent on plucking (or gouging!) our own eyes out so we can get into Heaven.
This is not a pretty image, and it isn't entirely obvious how to interpret this and apply it in our lives. Salvation through self-mutilation? What's that about?
I do think this verse applies, and particularly in the area of personal change - of overcoming self-destructive behavior patterns. Whatever our addiction is - cigarettes, alcohol, sugar - there's something about it that we love. On some level, I do have a love of eating too much. I enjoy the pleasure of eating, and I enjoy the full, satisfied feeling. That enjoyment is a part of me, and like anyone else, I have a natural impulse to defend and protect anything that's a part of me. I think this is why we're so defensive about our bad habits. They may be bad habits, and they may cause us all kinds of misery, but they're part of us and something deep inside the lizard brain tells us to hold on and protect these parts of ourselves. This is why idea of stopping a behavior - however maladaptive it may be - can feel like someone proposing that we tear off some part of our own bodies.
The Lord's answer to this is right there in the scripture: even if I have to give up beloved part of myself, it's better to give it up and go to Heaven (and enjoy a healthier life here on Earth) than hold onto it and go to Hell (or make my own Earthly life into a kind of Hell).
I don't mean to imply by this that if I continue overeating (or if someone else continues drinking or smoking or whatever) that we're all condemned. Judgements about who goes where in the hereafter are made by the Boss up there, not by the help down here. One thing I can say, though, is that as I've progressed in my program and experienced some detachment from food, I've experienced some real spiritual benefits. Some of the things I'd been "smoothing over with food" - like friction in relationships, faults in myself, problems I'd been neglecting - have become more apparent to me and I'm learning to deal with them in healthier ways. I used to say I wanted to lose weight because I didn't want my son to be the one kid whose dad couldn't go on the hike because he's too fat. Now, I'm seeing this a bit differently: I want to be in recovery because I don't want to rob my son of the better dad I'll be when I really deal with my issues, rather than just burying them in food. Whether this will get me into Heaven or not - again, not my call. But it does seem like it's leading me to a better life here on Earth; a life closer to the Lord and closer to my loved ones.
This is not a pretty image, and it isn't entirely obvious how to interpret this and apply it in our lives. Salvation through self-mutilation? What's that about?
I do think this verse applies, and particularly in the area of personal change - of overcoming self-destructive behavior patterns. Whatever our addiction is - cigarettes, alcohol, sugar - there's something about it that we love. On some level, I do have a love of eating too much. I enjoy the pleasure of eating, and I enjoy the full, satisfied feeling. That enjoyment is a part of me, and like anyone else, I have a natural impulse to defend and protect anything that's a part of me. I think this is why we're so defensive about our bad habits. They may be bad habits, and they may cause us all kinds of misery, but they're part of us and something deep inside the lizard brain tells us to hold on and protect these parts of ourselves. This is why idea of stopping a behavior - however maladaptive it may be - can feel like someone proposing that we tear off some part of our own bodies.
The Lord's answer to this is right there in the scripture: even if I have to give up beloved part of myself, it's better to give it up and go to Heaven (and enjoy a healthier life here on Earth) than hold onto it and go to Hell (or make my own Earthly life into a kind of Hell).
I don't mean to imply by this that if I continue overeating (or if someone else continues drinking or smoking or whatever) that we're all condemned. Judgements about who goes where in the hereafter are made by the Boss up there, not by the help down here. One thing I can say, though, is that as I've progressed in my program and experienced some detachment from food, I've experienced some real spiritual benefits. Some of the things I'd been "smoothing over with food" - like friction in relationships, faults in myself, problems I'd been neglecting - have become more apparent to me and I'm learning to deal with them in healthier ways. I used to say I wanted to lose weight because I didn't want my son to be the one kid whose dad couldn't go on the hike because he's too fat. Now, I'm seeing this a bit differently: I want to be in recovery because I don't want to rob my son of the better dad I'll be when I really deal with my issues, rather than just burying them in food. Whether this will get me into Heaven or not - again, not my call. But it does seem like it's leading me to a better life here on Earth; a life closer to the Lord and closer to my loved ones.
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