What is a Calorie Ceiling? It's the amount of calories that you are able to eat without being hungry, feeling deprived, or quickly gaining or losing weight.
In other words, it's the amount of food that's neither undereating (dieting) or overeating (binging, pigging out, stuffing your face). It's just plain normal eating.
How to choose the Calorie Ceiling that's right for you?
Here is how I chose mine:
I knew a guy whose Calorie Ceiling was 2000 calories a day, and tried that. But I found that while 2000 calories was possible for me, it required a certain amount of willpower to keep it going. That means mental stress, which in respect to food, must always have an eventual reckoning (that is, quitting the "diet" for a binge). Also, I was losing weight on 2000 calories, a pound or two a week. So this amount of calories was, for me and my metabolism, just a bit too low to be a reasonable and effective Calorie Ceiling.
So what did I do? I decided to add on 500 calories. Now my Calorie Ceiling was a COMFORTABLE 2500 daily calories.
Choosing a comfortable, do-able daily calorie limit MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD! Having a calorie limit of which that I was fearlessly confident took all the stress away from the idea of limiting how much I ate.
But what about you? How will you find your own Generous Calorie Ceiling?
The first thing is to realize that not everyone has the same metabolism. A petite female professional who has a fairly sedentary job is going to have a much lower Calorie Ceiling than a tall construction worker. So there is no way I or anyone can say that there is a Calorie Ceiling number that is right for everyone.
Should you use one of the online "Calorie Calculators" that, with inputs on your age, gender, and height, purport to tell you how many calories you need?
I have checked out several of these calculators, and in my opinion, they were all wildly inaccurate regarding what works for me.
So here is what I suggest to begin, right now.
If you're male, begin with 3000 calories as your Calorie Ceiling.
If you're female, 2500 calories a day as your Calorie Ceiling.
Probably some of you are saying "that is too high!" (Also, some of you are saying it's too low!) But these are good initial Calorie Ceilings for virtually everyone, whether you're built on the small side, largely sedentary, or whether you're a very active 6' 6" guy.
Monday, December 26, 2016
Friday, December 23, 2016
How it Works
Here is the program:
1) Choose a Calorie Ceiling that you can live with every day of the year.
2) Keep track of your calories every day, keeping the amount that you eat just below your Calorie Ceiling.
That's it!
Does it seem hard, complicated? I assure you it's neither. It's easy, it's simple.
Let me show you how I did it, and how you can easily duplicate what I did.
1) Choose a Calorie Ceiling that you can live with every day of the year.
2) Keep track of your calories every day, keeping the amount that you eat just below your Calorie Ceiling.
That's it!
Does it seem hard, complicated? I assure you it's neither. It's easy, it's simple.
Let me show you how I did it, and how you can easily duplicate what I did.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Applying Proven Recovery Principles to Overeating
There is a saying, "Nothing succeeds like success"! And to succeed at anything, from being a great basketball player to learning chess to Having finally stumbled upon an already known doorway to success with other compulsions, I began to consider what principles of recovery I'd been ignoring.
1. Quitting FOR GOOD AND FOR ALL.
This is a key AA principle, perhaps the most key to my long term recovery. It means that once embarked upon abstinence from alcohol, there are no "off" days where one can drink. Complete abstinence. This is probably the first thing everyone learns about the AA way of life, that there are no occasions -- none whatsoever -- where it's OK to have even a single sip of alcohol. The idea of "well, just one won't hurt me" is one of the old ideas that AA says must be smashed if any kind of recovery is desired.
I readily saw I'd been blind to following this principle concerning overeating. I would begin a diet of calorie restriction, and then with some meager days of success, tell myself I deserved a "holiday" of going off that diet (of course, with the notion that I could jump right back into the diet the next day).
I'd done this countless times, and of course on that next day, I had no will to begin again on the diet.
But there was a problem here. I'd been on a 2000 calorie a day diet, like Gene. But Gene was quite a bit older than me, and of slighter build. The 2000 calorie limit surely made me lost weight, but
Problem of the mind.
2) SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE See Page 190 BB: "Don't you believe you are going to have all you can do to get rid of that"? "Let's forget about all those other things, that is, trying to eliminate them all at once, and concentrate on the drink."
We forget about trying to fix every aspect of our diet, making it perfect, adding on rules for exercise, etc. Singleness of purpose is a principle that, for our purposes, means we only pay attention to ONE thing: keeping just below the # of calories daily.
3) FEAR This is the main problem behind all problems with overeating. That is, the problem isn't choosing the perfect diet with just the right correct foods, but the fears that "I won't get enough to eat to make me happy." I don't know how else to explain that feeling of alarm, loss of hope, when the seeming need to overeat is something we are strangely powerless over.
4) EFFECTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE. This is an AA principle that isn't quite spelled out in the AA literature, but nevertheless, it's the very foundation of the program. That is, if AA wasn't truly effective for stopping drinking, then what is the point of the program? And, if that program isn't sustainable -- meaning, its only something a person can do for so long before, for whatever reason, they can't stand it anymore and need to take a drink -- then again, what is the point of even trying AA? But as most everyone in AA knows, the program is both effective and sustainable. How do they know this? Because of the number of low bottom drunks who have gotten sober, are comfortable in their sobriety (don't hanker after having a drink and are otherwise relatively content human beings) and go on like this for decades.
In the same way, this program of GA, by focusing on the daily amount one eats with at LIBERAL daily calorie allowance, is both effective and sustainable.
5) TIME TAKES TIME As in any successful recovery program, "time" (recovery) must be a process of one day at a time, plus one day at a time, plus one day at a time....without any breaks. That is "time," meaning, everything to do with satisfaction and progress and results and happiness is directly linked to that series of days without a break. It can't be stressed enough: For the true compulsive overeater or glutton, there is no way to take a break, a vacation, a reward, a binge for even one day. All success comes from "time" -- the consistent, unbroken abstinence from going beyond your calorie ceiling.
Also, "time takes time" is about avoiding the greed for fast weight loss. This is a frequent impulse for many people who are frustrated with overeating and being overweight, and therefore their methods border on the extreme. So they go on diets of very low calories or inconvenient and complex plans to avoid certain foods, thinking that this deprivation and suffering will pay off in fast results. Of course, 99 times out of 100, their plans will fail and all their suffering will have been for nothing.
Extreme measures are not necessary! That is a golden truth of applying this program. Instead of extreme measures, I found that all that was necessary was to AVOID OVEREATING ONE DAY AT A TIME. Please read that carefully -- it doesn't say GO ON A VERY RESTRICTIVE DIET THAT WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER...no, just avoid over-eating. That is really all that is necessary to quickly overcome all the problems, both mental and physical, that come with overeating.
6) KEEP IT SIMPLE Simple works. Complex plans for food, whether they involved special kinds of food and lots of rules, or plans that change depending on certain circumstances, or (worst of all) plans that involve depriving your self for days or weeks and then stopping the plan once your ideal weight has been hit....all such plans are bound to fail.
But keeping it simple really works. It worked for me. All I need was one skill -- keeping track of my daily calories. All I needed was one plan - keeping my daily calorie below my Calorie Ceiling of 2500, and doing this every day. I had tried all kinds of complicated formulas, and they all failed. But this simple formula produced success. 100% success!
7) EASY DOES IT The test of whether you're doing it right is that it's easy. If it's hard -- you're doing it wrong! You probably have chosen a Calorie Ceiling that's too low. That's OK. In fact, it's good news! That will serve as a great learning experience that you were eating too little, and -- good news -- you can now up your Calorie Ceiling, say by 500 calories. This was exactly my experience. I had a Calorie Ceiling of 2000 calories, and while I "could" do it, doing it was a challenge. It required me constantly thinking about food and using willpower to make it through every day. But when I upped my CC to 2500 from 2000, I found that willpower was no longer necessary to get through any day. I could RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY, as the AA Big Book says.
I discovered an amazing truth: To win at this game, all I had to do was NOT OVEREAT! That was an incredibly profound revelation to me. Before, I'd thought that my problems with food required adjusting myself to complex and difficult diets. But now, I'd found out that if I just took care to avoid overeating,
a) I now longer had the fear of deprivation of not eating what I wanted, or as much as I wanted.
b) I never had to deal with hunger or craving (hard to believe, but true!)
c) My weight became stable. I was no longer gaining weight, and (more on this later), I found a base for a truly sane way to lose weight, if I wanted to. And I could lose weight EASILY as well!
1. Quitting FOR GOOD AND FOR ALL.
This is a key AA principle, perhaps the most key to my long term recovery. It means that once embarked upon abstinence from alcohol, there are no "off" days where one can drink. Complete abstinence. This is probably the first thing everyone learns about the AA way of life, that there are no occasions -- none whatsoever -- where it's OK to have even a single sip of alcohol. The idea of "well, just one won't hurt me" is one of the old ideas that AA says must be smashed if any kind of recovery is desired.
I readily saw I'd been blind to following this principle concerning overeating. I would begin a diet of calorie restriction, and then with some meager days of success, tell myself I deserved a "holiday" of going off that diet (of course, with the notion that I could jump right back into the diet the next day).
I'd done this countless times, and of course on that next day, I had no will to begin again on the diet.
But there was a problem here. I'd been on a 2000 calorie a day diet, like Gene. But Gene was quite a bit older than me, and of slighter build. The 2000 calorie limit surely made me lost weight, but
Problem of the mind.
2) SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE See Page 190 BB: "Don't you believe you are going to have all you can do to get rid of that"? "Let's forget about all those other things, that is, trying to eliminate them all at once, and concentrate on the drink."
We forget about trying to fix every aspect of our diet, making it perfect, adding on rules for exercise, etc. Singleness of purpose is a principle that, for our purposes, means we only pay attention to ONE thing: keeping just below the # of calories daily.
3) FEAR This is the main problem behind all problems with overeating. That is, the problem isn't choosing the perfect diet with just the right correct foods, but the fears that "I won't get enough to eat to make me happy." I don't know how else to explain that feeling of alarm, loss of hope, when the seeming need to overeat is something we are strangely powerless over.
4) EFFECTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE. This is an AA principle that isn't quite spelled out in the AA literature, but nevertheless, it's the very foundation of the program. That is, if AA wasn't truly effective for stopping drinking, then what is the point of the program? And, if that program isn't sustainable -- meaning, its only something a person can do for so long before, for whatever reason, they can't stand it anymore and need to take a drink -- then again, what is the point of even trying AA? But as most everyone in AA knows, the program is both effective and sustainable. How do they know this? Because of the number of low bottom drunks who have gotten sober, are comfortable in their sobriety (don't hanker after having a drink and are otherwise relatively content human beings) and go on like this for decades.
In the same way, this program of GA, by focusing on the daily amount one eats with at LIBERAL daily calorie allowance, is both effective and sustainable.
5) TIME TAKES TIME As in any successful recovery program, "time" (recovery) must be a process of one day at a time, plus one day at a time, plus one day at a time....without any breaks. That is "time," meaning, everything to do with satisfaction and progress and results and happiness is directly linked to that series of days without a break. It can't be stressed enough: For the true compulsive overeater or glutton, there is no way to take a break, a vacation, a reward, a binge for even one day. All success comes from "time" -- the consistent, unbroken abstinence from going beyond your calorie ceiling.
Also, "time takes time" is about avoiding the greed for fast weight loss. This is a frequent impulse for many people who are frustrated with overeating and being overweight, and therefore their methods border on the extreme. So they go on diets of very low calories or inconvenient and complex plans to avoid certain foods, thinking that this deprivation and suffering will pay off in fast results. Of course, 99 times out of 100, their plans will fail and all their suffering will have been for nothing.
Extreme measures are not necessary! That is a golden truth of applying this program. Instead of extreme measures, I found that all that was necessary was to AVOID OVEREATING ONE DAY AT A TIME. Please read that carefully -- it doesn't say GO ON A VERY RESTRICTIVE DIET THAT WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER...no, just avoid over-eating. That is really all that is necessary to quickly overcome all the problems, both mental and physical, that come with overeating.
6) KEEP IT SIMPLE Simple works. Complex plans for food, whether they involved special kinds of food and lots of rules, or plans that change depending on certain circumstances, or (worst of all) plans that involve depriving your self for days or weeks and then stopping the plan once your ideal weight has been hit....all such plans are bound to fail.
But keeping it simple really works. It worked for me. All I need was one skill -- keeping track of my daily calories. All I needed was one plan - keeping my daily calorie below my Calorie Ceiling of 2500, and doing this every day. I had tried all kinds of complicated formulas, and they all failed. But this simple formula produced success. 100% success!
7) EASY DOES IT The test of whether you're doing it right is that it's easy. If it's hard -- you're doing it wrong! You probably have chosen a Calorie Ceiling that's too low. That's OK. In fact, it's good news! That will serve as a great learning experience that you were eating too little, and -- good news -- you can now up your Calorie Ceiling, say by 500 calories. This was exactly my experience. I had a Calorie Ceiling of 2000 calories, and while I "could" do it, doing it was a challenge. It required me constantly thinking about food and using willpower to make it through every day. But when I upped my CC to 2500 from 2000, I found that willpower was no longer necessary to get through any day. I could RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY, as the AA Big Book says.
I discovered an amazing truth: To win at this game, all I had to do was NOT OVEREAT! That was an incredibly profound revelation to me. Before, I'd thought that my problems with food required adjusting myself to complex and difficult diets. But now, I'd found out that if I just took care to avoid overeating,
a) I now longer had the fear of deprivation of not eating what I wanted, or as much as I wanted.
b) I never had to deal with hunger or craving (hard to believe, but true!)
c) My weight became stable. I was no longer gaining weight, and (more on this later), I found a base for a truly sane way to lose weight, if I wanted to. And I could lose weight EASILY as well!
Thursday, November 17, 2016
The Solution
First of all, I looked again at what Motorcycle Gene had said about what had worked for him. It was brief advice.
1) He said he had a daily limit of 2000 calories.
2) Gene also said that many people go wrong in OA because they don't have any such hard and concrete limits on how much they eat. Instead, for some reason, they expect that managing their feelings will somehow lead to success.
So I pondered this, and reflected on whether or not it was true, and how it was true.
On point one, I knew it was true that Gene had truly found a way to stop overeating on a consistent basis. He had truly found success. I didn't have to take Gene's word on this (though I could have, as he was an exceedingly honest man). I just had to look at him. Gene was about 5' 6" and probably weighed 150, tops. In other words, he was extremely trim and fit looking for his size.
On point two, I could see that what Gene was suggesting about the lack of success by most people in OA was true as well. From attending a good many OA meetings, I saw that hardly anyone was successful. Group members were constantly talking about bingeing, or eating something with sugar in it. Most disturbingly, many there seemed to believe some kind of magic would someday happen that would cause them to stop overeating and lose weight.
So fine. Others in OA weren't successful in overcoming their problem with food, But neither was I.
The burning question then was: if recovery from overeating WAS possible, where had these people gone wrong? Where had I gone wrong?
I knew that I had recovered from the obsession and compulsion to drink alcohol. And I have also recovered from a serious addiction to cigarettes. These recoveries weren't flukes, they were genuine. This meant that consciously or unconsciously, I had done certain things right that produced success.
Adding to that, I knew of my friend Gene's genuine success with overcoming overeating. Gene seemed to be one of the very few, maybe the only person I'd met in OA who actually had authentic long term recovery from our common compulsion to eat as if it was our last day on earth.
I suspected that whatever Gene had done to conquer overeating had something very much in common with what I had done to conquer drinking and smoking. Could it be that I already knew the path to success with food, but hadn't realized that I knew it?
Could it be that I had failed with food, because I simply ignored certain principles of success that were essential to my recovery from drinking and smoking? In other words, was I actually deliberately flouting these proven principles of success in trying to overcome overeating?
This was a radical hypothesis!
What if I simply applied WHAT HAD ALREADY WORKED for me with drinking and smoking recovery directly to eating?
1) He said he had a daily limit of 2000 calories.
2) Gene also said that many people go wrong in OA because they don't have any such hard and concrete limits on how much they eat. Instead, for some reason, they expect that managing their feelings will somehow lead to success.
So I pondered this, and reflected on whether or not it was true, and how it was true.
On point one, I knew it was true that Gene had truly found a way to stop overeating on a consistent basis. He had truly found success. I didn't have to take Gene's word on this (though I could have, as he was an exceedingly honest man). I just had to look at him. Gene was about 5' 6" and probably weighed 150, tops. In other words, he was extremely trim and fit looking for his size.
On point two, I could see that what Gene was suggesting about the lack of success by most people in OA was true as well. From attending a good many OA meetings, I saw that hardly anyone was successful. Group members were constantly talking about bingeing, or eating something with sugar in it. Most disturbingly, many there seemed to believe some kind of magic would someday happen that would cause them to stop overeating and lose weight.
So fine. Others in OA weren't successful in overcoming their problem with food, But neither was I.
The burning question then was: if recovery from overeating WAS possible, where had these people gone wrong? Where had I gone wrong?
I knew that I had recovered from the obsession and compulsion to drink alcohol. And I have also recovered from a serious addiction to cigarettes. These recoveries weren't flukes, they were genuine. This meant that consciously or unconsciously, I had done certain things right that produced success.
Adding to that, I knew of my friend Gene's genuine success with overcoming overeating. Gene seemed to be one of the very few, maybe the only person I'd met in OA who actually had authentic long term recovery from our common compulsion to eat as if it was our last day on earth.
I suspected that whatever Gene had done to conquer overeating had something very much in common with what I had done to conquer drinking and smoking. Could it be that I already knew the path to success with food, but hadn't realized that I knew it?
Could it be that I had failed with food, because I simply ignored certain principles of success that were essential to my recovery from drinking and smoking? In other words, was I actually deliberately flouting these proven principles of success in trying to overcome overeating?
This was a radical hypothesis!
What if I simply applied WHAT HAD ALREADY WORKED for me with drinking and smoking recovery directly to eating?
Monday, October 10, 2016
My Story
My Story...
For as long as I can remember, I never had that ability, that common sense, that sanity that other people had. Specifically, that ability to not grossly overeat at every meal.
Eating for me was about eating as much as possible, eating until the thought of another bite made me feel ill. The enjoyment of eating was an equation basically of: eating is pleasure, and therefore the more I eat, the more pleasure I will feel.
Even more important to this equation: if I DON'T eat as much as I possibly can at every meal, then I am severely missing out on pleasure. And moreover, as a result of "restricting" myself, I am due for serious pain.
So on this went day after day, for some 50 years. A ferocious attitude toward food. In a word, GLUTTONY. Even with a fairly high metabolism, I always had a gut. Every meal was a serving size. A large pizza? One serving size. An entire chicken? One serving size.
I had also tried a variety of diets that were mainly based on the idea that controlling the quality of my food would result in a happy solution to my eating problems. So I tried vegetarianism, veganism, and even the macrobiotic diet. I went so far as to live in a Macrobiotic home in Colorado (back then they were called "study houses," where one paid for a room and someone to cook very high quality macrobiotic meals). I expected success, because macrobiotic men were thin!
But the problem with overeating remained. I went for stretches with being faithful to a "strict' macrobiotic diet, but always fell off the wagon for the forbidden temptations of sugar, dairy and meat. (I felt guilty about this for a long time, until I realized a very important truth -- almost NO ONE is able to faithfully and consistently eat a strict diet that, however "good" it's supposed to be for one's health, nevertheless leaves them feeling hungry and deprived. More on this later.)
Eventually I tried a 12 step group called Overeaters Anonymous. Lots of different ideas there, and frankly, not many success stories in those local meetings. Bbut I met a man called "Motorcycle Gene" who impressed me. I knew Gene had been a 12 stepper for several decades, and moreover, someone who led a life I could look up to. He had been a pilot before and during WWII, and could fly anything from a helicopter to the Goodyear blimp (indeed, he was one of the blimp's pilots!). And he was known to some as "Motorcycle Gene" because though he was well into his 80s, he still rode a Harley everywhere. Most impressive to me: Gene had conquered overeating. He had found the secret. Gene told me his story, about how he was always stuffing himself with food. But he'd found a solution to this problem. Now, Gene, though over 80 yrs. old, had the physique of a well-proportioned man in his 30s. Gene was not fat, he did not have a gut like I did. And he never overate. Gene said he put a limit on how much to eat every day.
It took me years before I fully understood Gene's secret to conquering overeating. It was so simple, yet it eluded me.
I took Gene's advice (as I understood it) for about a month.. It was the 1st time in my life without daily overeating. I lost a good bit of weight. But having this success, I felt it was time to reward myself with a really huge meal. After all, I could go back to Gene's way and start over.
Guess what happened next? If you guessed three years went by with me overeating about every day...you nailed it!
As I said, "about every day." This means the other days were spent trying following a half-way attempt at "getting back on track." Like Matt Foley. Manic enthusiasm to begin, and then finding a way to fall on my face a few days later, gorging myself on something or other. I didn't have a problem with kinds of food, but with overeating any kind of food. And these failures were all accompanied by the best of intentions. I deserve a break, this food looks too good to pass up, this is a "special occasion," and I start tomorrow, ad infinitum.
Finally, I reached a point where this was really getting tiresome. I was coming up on an anniversary of my AA sobriety date, and resolved to really begin a sane eating plan in earnest at that time. This was several weeks away. Now, to prepare, let's try something new: I will give up ALL control over my eating, and just eat as much as I want, whenever I want, and see what effect that has on my tendency to overeat. I mean, perhaps I was simply "repressed," and needed to give my overeating free reign to get it out of my system (yes, I can see this "strategy"was mostly a rationalization to give myself permission to really go on a run with my eating. But, since I was sincere about really doing something about my eating in a few weeks, I figured what the hell, let's really try letting go, giving full permission to my appetite and whatever intuitive wisdom I have about how much to eat. Maybe, just maybe, if I give in to "no rules," then my eating will straighten itself out.
Look, I don't even know if I really believed it would "straighten out." Nevertheless, for a month or so I followed my hedonistic "let go" program.
What, you ask, were the results of my little social experiment? Through unrestricted bingeing, did I get the compulsion out of my system? Sort of like aversion therapy where Mom catches you smoking and makes you smoke the whole pack of cigarettes? Did overeating cure me of wanting to overeat?
It did not! The more I overate, the more I wanted to eat. Strangely, I was never hungry, but always wanting more food. I was always full, but always wanting to be even fuller.
Have you ever done this? If not, you might be thinking "well, at least there was enjoyment from eating all that food, plus the enjoyment of the freedom to eat however much you wanted to eat."
Yes, you might think so, but you'd be wrong. I was surprised to find that there was really no enjoyment in fully giving in to overeating. The more I ate, the less I enjoyed it. Maybe that's not quite accurate -- overeating made enjoyment flee.
So the giving in to overeating experiment was a total failure. I felt like crap, I'd gained about 20 lbs., and my compulsion to eat had only gotten worse.
It was at this point that I really took stock of my situation with food. As I said, I was nearing an anniversary date of success over another addiction. I wanted to begin again and solve my problem with overeating.
So I took stock. Two things I knew:
1) My previous attempts to not overeat had all failed.
I was now 50 years old. This of course meant 50 years of failure. I didn't think of this statistic at the time, which is a good thing! It was of course true, but would have been highly discouraging.
2) My previous attempts to quit drinking and to stop smoking, HAD worked.
I began to think about this. I knew that it was possible to overcome drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. These were items that I used to excess and, like overeating, had repeatedly failed at overcoming. Yet overcome them I eventually did.
I began to wonder: would it not make sense to look very carefully at what I did that worked?
So I looked closely at "the program" I'd practiced over the last few years with food, and compared it to what I had done in respect to alcohol and tobacco. I looked closely, to see where I had gone wrong...for this might...just might hold a very slight chance....of holding the key to the solution.
Next -- the Solution
For as long as I can remember, I never had that ability, that common sense, that sanity that other people had. Specifically, that ability to not grossly overeat at every meal.
Eating for me was about eating as much as possible, eating until the thought of another bite made me feel ill. The enjoyment of eating was an equation basically of: eating is pleasure, and therefore the more I eat, the more pleasure I will feel.
Even more important to this equation: if I DON'T eat as much as I possibly can at every meal, then I am severely missing out on pleasure. And moreover, as a result of "restricting" myself, I am due for serious pain.
So on this went day after day, for some 50 years. A ferocious attitude toward food. In a word, GLUTTONY. Even with a fairly high metabolism, I always had a gut. Every meal was a serving size. A large pizza? One serving size. An entire chicken? One serving size.
I had also tried a variety of diets that were mainly based on the idea that controlling the quality of my food would result in a happy solution to my eating problems. So I tried vegetarianism, veganism, and even the macrobiotic diet. I went so far as to live in a Macrobiotic home in Colorado (back then they were called "study houses," where one paid for a room and someone to cook very high quality macrobiotic meals). I expected success, because macrobiotic men were thin!
But the problem with overeating remained. I went for stretches with being faithful to a "strict' macrobiotic diet, but always fell off the wagon for the forbidden temptations of sugar, dairy and meat. (I felt guilty about this for a long time, until I realized a very important truth -- almost NO ONE is able to faithfully and consistently eat a strict diet that, however "good" it's supposed to be for one's health, nevertheless leaves them feeling hungry and deprived. More on this later.)
Eventually I tried a 12 step group called Overeaters Anonymous. Lots of different ideas there, and frankly, not many success stories in those local meetings. Bbut I met a man called "Motorcycle Gene" who impressed me. I knew Gene had been a 12 stepper for several decades, and moreover, someone who led a life I could look up to. He had been a pilot before and during WWII, and could fly anything from a helicopter to the Goodyear blimp (indeed, he was one of the blimp's pilots!). And he was known to some as "Motorcycle Gene" because though he was well into his 80s, he still rode a Harley everywhere. Most impressive to me: Gene had conquered overeating. He had found the secret. Gene told me his story, about how he was always stuffing himself with food. But he'd found a solution to this problem. Now, Gene, though over 80 yrs. old, had the physique of a well-proportioned man in his 30s. Gene was not fat, he did not have a gut like I did. And he never overate. Gene said he put a limit on how much to eat every day.
It took me years before I fully understood Gene's secret to conquering overeating. It was so simple, yet it eluded me.
I took Gene's advice (as I understood it) for about a month.. It was the 1st time in my life without daily overeating. I lost a good bit of weight. But having this success, I felt it was time to reward myself with a really huge meal. After all, I could go back to Gene's way and start over.
Guess what happened next? If you guessed three years went by with me overeating about every day...you nailed it!
As I said, "about every day." This means the other days were spent trying following a half-way attempt at "getting back on track." Like Matt Foley. Manic enthusiasm to begin, and then finding a way to fall on my face a few days later, gorging myself on something or other. I didn't have a problem with kinds of food, but with overeating any kind of food. And these failures were all accompanied by the best of intentions. I deserve a break, this food looks too good to pass up, this is a "special occasion," and I start tomorrow, ad infinitum.
Finally, I reached a point where this was really getting tiresome. I was coming up on an anniversary of my AA sobriety date, and resolved to really begin a sane eating plan in earnest at that time. This was several weeks away. Now, to prepare, let's try something new: I will give up ALL control over my eating, and just eat as much as I want, whenever I want, and see what effect that has on my tendency to overeat. I mean, perhaps I was simply "repressed," and needed to give my overeating free reign to get it out of my system (yes, I can see this "strategy"was mostly a rationalization to give myself permission to really go on a run with my eating. But, since I was sincere about really doing something about my eating in a few weeks, I figured what the hell, let's really try letting go, giving full permission to my appetite and whatever intuitive wisdom I have about how much to eat. Maybe, just maybe, if I give in to "no rules," then my eating will straighten itself out.
Look, I don't even know if I really believed it would "straighten out." Nevertheless, for a month or so I followed my hedonistic "let go" program.
What, you ask, were the results of my little social experiment? Through unrestricted bingeing, did I get the compulsion out of my system? Sort of like aversion therapy where Mom catches you smoking and makes you smoke the whole pack of cigarettes? Did overeating cure me of wanting to overeat?
It did not! The more I overate, the more I wanted to eat. Strangely, I was never hungry, but always wanting more food. I was always full, but always wanting to be even fuller.
Have you ever done this? If not, you might be thinking "well, at least there was enjoyment from eating all that food, plus the enjoyment of the freedom to eat however much you wanted to eat."
Yes, you might think so, but you'd be wrong. I was surprised to find that there was really no enjoyment in fully giving in to overeating. The more I ate, the less I enjoyed it. Maybe that's not quite accurate -- overeating made enjoyment flee.
So the giving in to overeating experiment was a total failure. I felt like crap, I'd gained about 20 lbs., and my compulsion to eat had only gotten worse.
It was at this point that I really took stock of my situation with food. As I said, I was nearing an anniversary date of success over another addiction. I wanted to begin again and solve my problem with overeating.
So I took stock. Two things I knew:
1) My previous attempts to not overeat had all failed.
I was now 50 years old. This of course meant 50 years of failure. I didn't think of this statistic at the time, which is a good thing! It was of course true, but would have been highly discouraging.
2) My previous attempts to quit drinking and to stop smoking, HAD worked.
I began to think about this. I knew that it was possible to overcome drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. These were items that I used to excess and, like overeating, had repeatedly failed at overcoming. Yet overcome them I eventually did.
I began to wonder: would it not make sense to look very carefully at what I did that worked?
So I looked closely at "the program" I'd practiced over the last few years with food, and compared it to what I had done in respect to alcohol and tobacco. I looked closely, to see where I had gone wrong...for this might...just might hold a very slight chance....of holding the key to the solution.
Next -- the Solution
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