That was a whirlwind trip!
I left for work Monday morning at about 7am, worked until 1:30 and hit
the road. After 6.5 hours of driving I
spent the night in Decatur, Illinois. I
had a short 30 minute drive the next morning to get to my business meeting at
8am which lasted until 12:30 and then I pointed the car back in the direction
that I came and 6.5 hours later I was home.
I planned ahead and packed all of my meals except breakfast, assuming
scrambled eggs and fruit would be easy to come by on Tuesday morning. That turned out to be not quite true as I
didn’t get great advice from the front desk clerk at the hotel. The diner I was directed to was not open at
6:30 in the morning. I ended up eating
my nuts and a couple of apples for breakfast.
It could have been worse. All in
all, I feel pretty good about the fact that I spent 14 of the last 36 hours in
a car by myself and did not eat any off program food. I drank a lot of water, ate a few too many
apples, and consumed more nuts than is recommended in a normal On Program day
(they are high in calories) but I didn’t eat any of the foods on my abstinence list,
so I feel really good about that. I’m
calling it a success. And next time I’m
packing an extra meal, just in case something unexpected happens again.
With respect to exercise, I got a workout in Monday morning
and brought my gear with me on my trip.
I did not get up early enough to exercise yesterday morning,
though. I did get my workout in this
morning, so that’s good. I’m still doing
the Black Fire workouts on the Daily Burn website. I like them a lot. I find them motivating and tough. They make me work hard. I want to do them all, every week. So far so good with Black Fire.
The big news, of course, is that Steve left for Samoa this
morning. He will be a Peace Corps
volunteer for the next 27 months. Maybe
it hasn’t quite hit me yet, but he is leaving the northern hemisphere and the
western hemisphere for over 2 years. I
know he is going to have an amazing, transformative experience. He has promised that he will blog about his
experience. He even bought a camera so
he can take pictures! As soon as I know
his blog address I will share it with everyone.
It’s hard to believe he’s gone.
This is something he has wanted for years. It is quite a process to get accepted as a volunteer
into the program but he stuck with it and now it’s paying off. Samoa.
For 27 months. Wow! Jack and I are planning on visiting him next
year. I am looking forward to that!
The business trip was fruitful. I learned quite a bit and met some people
that I will be working with into the future.
I can’t give a lot of details yet (that will change soon), but for now
it shall suffice to say that my world is getting turned a bit upside down. The next 90 days are going to be BUSY! I don’t expect to have any days completely
off until my surgery and I am a little worried about being able to take off the
last couple weeks of the year. I think
between Mike and me we can get everything squared away prior to December 16th,
but it is going to be tight. I just need
to settle into a routine of working weekends and evenings and acknowledging that
that is the way it is going to be for a while.
I have activities planned and will continue to do those things, like
bowling, baseball games (we have tickets to all of the playoff games,
exciting!), kids and grandkids coming to visit, kickball, etc…, but when I am
not doing something else I will pretty much be at work for the rest of the
year. The payoff will be that when we
get everything done that we need to get done, our jobs will actually become
easier in many respects. It’ll be
fine. We’ll get this done. Such is life.
I’m feeling strong with regard to my program. An interesting thing happened on Day 5 and I
can’t remember if I already mentioned it in a previous post, if so, I’ll be
repeating myself. On Day 5 I noticed
that food started tasting really good. I
first noticed it with a strawberry. I
popped a breakfast strawberry in my mouth and I was struck with how sweet and
full of flavor it was. All day long I
was exclaiming, “Wow, that tastes really good!”
Funny thing is, it was all the same food that I’ve been eating for
months. The big difference? I was no longer eating anything sweetened
with sugar or any manufactured foods of any sort. I also no longer had cravings for any of those
foods. It’s as if my taste buds
readjusted to appreciating the real food.
It sure makes eating food enjoyable when everything tastes so good!
Do I have a food addiction?
Probably a better question is do I have a crap food addiction? My behavior certainly mimics that of an
addict. If I abstain completely from
crap food I lose my cravings for it and can resist any temptations that are
around me. But if I “slip” and have just
one, it seems to open the door to having two a couple days later, and then more
the next day, and before you know it, it’s a habit again. I’ve lived with an alcoholic. I’ve lived this pattern. Sobriety for 3 or 4 months. Then one drink. Then a couple days later, two drinks, while
convincing himself he is not an alcoholic and he can be a “social drinker.” Then within a few weeks, drinking every
night, and before too long, drinking heavily again. The only real difference between my crap
eating pattern and an alcoholics drinking pattern is that eating crap has a
milder immediate impact on my life. I can
still function when I’m eating crap and the negative impact on my behavior and
body are harder to see. That is one of
the things that makes it so insidious.
You can hardly tell that it is a problem until you are totally
hooked. I think this probably is an addiction. As many of you know, many years ago I went
through several years of therapy to deal with depression and PTSD. I’ve decided to go back to therapy to cure
this one last thing. While I am at it, I
am going to figure out once and for all why I get so depressed between
Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. My first appointment is this afternoon.
If you thought this blog was interesting before (and perhaps you didn’t –
but then you wouldn’t still be reading, would you?), just wait until I start
blogging about therapy.
I gotta run. Work
calls.
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