The supervisor saw the cashier beating on the register and yelled out, “Nancy! Don’t hit the keys so hard! You’ll break the register.” At this point, I got the giggles. I actually spent the rest of the day periodically mimicking the supervisor by yelling out, “Nancy!!,” for no good reason. Each time, I would crack up laughing at the incongruity of the whole situation at the store earlier.

The next day, though, it dawned on me: I’ve certainly been guilty of “being a Nancy” in the past. It’s easy to see where I’ve used brute physical force repeatedly in misguided attempts to make something work. I’m not the most mechanically-inclined person in the world, so I’ve definitely had my share of those actions. But there are other emotional behaviors I saw paralleled when I took time to reflect on a deeper level.

The main idea, of course, is the whole definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. How many times have I tried a diet thinking this was the one that was going to work? How many times have I tried to change people by repeatedly saying the same things to them? How many times have I procrastinated, telling myself that it would be no big deal to get it done later? Lots and lots and lots of times. Thankfully I’m engaging in those behaviors less and less these days and my life is being restored to sanity.

As an outsider, it was easy to see Nancy’s behavior as insane. She clearly was not going to get a different result the next time she scanned both bar codes then went to her register to abuse the keyboard again. I’m not sure how much longer she would have kept trying the same method if a supervisor didn’t intervene, but I think she would have stopped and reassessed the situation to think of a new solution before long.

It’s not as easy to see when we’re engaging in this type of insane behavior emotionally, though. Especially when we’re the ones doing it. I can spot this pattern pretty quickly in others, but not always immediately in myself. It’s not fun or easy to notice ugly behaviors about ourselves – and I think that prevents a lot of honest self-appraisal. Who wants to admit they’re participating in emotional insanity? It’s not usually one of my favorite things to do. Thinking about the metaphor of Nancy banging on the cash register, though, makes it a bit easier for me to admit my own faults. I can catch myself trying to control someone through my words or actions and then visualize Nancy attacking her machine to make me smile. For me, it’s a kinder, gentler – yet powerful – way to remind myself to take a step back.

Today’s lesson for me is: Don’t Be A Nancy. I want to recognize when I’m trying to force an outcome or repeating a behavior that is clearly not beneficial to me or anyone else. I don’t want a “supervisor” to have to come and correct my actions, so I’m going to hold the Nancy image close to my heart as a loving reminder lesson.

I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to maintain a program of recovery to keep abstaining from all those sick behaviors I engaged in for so many years. I’ve got a very powerful Higher Power and an incredible network of friends who are walking this path with me. Together, we’ve all made it possible.

I treated myself with extra care today just as a way to commemorate and also as a reminder that today I need to always practice self care. Here’s a list of things I did:

• Finally broke out that Free Drink card at Starbucks on my way to work – Decaf Venti Americano, baby!
• Prayed and read from my daily meditation book
• Savored my breakfast and lunch, relishing how much I truly do enjoy the tastes of my nutritious food
• Brewed myself some Seattle’s Best Organic Twilight Decaf in the French press this afternoon (apparently coffee is a treat for me!)
• Called someone who is struggling with alcohol on my way home from work
• Made dinner for me and the boys (Rob had to work late) and enjoyed the dinner conversation with them
• Made breakfast for Rob & I for the last day of the week (we did 4 days already on Sunday)
• Packed my breakfast and lunch for work tomorrow
• Took a long, long, long hot shower
• Gave myself a hot oil treatment on my hair
• Put my pajamas in the dryer before putting them on. Bliss.
• Slathered moisturizer on my face & neck
• Loved on my doggie

I also plan on taking myself to bed early to read a bit before going to sleep because I need to get up earlier than normal.

Here’s to another 7+ years of continued recovery from alcoholism and compulsive eating… and all the rewards that come with those things. I never knew life could be so happy, joyous, and free!

Yesterday was my 7th Thanksgiving in a row where I didn’t overeat. Instead, I ate exactly what was on my weighed and measured food plan just like I do on any other day. I have to tell you – it felt great. I loved being able to remain comfortable in my clothes and in my skin, and yet still be satisfied.

I love knowing that no amount of food – no matter how tempting – is worth eating when it just destroys my sanity and self-esteem.

I know if I would have indulged in any of the foods that were not on my food plan that I wouldn’t have stopped there. I would have over-indulged for the Thanksgiving meal itself and then kept on going throughout the night and probably on to the next day. In fact, I’m honestly not sure when I would have stopped. That’s my cross to bear: I can’t stop once I start eating foods that are problems for me.

I’m so extremely grateful that I’ve been given the willingness and ability to refrain from eating problem foods today. What a new way of life!

I have a weigh-in on Monday (I weigh every first of the month) and it’s barely even a blip on the radar because I don’t have the whole “holiday eating factor” to take into account. Thank you, God!!

Well guess what? The majority rule are a bunch of dummies. Two weeks from the day I got that shot, I came down with the flu. It’s been two weeks since I came down with the flu and I’m still recovering. It’s been a rough month.

An aggravating result of getting the flu was the setback of my physical therapy progress. My neck and shoulders are now back to the level of pain and loss of range in motion I was experiencing 6 weeks ago. It’s pretty frustrating. It’s been 3 months since my accident. I never would have thought I’d still be feeling the effects all this time later. It’s changed my quality of life without a doubt.

Anyway, this week is Thanksgiving, and I need to focus on gratitude. I do have much to be grateful for in my life and so I’ll end this post with a gratitude list – something I haven’t done nearly enough lately.

I’m grateful for:

• the pain in my neck, shoulders, and back – for it means I’m not paralyzed
• my physical therapist – he is great at what he does and has an engaging personality. I enjoy my visits.
• my sponsor – she reads my lengthy emails and listens to meandering phone calls moaning about my life’s problems and responds with love and tenderness
• the women I sponsor – they remind me on a daily basis what a gift and miracle recovery from addiction is
• my job – it’s definitely not something anyone can take for granted in these economic times
• Rob’s job – he went 8 long months without one, so we definitely appreciate him being employed now
• my immediate family – I love all three of my guys so much. The boys are so funny and different from each other, and Rob is always such a loving supporter.
• My extended family – between my parents, my siblings, my nieces & nephews, and inlaws, I’ve got a full plate that provides me with a lot of joy most of the time.
• Facebook and the resulting rekindling of friendships from my youth
• the Internet, TV, and books – my three main sources of entertainment
• Music – I’m not much of a musician, but my life has always been surrounded by music in one way or another and without it – I start to wither.

I suppose I could go on for a while, but those are the things that are really present for me today. What are you grateful for?

I need to know what I weigh on a regular basis so that I don’t have the opportunity to get into denial about my size. Believe me, I’ve spent lots of time there. “These jeans must have shrunk in the dryer!” I also don’t need to know how much I weigh on a daily, hourly, minute-ly basis. Otherwise I’m not only spending my precious time obsessing, but I’m also completely off focus and not on good spiritual grounds. I want to have a nice normal body size, but I do not want it to be the only thing I think about.

Anyway, this month I completely forgot to weigh myself on the 1st. I think a good part of the reason for that was how overwhelmingly busy and distracted I’ve been the past two weeks. However, I think part of it is because I’m really spending a lot less time thinking about how I look. This is huge progress for me because I’ve spent the majority of my life worried about what I look like. Today I’d rather be beautiful in thoughts and actions than in outside appearances. What a concept. Of course, I’ll take the outward beauty, too – don’t get me wrong.

Once I realized I forgot to weigh myself, I decided to do so the following morning – which happened to be today. I got on the scale this morning and discovered that I gained 4 pounds in the last month. Ack! How did that happen? The weird thing is my clothes all fit the same (if not looser), and I don’t feel like I’ve gained any weight. I actually thought I might have lost weight this month. I did quite a bit more exercise this past month than I’ve done in recent memory (which wasn’t hard to do considering my sedentary lifestyle!). Is it really true that muscle weighs more than fat? Is it possible the weight gain can be attributed to that? The miracle is that I didn’t freak out when I saw the number. There have been times when full days have been ruined by the number on the scale going up. Today I know that I am okay and that I don’t look any different than I did the minute before I stepped on the scale and thought I was looking pretty darn good for a 38 year old mom of two. :-)

Six years ago today I walked into my first 12-step meeting and I haven’t looked back since. I’m celebrating being abstinent from compulsive overeating as well as being sober – two very big things! Looking back, I don’t think I would have willingly decided to do both on the same day, but it just worked out that way for me since I landed a food plan that had no sugar. No sugar = no alcohol.

On this date six years ago, I was nervous and excited. I was eager to try something new where my eating was concerned, but I had no real idea what I was getting myself into. In the following days, I would go through a horrible detox that kept me in bed with massive headaches, cold sweats, and bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. The withdrawals hit me hard. I don’t ever want to go through that again. And if I keep doing the same thing I’ve been doing the past six years – one day at a time – I won’t have to.

For the visuals among us, here’s a little photo trip down memory lane.

Almost 7 years ago, partying at Colleen’s family shore house:

A llittle over 6 years ago at my sister-in-law’s baby shower:

About 5 1/2 years ago, 4 months into my journey:

About 1 1/2 years ago with my friend, Deb:

And a more recent one, a couple months ago:

I need to take some updated pictures of myself. I’ve been slacking in that department for some reason! I got my hair done on Saturday and it looks fabulous. I’ll try to remember to do that this week.

But then I started coming across random articles that spoke about the benefits of a dairy-free existence. At first I paid little attention, I felt secure in my dietary habits and I wasn’t looking for a change of any sort. The articles, though, they kept appearing. I finally decided to take heed and I read one. Then another. And another… which led me to hours of searching to find out all I could about the awful side effects of dairy and what I could expect if I stopped consuming it. Visions of increased energy, no PMS, the departure of adult acne, regular (& neat) bowel movements, and losing those last 10 pounds began to dance across my mind. After some time I decided I had nothing to lose by trying the Go Dairy Free 10-Day Challenge, and so I embarked on the latest journey of my ever-evolving food plan.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent my spare time researching. Once I was open to the idea of no more dairy, my brain became insatiable – I had to learn all I could. What I discovered led to my destination for today: I could no longer eat animal products without feeling squeamish about the things I was putting into my body. I’ve been saying for years that I eat for nourishment only, and now I’ve got too much knowledge to eat the things I held dear for so long without feeling like a complete hypocrite.

What started out as hapless blog surfing has somehow turned into a complete lifestyle change. Funny how that works. And now I’ve got a brand new label: Ovo Vegetarian, which means I will eat eggs (for the moment!) but no meat or dairy products.

Although I took dairy out over a week ago, I’m pretty sure there was butter in the meals I had in restaurants on Saturday. I also had meat (tilapia and chicken) and I was feeling the effects of not having a clean meal all day. I’ve been a vegetarian for 3 days now and my stomach is starting to rebel a bit. I think I’m officially in the detox stage. Hopefully since my diet was so clean prior to this change, I won’t suffer too many ill effects before I start reaping some of the rewards. I’ve already noticed an increased amount of energy in the form of not needing as much sleep each night. You can be assured I’ll keep you updated on my progress as I embark on this new adventure in my quest for better health.

And no, I won’t be having Tofurky on Thursday! Gross.

One of the guys who went down to the assembly from my group got really ill right before we were set to leave. At first we thought he was just being dramatic and perhaps a bit of a hypochondriac. He thought he was dehydrated, and wanted to go to a hospital. He doesn’t drive, so he was depending on the person who provided his transportation to take him to the hospital. Rehoboth Beach is about 3 hours away from home for all of us, so the woman who was his ride was in a bit of a quandary. She wanted to do the right thing, but she wasn’t sure where her responsibility as his ride began and ended. In the end, she decided to take him to the hospital and stay with him until she got news of his status.

Turns out, it was a good thing she stayed – our friend’s kidneys went into failure and he was unconscious and on a ventilator for some time. We were all pretty worried about what was going to happen to him, but today he had a miraculous turn for the better. He’s awake and in good spirits; I’m so grateful.

That whole experience was so surreal and I haven’t been able to get my mind off of it. I was so relieved when I got the good news this afternoon. Hopefully it will continue to be good news.

I also had some other excitement today. My new cell phone came in! I got the Samsung SCH u740 and I am absolutely in love with this thing. I can’t stop playing with it! I made sure to send Colleen a text message right away to show off my newfound texting prowess. I think she was duly impressed. Which? Was not a shocker. My texting brings all the boys to the yard, you know what I’m sayin’? Yaeah.

All kinds of good stuff is happening at work now, too. I can’t really go into too many details about it here, but I will tell you about Google soon, I promise!

When the food came, people were whipping out food scales, measuring cups and spoons, and spices seemingly out of nowhere. I was seriously impressed with how prepared some people were – especially compared to me! I knew there would be plenty of food scales, so I didn’t even bring one of those. Yes, I am that person: the food scale moocher. I really need to get a better digital pocket scale so I can stop being that person. I’ve never been one to bring my measuring cup out to a restaurant, they’re just too cumbersome to be carrying around. However, that all changed today.

One of the girls we went to dinner with had one of these collapsible cups that just blew my little mind. The cups collapse to lay flat for storage and then pop open when you need to use them to measure. No more excuses for not having a measuring cup with me when I’m out. I got those and the cool swivel measuring spoons, too, at Williams-Sonoma. You have no idea how excited I am about these cups. It felt like Christmas morning around here today. I couldn’t wait to get home to just hold the cups in my hand and expand and collapse them endlessly as I marveled at the ingenuity of people. Why can’t I think of something like this?

Friday night after my share and the meeting that followed, I found out a bunch of fun women from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina were also staying in my cabin. I was glad about that, since they were an absolute riot from what little I saw of them. I was looking forward to spending the weekend with them. On Saturday, I wanted to sleep in a bit since I didn’t get to bed until pretty late the night before and I also got my period (good times). However, the rabble rousers from South Carolina made all kinds of noise getting up around 6 AM. It wasn’t so bad, I did get to lay there for a bit and then when I got up I was able to take my time getting ready.

I also took that time to finish my preparation for the speaking engagement I had for later that evening. Once 8 o’clock rolled around, I headed to the dining hall for breakfast, followed by listening to a friend share his personal story of recovery. It was great to just be able to sit and listen instead of being in the spotlight. This guy has an incredible story, too, he takes the disease of food addiction very seriously because he knows so many people who have died from it. Sad, but true. He shared a great metaphor that really made a lot of sense to me. He said that choosing to indulge in compulsive overeating is like going to a young tree and tying a rope to it, and a noose around your neck with the same rope. You won’t die today or in the near future from food addiction, because it’s a slow killer. But it will kill you and the death won’t be pretty. Sobering thoughts.

After the speaker shared, we went to our different workshops. I chose the one on honesty. It was a great group and an excellent meeting. Afterwards we had lunch followed by 3 hours of free time. There were a number of available activities to choose from – mountain biking, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, and rock climbing among them. I didn’t choose any of those, however. Instead, I went with a local guy and three elderly ladies to a local church to see some amazing frescoes and a labyrinth. I felt blessed to have the opportunity to see some of the local culture and experience this man’s church. I also felt jealous that his church was so incredible. I really want and need to find a church. Hopefully I can find one as nice as his.

Check out the frescoes in the main lobby of this church:

There are more of these in my Flickr, if you’re interested.

After we got to hear some interesting stories about the history of this man’s church, and viewed the frescoes at length, we took a walk outside to explore the labyrinth on the grounds past the cemetery.

I actually walked the path – it took more than 5 minutes to complete it one way! All told, we spent a couple of hours at the church, because we moved at a leisurely pace. On the way back to the retreat, he drove us by Moravian Falls. This picture doesn’t do the site justice – I had to take it from inside the car.

Once back at the retreat, it was time for another workshop. I chose to go back to my room and really retreat, though. I needed some quiet alone time. I finished my preparations for my final two speeches and then got inside my sleeping bag and read some of my novel. It felt delicious, but it was time for dinner all too soon. After dinner, it was time to do my talk on steps 4-6 and the principles associated with them. It went very well – I just quoted from our literature and shared my related experiences. There was entertainment that evening, but it was short-lived and unorganized. I spent most of that time talking quietly with one woman who wanted to know more about how I worked my food plan and program. I also spent some one-on-one time with a couple of other fantastic women.

I can’t say enough about how wonderful the people I met were. I’m excited to have new friends from different areas. I’m certain that at least some of our paths will cross again in the future.

Sunday was a short day at the retreat. I shared on steps 7-9 after breakfast and then we had the closing ceremonies and it was time for me to go home. I took with me a letter and a “love note” to remind me of my time there. Everyone there was asked to write an anonymous letter to someone as if it was their first time coming to program, then everyone took a letter when they left. Everyone also wrote their name on a piece of construction paper and hung it on a wall so everyone else could write little love notes on it all weekend. It was fun coming up with nice things to say to everyone. It was even better to read all of the wonderful things written on my paper when I took it down.

The trip back home was pretty uneventful. I was so glad to land in Philly, and even more happy to see my precious car sitting there waiting for me where I left her. I was so relieved to be home, and just vegged for the rest of the night. I missed my family like crazy while I was gone, and I was totally wiped out emotionally. It was a great experience, though, and I’m so glad I was able to have it. I’d say yes in a heartbeat if asked again in the future to speak somewhere.

[tags]recovery, retreat, spiritual retreat[/tags]