Hang With the Winners
Posted August 29, 2009

As I pulled out onto the Atlanta Highway on Labor Day in 2002, I said out loud, "Do whatever they tell you to do, Ed." After two weeks of desperately trying to detox from more than two decades of daily alcohol drinking by myself, I'd given up and was on my way to the treatment center. I had a masters degree in psychology and a doctorate in counseling and I knew absolutely nothing about how to quit drinking alcohol. For the previous twenty years, I'd awakened each morning with a desire to stop drinking alcohol and every day when I arrived home from work I'd fill a glass with ice, vodka, and a splash of water and start again. Clearly, I had no idea how to stop drinking. The people at the treatment center were experts and I made a commitment as I drove there to get myself out of the way and follow their directions. Without question, that was the best set of directions I've ever given myself.

After leaving the treatment center I sought out recovering alcoholics who had years of sobriety. When I heard something from many of them over and over, I did what they said to do. At this writing, I just celebrated my seventh year of sobriety and I'm still doing what the winners do.

I also hang with the winners in losing and maintaining weight loss -- particularly the latter. Lots of people lose weight from time to time. A tiny fraction maintain the loss. I have no interest in losing the weight only to have it pile right back on. The problem with hanging with the weight loss winners is that there are so few of them in our immediate vicinity. Of all the people I know, I only know a couple who've lost a lot of weight and kept if off longer than a year. Both of them did it by calorie control and exercise. But, two winners is pretty skimpy.

That void of winners has been filled since 1993 by Rena R. Wing, Ph.D. and James O. Hill Ph.D. The two researchers began the National Weight Control Registry in 1993. Participants in the study have lost a minimum of thirty pounds and have kept the weight off for more than a year. The participants far exceed the minimum. As of now, the registry reports "Registry members have lost an average of 66 lbs and kept it off for [at least] 5.5 years." So what commonalities have the researchers found among the winners? Here are a few:

• There is greater variability among the winners in the dieting pattern used to initially lose weight than there is in maintaining the weight loss.
• 90% of the winners have a diet that is low in fat.
• 10% of the participants maintain weight loss on a low carbohydrate diet.
• 90% of the winners exercise for an hour a day on average.
• 75% of the winners weigh themselves at least once a week
• 90% of the winners self monitored food intake (e.g. counted calories.)
• Winners limited variety in all food groups.
• Weight loss maintenance gets easier over time. Once the winners maintained a weight loss for 2-5 years, the chances of longer-term success greatly increases.

While there are a zillion books and theories out there on losing weight, I'll stick with the winners. The winners count calories, eat a low-fat diet, and exercise an hour a day. Other studies on these winners found most were people who developed plans and stick to it. They also have life transformations where they learn to react to life differently than before. There are many other findings and they all support the "Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Weight Loss" that I proposed last week.

Hey, you can do what you want. You can follow whatever "guru" you want who says you can lose weight and keep it off easily. As for me, I'll stick with the winners.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Weight Loss
Posted August 22, 2009

From what I've seen, most people who want to lose weight skip the necessary steps to be successful. Based on my experience, and on the experience of people who have been successful at losing weight and maintaining the loss, there are a few conditions that are necessary. They are also sufficient. Ninety-five percent of the people on the planet will lose weight and maintain the loss if these conditions are met in the order provided below. The other five percent have some medical condition that makes their bodies react differently. The odds are massive you are not one of those. Here are the necessary and sufficient conditions for losing weight and maintaining the loss:

1. Maintain rigorous honesty: Honesty comes first and the most important person to be honest with is ourselves. Instead of tying to cover up the reading as we weigh ourselves, advertise it. Wear a button that says, "I weight 200 pounds and my waist is 42 inches." (Measure your waist one inch below your belly button -- another honesty issue.) Say it out loud: "I am powerless over junk food." Or, "Ice cream defeats me every time." Admitting it is the first step in getting better. If you relapse and eat a piece of cake on any day but your one day to eat one piece of cake, admit it. Don't rationalize. Until you are rigorously honest, your efforts are doomed.
   
   
2. Be willing to change: Wanting to lose weight doesn't matter. Not a bit. What matters is a willingness to give up preconceived notions that have never worked and do things differently. You have got to be willing to listen to the winners: the people who've lost weight and maintained that weight loss for a long time. If you do that, you'll find that the vast majority, like almost all, follow the third and fourth necessary and sufficient conditions. You also must change the way you react to life. If you eat ice cream when you're worried, you need a new way to deal with worry. If you don't find that, you'll never, never, never be successful. (See the tools.) You've got to change.
   
   
3. Effective Exercise is essential: Exercise comes next because so many people want to skip this part. If you're not exercising, you're doomed to failure. You simply cannot reduce your food intake enough to lose weight. Part of the reason for that is your body will think you are starving and begin converting everything to fat to store up an energy source for when the food runs completely out. If you exercise, you fool you body back into thinking you're OK. You must exercise. And, you must be rigorously honest about that exercise. Plan on 45 minutes a day during which you get your heart rate up into your target zone. If your heart rate isn't up there, you're not burning enough calories to matter. Now look here: it does absolutely no good to sweat for 45 minutes, then reward yourself by eating a honey bun. You've just wasted all your effort.
   
   
4. Believe you lose weight due to calories in and calories out: If you think calories eaten and calories burned don't matter, you are doomed to failure. You just are. If you insist on believing that, stop reading this and accept that things won't change for you. They won't. Esoteric arguments found in books and websites don't change that. As you go about eating foods with calories in mind, don't forget that you have to maintain rigorous honesty. A cup is not a heaping cup. If you go over the top when measuring your cereal, you'll take in tons more calories over time and you won't lose weight or you'll gain it back. Measure honestly. And, Dr. Harry Lodge's rule about what you should eat that's found in Younger Next Year is the best I've seen. Here it is in its entirity: "Don't eat crap." We all know what "crap" is. Stay away.
   
   
5. Eliminate decisions: At least for a while, meaning . . . oh, say . . . the first five years, you should do all you can to eliminate decision making. Develop menus that have the number of calories that fits into your regime and stick to those menus. If you are cooking for a family, make their meals and make yours. Your menu shouldn't be all complicated. At least for this time period, food should not be the center of your life. Have set times for snacks and make the snacks an apple or orange. Create a routine that you don't change. When life forces changes, make careful substitutions. Notice, the word is not "exception." Substituting one meal for another is OK. Eating a piece of pie as an exception is not. Don't go to all you can eat buffets. Don't go to scovered dish dinners . . .or if you must go, eat your dinner before you go and don't get near the food table. If you've tried to lose weight and have failed, or have lost weight but failed to maintain the loss, it's clear your decision making is flaw. Eliminate them.
   
   
6. Give yourself a break: Take a meal off once a week. Eat what you want. Now, that doesn't mean you eat as much as you want. Eat a piece of pie after your meal off -- not a whole pie. When you are craving during the rest of the week, remind yourself that you can eat it during your meal off.
   

That's it. If you do those things, you'll lose weight. The concepts are extremely easy. If you're honest about carrying them out, you'll be successful, guaranteed. If you're not, you'll fail. No doubt. You can read more about the principles behind these conditions here.

Several topics were running though my mind for this Saturday's reflection as I set off for my run this morning. The Saturday run always begins by 7:00 a.m. and much of the route is down the University of Georgia's sorority row. The value of distraction occurred to me as I ran through that part this morning. Now, before going further, I have to tell you something. I don't understand old guys who seek young women. Not at all. If I were out looking to establish a new relationship now, one of my first questions would be, "Are you done ovulating yet?" If the answer is no, I'll move on. Post menopausal women are about a zillion times easier to deal with, much more relaxed, and significantly saner than their hormone filled counterparts. I also need to tell you that I've learned some things from my three daughters. I've heard their tales of gross old men who follow them around in grocery stores. I never want to be one of them.

That being said, it is also true that I'm a man and full of manful pride. So, this morning I found my run to be easier than normal because of the distractions. The University of Georgia's school year is about to begin. That means it's sorority rush season and it began this morning. Each of the mansion-like houses I ran by this morning had yards full of dressed up young women waiting for the freshmen rushees to arrive. I mean lots and lots of young women. Now, my head knows that 90% of them don't even see me. Or at least once they take a good look, I become invisible. The other 10%, the ones who take a moment to think about me, are thinking, "Oh, Lord. I hope that old man doesn't stroke out right here in front of me." I know all that. Doesn't matter. I want to look good. I want to look fit. I want to run fast and make it look easy. And, speaking of looking, the male part of me still thinks these young ladies are fun to look at. That's just the way it is.

So, what's normally a struggle wasn't a struggle at all this morning. That part of the road is mostly a slowly rising upgrade that becomes more challenging as I move along. This morning, I didn't notice it at all. I realized when I was done with sorority row that I was at the top of the hill in record time. There was not one moment of angst either. It was like having a colonoscopy. One moment they say, "Count backwards from ten,"and the next moment I'm waking up in the recovery room. Same with this. One moment I see all the lawns filled and the next moment I'm at the top of the hill. It's amazing.

I run with a radio. Music doesn't distract me enough, so I listen to talk radio. Usually sports talk radio. That provides a distraction. But, the best distraction is when I'm off somewhere in my head. If I can put my mind in a totally different place, the runs zip by. I've learned that I've got to go there in my mind before I'm heading up a hill. By then, I can't fool my mind into thinking I'm somewhere else instead of where I am -- which is in a legs and lungs hurting frame of mind. But, if I can head off into that mental magic land before the hill arrives, I'm good. It's the mind's own anesthesia.

The same mental magic worked after I quit smoking cigarettes. The cravings were awful. When they hit, life wasn't worth living without a cigarette. I was doomed to be miserable forever. That was my nicotine addiction talking and it was loud. When that happened, I did self-talk first. This too shall pass. I won't feel this way forever, I'd tell myself. Then, I'd make myself think about something else. Put myself somewhere or think of a problem to solve. The more I practiced that, the easier it was to do. At some point, I'd come back to the present and realize the craving was gone and I'd be grateful I hadn't succumbed. The same thing works when I want a cookie.

The mind is a marvelous thing. Letting it go has been a big part of my getting better.

How to Stay Married for 31 Years
Posted August 7, 2009

Not long ago I was talking to the wife of a friend who is a recovering alcoholic. They've been married for four years and it seems like a good one. But, like all of us, they have issues from time to time. During our conversation, I mentioned that Pat and I have been married for 31 years. She was astounded and asked how we did it. I told her and decided it might be good to share that here as well.

So what does my marriage have to do with alcoholism, nicotine addiction, gluttony, and sloth? A lot. Serenity is a major component of getting better for me. I drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, and ate comfort foods (i.e. fattening foods) to change the way I felt. If I am to stay sober, slim and cigarette free, I have to find peace in other ways. That's what the tools are all about. A large part of my life, the vast majority, is spent in my marriage. If it's a constant source of frustration, I'm in danger of relapse.

There are three components to what has made our marriage stick, I think. I discovered the third one only recently, Goes to show it's never to late to learn.

1. The engagement period needs to be at least a year. Relationships have life cycles. The first part is really exciting. But, they change. One of the biggest time for change is when we move from trying things out to committment. Once we make the decision to be married, we start asking different questions. We need time to answer those questions.
   
   Susan was my first fiance. She's a neat person. Thirty-five years later, we keep in touch. But, we would not have made a good marriage. As soon as we decided to get married, all those new questions popped up and it became clear the answers weren't the right ones. We set our date far enough off so that we had the opportunity to make a different decsion. That saved a divorce.
   
   In our wedding, Pat and I included a poem by Amy Lowell:
   
   

   When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

   
   The red wine and honey is fun, but if you don't like the bread, your in trouble. A significant time for engagements allows you to begin to experience it.
   
2. Mean what you say. All of the marriage vows I've heard include the words "For better or worse." It's clear that a lot of people don't mean what they say when they recite that vow. They should. A friend talks to me from time to time about his marriage. On ocassion, his wife is mean to him, I say. Skipping the part where I ask him his part in it, I often jump right to, "When you promised to be with her 'for better or worse' were you just kidding?" Once he says he wasn't — that he meant what he said when he made the promise, we can move on to the issue at hand. The first priority is to remember what we promised. Now, there are times when the worse is too worse. Like when a spouse beats up another one. But, in all the marriages I've seen break up, that kind of thing has been rare. Mostly they reneged on their promise. Reniging on promises is a lousy thing to do.
   
3. You don't have to fix 'em. For a little over 29 years, the first two were enough for me to stay married. But, every now and then I wasn't happy. In fact, a couple of times I stormed out and stayed in the Holiday Inn overnight. I admit, too, that alochol had a lot to do with those embarrassing moments. Since alcohol has been out of my life, those moments are long gone. But, I still have times when I'm irritated. A few months ago something dawned on me about Pat. I don't have to fix her. I discovered that a lot of the things I was irritated about involved my thinking she needed to change something about herself. I told myself that they were things that affected me. Most didn't, but some did. In either case, I don't have to fix her. If something she'd doing affects me, I need to figure out how to mitigate that by fixing myself. Since I've understood that, I don't get irritated any more, except for the times I forget. When I remember I don't have to fix her, the angst is gone. This one seems hard for some people to get, but once you do, life's a whole lot easier. And, you can then begin to apply it to everybody outside of your marriage. It's marvelous.

That's it. The secret to being married for 31 years. Hope you can use it so you can keep getting better.

My Drinking Causes No Harm
Posted August 1, 2009

[Quick update: Last week I wrote about the worst pain I've experienced since I've been running. (Read it.) It was in my right hip. Early this week, I read all about hip pain. The entry that matched my pain most closely suggested shortening the stride. I did that and slowed down. Immediate relief. This morning I went back to running normally and had no problem. I say again: Way too many people use the "pain" excuse to quit working hard. If my pain had not gone away after a couple of weeks, I would have gone to my ortho. But, once again I didn't have to do that.]

One of the things that helped me keep drinking alcoholically for more than twenty years was that I didn't think I was hurting anybody. I was aware that drinking a lot of alcohol caused physical problems, but for many, many years. that just wasn't happening. I knew that on rare occasions, I'd do some alcohol influenced thing that I regretted, but usually it involved me embarrassing myself rather than hurting someone else. I wasn't a mean drunk. I did kill a baby swing in anger one time while drunk. During that act I also kicked an iron pole in our basement, severely bruising some toes. The baby swing never recovered. Fortunately, my toes did, but I never did such a thing again.

So, did my alcoholic drinking do no harm?

No, not at all. First, it turned out I was doing physical harm to my body. It was just in slow motion. The first thing was damage to my bone marrow which caused my red blood cells to grow large. That progresses into an anemia that results in wet brain and death. The way to stop it is to quit drinking alcohol. (When you get a blood test, check the MCV. If it's above the normal range, you're headed for trouble.) I also developed heart disease and alcohol undoubtedly played a huge part in it. Excessive alcohol raises your triglycerides levels, which causes plaque to build up in your arteries. That's caused heart disease. Alcohol was also a big part of my continuing to smoke cigarettes, another cause of heart disease. As long as I was drinking, there's no way I could quit smoking. Also, no way I would exercise adequately. That interfered with my drinking time.

I also did damage to others. Early in my recovery, I was telling my friend Doug, who is a recovering alcoholic, that I wouldn't have many amends to make to people because I was a pretty nice drunk and didn't do things to hurt damage. He said maybe that was true. He said he suspected that in my case, I'd need to make amends for things I didn't do. Wow! I immediately knew what he was talking about. Tons of things came to mind. I'd need to do something for others or take care of some kind of business and instead of doing that, I'd sit on my porch and drink.

If you are an active alcoholic and think you're not hurting anybody, including yourself, you're wrong. I'm not equivocating here. You're just flat wrong. You won't fully recognize the full extent of that until you've quit drinking for a while, but I know that if you think hard enough, you can find examples right now.

Maybe if you start listing those, that'll help find the willingness to do what it takes to quit making yourself miserable and get sober.