Am I an Addict?

This whole “recovery” thing is REALLY frustrating. All I really wanted in the beginning was to get down to a normal weight and stay. Done. I got there. Even with some fluctuations over the last year or two, I have pretty much stayed that way. So why do I feel like I am back at square one (to say nothing of day #1) in my recovery?

A lot of it is because my sponsor is tough.  By that, I don’t mean that she is unreasonable or arbitrarily strict.  I mean that she demands I deal with the under-lying issues of food addiction—do I, or do I not have a disease that makes me respond to food differently than normal people?  If so, what does that mean?  What do I have to actually do in order to control the physical addiction and the mental compulsion? 

She makes me ask hard questions. I don’t like the answers.  Furthermore, the answers aren’t really clear or cut-and-dried, black-and-white like I want them to be. Actually, even as I write that last sentence, my real fear is that the answers are cut-and-dried.  I just am not sure I am ready to accept that right now. I am still secretly convinced that there must be—there has to be—an “easier, softer way”. 

So, I have committed to looking, yet again, at the original issues that plagued me and see if I can sort through them.  My purpose in doing this isn’t in an effort to find some magic bullet that will get me down to a miniature size dress—that is pretty much a non-issue for me now.  The purpose is to get back to the mental, emotional and spiritual freedom that I used to have in the early days of my program where I didn’t waste an ounce of energy negotiating with myself on what I could or could not eat—where I ate a pre-planned meal and didn’t think about food again until the clock said it was time to eat my next pre-planned meal—and where I was happy and grateful to do that.

So the specific question for this blog:  Am I a food addict?

I would like to believe that because I am a normal size and weight that I am not really a food addict any more.  However, experience tells me that is a lie.  I attended an OA meeting last Saturday where the speaker shed some amazingly clear light on that subject.  She explained that when she first joined the program she had a hard time accepting the labels, “food addict” or that she had an incurable “disease of mind and body”.  She did, however, recognize that she didn’t eat the same way that normal people ate.  Her sponsor asked her to write down on paper what being a “normal eater” looked like and what being an “abnormal eater” looked like.  She came up with something I think is wonderfully insightful.  I asked her (Courtney) for a copy and here it is:

Normal versus Abnormal Eaters

What do normal eaters say?

Do you want to split this?

This is too much food.

I’m too full for dessert.
I’ll have a child size.

I forgot to eat.

It’s too rich or too sweet.

I’m too nervous/stressed/excited/sad/happy to eat right now.

I’ve lost my appetite.

I’m not hungry—I’ll skip lunch.

I’ll just have a taste.

I can’t finish this—would you like it?

No, I don’t need a doggie bag.

How do normal eaters react to eating and food?

They stop when they’re full.

They eat for fuel, not for comfort.

They don’t use food to suppress feelings or to dial down intense feeling.

They don’t go into a food trance.

They have a bite or two and walk away.

They don’t have cravings or yearning for certain foods—

Certain foods don’t trigger them to a binge.

They don’t have an emotional drive to eat.

They don’t feel desperation that they have to eat “right now.”

They don’t feel guilty after eating.

They eat to feed and nourish their bodies, not their emotions.

They don’t get overly excited about eating certain foods.

They leave food on their plate.

They are not into high volume.

They don’t obsess over, sneak, or hide foods.

They share food with others.

There is not the emotional attachment to food.

They don’t use food for soothing, comfort or to meet their emotional hunger.

What do abnormal eaters say?

I have to have it right now.

I’ll feel better after I have this.

I’ll start dieting tomorrow (or Monday).

I can control this with enough prayer, exercise, shrink appointments, etc.

I’ll only have 3…or 4.

How do abnormal eaters react to eating and food?

They have a long history of dieting, starving, bingeing, trying to control their eating, loss of control, and promises to do better next time.

They feel a desperate need to eat something right away.

They have a deep emotional attachment to food, to certain foods, or to eating in general.

Eating has become an automatic soothing response to stresses.

They use food and eating as a way to get comfortable or to dial down uncomfortable feelings.

They use food and eating as a way to cope.

They eat instead of problem solve.

Food has become a psychological tool.

They use food and eating to avoid feelings that are too intense or anxiety-provoking.

They haven’t learned how to cope with life and emotions in a way that doesn’t include food and eating.

They need certain foods to treat and satisfy.

They usually stuff food in very quickly.

They usually chose comfort foods (not carrots) and fell guilty about it.

Food is a love object.

Food is used to sooth and comfort.

They short-circuit their best problem-solving abilities by going into a food trance.

They choose high sugar, fat, and salty foods to go into the food trance.

They have an unexplainable driving need to eat that no amount of will-power can control.

Emotional hungers trigger emotional eating.

They eat when they’re not hungry.

They don’t stop when they are full.

They use their obsession with weight and body image as a way to distract them from what’s really bothering them.

I didn’t have to read through much of this to recognize that I am clearly (even now) not a normal eater.  Although the obvious symptoms of me being an abnormal eater have been greatly reduced over the last five years on program, it is clear that I still have a problem.

● I may stop when the scale says I am done eating, but I don’t want to!

● I still have a gut-reaction to eat when things are upsetting or stressing me out.

● Food still sooths and comforts me like nothing else does.

● I still have a strong emotional attachment to food.  This becomes clear in certain social or family situations where a particular eating experience is inseparably connected to my enjoyment of the event.  I don’t enjoy the people or the occasion they same way unless the food experience is involved.

Yep.  I’m still a food addict.

Reporting In

It occurred to me that only two things have been obvious from my posts of late:  I have spent most my time totally off the grid and when I have surfaced I have verbosely gone on and on about whatever happened to be on my mind at the time.  So, I’ll balance that out with a little factual update.

After seven consecutive weeks of travel (including Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years) I had my first official “weigh in day” on my home scale in three months—February 1^st.  The results:  I have lost 17 pounds from the time I started blogging.  That doesn’t put me back down to where I want to be, but it puts me back to within 4 pounds of my reasonable “goal weight” and one size smaller than I was in October. (Okay, the vanity part of me is not content to be a healthy weight…I want to be an AMAAAAZING weight, so I will keep plugging.)  And it definitely relieves some of the worry I was feeling about being out of control and being afraid of gaining back 180 pounds of lost weight.

Anyway, hurray,  hurray,  hurray!  The program works if you work it!

I left California early last Thursday for two more weeks of travel.  First stop: the very cold regions of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  My husband decided he was tired of traveling home each weekend and figured I could come visit him instead.  I have to admit I was a little concerned.  I have been freezing in California, so how on earth was I going to survive that fact that the high temperatures during the day here have only been getting up to between -15º and -7º C? That is a problem that even chocolate wouldn’t fix.  I have actually done remarkably well.  My husband is used to eating every meal out—three times a day.  That wouldn’t have done well for my weight.  So, first stop in Canada…Costco!  I loaded up with an obscene pile of produce and a few other staples.  I have cooked every meal except two here in the hotel—weighed, measured and abstinent.  It helps that the hotel he booked is basically a condo-type apartment with a full kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, storage room etc.  Gee—all the luxuries of home minus my rice cooker and vita-mixer.  But, it has the added advantage of daily room service.  I could get used to that without too much trouble.

Anyway, tomorrow evening I fly back to California and arrive home late (i.e. 2:30 in the morning).  I leave at 6 a.m. the next morning to go for another 10 day road trip off to St. George and the more northern parts of Utah.  More food challenges to be faced, but I am feeling up to the challenge.  Amazing how different life is when you eat to live rather than live to eat!

It is by grace we are save....

As long as my mind’s meanderings have been taking a somewhat religious route I might as well lay some more spiritual insights out on the table. 

Grace.  How does the word “grace” relate to recovery from addiction?  I understand and accept the basic Christian doctrine: it is through Grace we are saved.  (Acts 15:11, Ephesians 2:8, 2 Ne 25:23)  No matter how noble our own efforts, they are insufficient in and of themselves.  Were it not through the Grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, none of us would or could be saved.

I understand grace in broad, general terms.  We do our best, but it can never be good enough.  Through his atonement, Jesus Christ makes up for our deficiencies.  When we truly accept him, he makes up the difference and we are enough.  This very simplistic answer seems to fit right in with what I will hereafter call the “Naaman Syndrome”  (see my previous blog).  We want to be fixed.  We want someone else to take away our disease, our shortcoming.  We want to be cured, to be whole, and if by simply acknowledging our dependence on the Savior and asking him to remove our weaknesses from us we can be whole, life is a piece of cake.  Isn’t that perfectly consistent with the 12-steps of recovery?  Step 7:  Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings. Tada—drum roll. We are fixed.

But there is another important aspect to grace that we need to look at.  In the same discussion where she shared the story of Naaman with me, my friend also shared some insights from a talk by David A Bednar. I was already familiar with the ideas, but hadn’t spent much time applying them to recovery.

From the Bible dictionary, under the word grace, we read:

"A word that occurs frequently in the New Testament, especially in the writings of Paul. The main idea of the word is divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ (emphasis added).

"It is likewise through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts".

Hum….grace = strength and assistance, enabling power.

If we plug that in, "it is by grace [strength and assistance, the enabling power of Christ] that we are saved…", we have some serious food for thought.  Isn’t grace a “get out of jail free” pass?  Am I not magically cured simply by having the faith that he can cure me?

In his talk, David A Bednar points to examples in the scriptures where individuals understood the real meaning of grace.  For example, when Nephi prays, he doesn’t just ask to be delivered, but to be given the strength he needs.  (1 Ne 7:17)  "O Lord, according to my faith which is in thee, wilt thou deliver me from the hands of my brethren; yea, even give me strength that I may burst these bands with which I am bound."  

In effect, don’t just remove my problem, but give me the strength and enabling power I need to do what I need to do.

In Mosiah 24, Alma’s people are greatly afflicted.  Verse 15 we says: "And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon [them] were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord".

Wow.  That is profound.  I am a food addict.  I don’t want to be, but I am.  All those prayers I said asking to be changed back into a normal person didn’t get answered.  My problem wasn’t taken away from me, but, that is not necessarily the meaning of grace.  Grace has been manifested one day at a time as I have been given the strength—the enabling power—to get up each morning and commit to living the day abstinently.   I feel that gift of grace each time I am willing to weigh my food, to leave a dessert on the table, to attend a meeting, to call my sponsor. 

I am not cured, but through grace I am able to live in recovery one day at a time.

I like the simplified version of steps 1-3:  “I can’t.”   “He can.”   “I’ll let him.”

I am powerless over food (as evidenced by the fact that my weight was simply unmanageable). I can’t fix me.  I have tried over and over again.  Finally, out of desperation I will turn it over to him.  I don’t ask to be miraculously healed.  All I ask for is the strengthening, enabling power (grace) to do what I need to do one step at a time, one day at a time, one bite at a time. 

And for today, that is enough.

The Story of Naaman and My Road to Recovery

A friend anonymously shared a discussion she recently had with someone who was struggling with a serious addiction.  His heart was broken.  He felt hopeless and defeated and expressed the fact that he was willing to do anything necessary to get past the problem.  Regardless of how painful or radical the cure might be, it would be worth it if it meant he could finally be released from the habits, behaviors and thinking patterns that held him captive.

The point of her sharing this discussion with me was this:  she realized that he was willing to submit to any number of major, painful experiences—to do whatever dramatic approach recovery required as long as it resulted in the problem being totally removed from him.  But, it was clear he didn’t understand what recovery from addiction really entailed.  It isn’t a matter of taking a single radical step and being cured.  It is a matter of doing a number of small and seemingly insignificant things over a long period of time that really leads to recovery.

She shared the story of Naaman as found in 2 Kings, chapter 5.  We read that Naaman was a great man.  He was captain of the host of the king of Syria, honourable and mighty, but that he was also a leper.  Naaman went to the prophet Elisha to be healed of his leprosy. 

The story recounts that “Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha, and Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.”

The story goes on to say that “Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, ‘behold…he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not [the] rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?  May I not wash in them, and be clean?’  So he turned and went away in a rage.”

One of his servants said to him, “if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith to thee, wash, and be clean?”  Following that reproof, Naaman “went…down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”

This lesson is profound.  It relates to all of us who struggle with any kind of addiction or character defect. 

•       Naaman expected some dramatic, huge event that would instantly cure him.  Instead, he was asked to do something small, insignificant and apparently unrelated.  It didn’t even make sense to him.  He couldn’t see the correlation between the action he was asked to take and the problem he had.

•      Naaman wasn’t just asked to do it once and then be cured—he was asked to do it seven times.  …a small and simple act, repeated over and over again.  It wasn’t just a “one-shot fix”, but consistency over time.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I can see Naaman reflecting back at me.  How many times did I look for some major, dramatic cure for my weight problem.  I was willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a weight loss program as long as I would be thin after plunking my money down.  I was willing to go on any crazy crash or starvation diet if it meant that I wouldn’t have to be fat any more.  What about those of us who go to the extreme of surgery, all with the intent that having once submitted our bodies to that radical procedure we will never have to deal with the consequences of our food addiction again?

Like Naaman, how many of us are "wroth" when we aren't offered a quick fix to our problem? So often we spend our time waiting or looking for a big, dramatic cure—the answer that will free us from our problem once and for all.  We tell ourselves that we want to be cured so badly that we are willing to take any action, how ever painful or large.  What we don’t see is that we spend our time waiting for something big to happen when the real answer—the little daily steps we need to take—are placed right in front of us.  It is the small commitments, repeated over time that bring real healing and recovery.

The miracle of working a 12-step recovery program for me was that it taught me that there is generally no instantaneous cure for an addiction.  We find a recovery program.  We commit to the actions necessary to get “abstinent” or “sober” from our destructive behavior.  Then we use the tools our program gives us and work the 12 steps of recovery as part of the slow process of change. 

The significance of Naaman having to dip himself multiple times certainly didn’t escape me.  I found a recovery program.  I committed to working it.  I worked it for a year, then two, then three, then four.  But I got so tired of doing the same little things over and over.  I felt sure that five years was enough.  After that level of effort surely I could be cured.  Not so.  When I let my program slip—when I stopped doing the daily actions that kept me in recovery—I relapsed. 

For Naaman, dipping in the river one time or even five times would not have been enough.  He had to consistently repeat the action before his healing occurred.  In terms of recovery, I don’t place any significance on the fact that Naaman was commanded to dip seven times, but on the fact that he did it the entire number of times he was told to.  In my recovery program I am told what specific actions I need to take every day.  I am asked to attend multiple meetings per week.  I am told that by consistently working my program I can keep my addiction in remission, but that at any point in time it is ready and waiting to come back with a vengeance.  For me, each day of recovery is like a day one, or perhaps a day seven.  I need to do it again today.  All I need to do is let my program of recovery slip for a day or a week or a month to find I am back in the clutches of addiction.

So for today, I will be willing to do the little things.  I will weigh each of my three meals.  I will not touch flour or sugar.  I will remember my reading and meditation, my outreach calls.  And for today, I will choose recovery rather than addiction.

...On Boring...

I had an interesting conversation with my sponsor yesterday.  I should have written about it right then and there but time was tight and I didn’t.  So my interesting conversation isn’t half so interesting now that I am trying to piece together what it was that I thought was so profound yesterday and the events that lead up to it.  Here it goes anyway…

There is a paradox in my life.  I despise stress, drama, crisis and chaos.  At the same time, I have become addicted to it—or more accurately, to the adrenaline rush it creates in my brain. Conversely, I value peace and serenity.  But, I find calm, ordinary, relaxing, peaceful life kind of boring and unfulfilling.  How the heck did that happen???

The fact is that I went through many years of my life in a state of chaos.  Some of it was my fault, but a lot of it was a simple bi-product of having six kids close together and a husband who was gone most of the time.  Whether I liked it or not, crisis and drama were normal for me.  It might have been something so simple as one baby having a dirty diaper at the same time another child decided to get in a fight with a sibling at the same time we were supposed to be loading into the car to get somewhere on time.  What ever it was, the result was the same—stress that required a certain amount of adrenaline to deal with it.  Now here is the bottom line: when you have to call on the adrenaline often enough for long enough, your body gets used to it.  And when it is not there—even if there is not a need for it—life feels empty, meaningless and incomplete.

Of course it isn’t really meaningless—it is still perfectly meaningful.  It is just that the body has learned to confuse that adrenaline rush with a normal feeling of well-being instead of what it really is—just an extra kick to make it through the immediate crisis. And so “normal” life begins to feel a little too hollow or unfulfilling.

I’ve learned some interesting things about myself.  I can do hard.  I can do impossible.  But don’t ask me to do boring or mundane. Being bored or under-stimulated feels like a fate worse than death to me.  As soon as I see boring on the horizon my mind frantically runs around looking for some big project or obsession that will eliminate the potential threat of any unsatisfying peaceful calm in my life.

How does this relate to food?  In the early stages of my adult life I needed that adrenaline rush to cope with all the demands being heaped on me.  I found that food was a great way to get that extra little kick I needed…some additional energy to cope with or accomplish the task at hand.  Unfortunately, after using food as an “upper” for so long, that little kick became my new “normal” and when I wasn’t experiencing that hyper-high, I felt blah—like something was missing.  It didn’t take long before I needed my food-drug-of-choice to feel a normal sense of well-being.  Food and emotional well-being became inseparably connected.  Once that connection was made I was in real trouble. It got to the point where anytime anything happened that caused any type of feeling or emotion, my first instinct was to stuff food in my mouth.  I used food to cope with everything; to cope with my many (at that point in time, undiscovered) addictions…including my newly acquired addiction to stress and crisis.

Fast forward 5½ years into my OA recovery.  I can’t use food as my drug of choice.  I can’t stuff junk in my mouth when I am feeling something.  I don’t eat to make myself feel better when life is unsatisfying or boring.   So now what do I do?  In my recovery meetings we talk about the blessings of finding peace and serenity in your life.  But what if peace and serenity—which sound perilously like boring—secretly terrifies you?

Stress and constant crisis are not healthy.  They are not supposed to feel normal.  They are meant to signal a very temporary need to step up your level of action to deal with an immediate issue so that you can return to a state of peace and serenity as soon as possible.  But it is a painful process to try and retrain a brain that has forgotten that peace and serenity really are supposed to be the norm.

So, I recently found myself in a dilemma.  I suddenly went from seven consecutive weeks of travel and excitement to being home alone in a big, empty house.  Even with all the “catching up” I had to do, that redefines B-O-R-I-N-G.   The first few days home I could barely make myself get out of bed in the morning.  Why bother?  There was no crisis anywhere to be found.  What was the point?    I found myself trying to contrive something important enough that I could force myself to kick into high gear.  But, it just wasn’t working.

It became very clear in a moment of pure inspiration that dealing with my addiction to an adrenaline rush had become even more pressing than my addiction to food.  And in a second burst of inspiration—in the same day, no less—I had the answer.  I had to change the way I started my day.  Instead of laying in bed in a half-drowsy state trying to force myself to get up at it when what I really wanted to do was sleep for another half a day, I found another alternative—to lay calmly in bed and do my recovery reading, my meditation and then to get on my knees and pray specifically about the day ahead. 

It is not a little coincidence that the Big Book and the resulting 12-step programs have always preached that as a basic tenet of recovery:  (from AA Big Book pp86)  “On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead.  We consider our plans for the day.  Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking…..”   How simple is that?  Wow.  What a difference!  I don’t have to force myself to jump up prematurely and run off into my day like a chicken with its head cut off.  Neither do I have to give up and fall back to sleep as a way of escaping from the potential drudgery that lies ahead.  Instead I can take a little block of time just for me—to focus and redirect my thinking, to set aside all my pre-dispositioned eccentricities, all my hyper-active craziness—and instead to relax and bask in the wonder of a new day full of new opportunities and a new readiness to let go of my own agenda and work off of His agenda.

I am only a week into this new approach to mornings, but I have already seen miracles.  There are been several times where I had one plan in my brain and clear as a bell, the thought came to do something else—which proved to be exactly what I needed to do at that moment.  Instead of getting up and running, I wake up, prepare mentally and spiritually for the day, and then ask to be guided to do “the next right thing.”  It’s working.  I like it.

Taking that extra time each morning for calm reflection has had a soothing effect on the rest of my day.  I am finding that I don’t subconsciously seek out the stress and crisis as much as  I used to.  Instead of flipping into “hyper-manic mode”, I focus on applying “calm—but directed—efficiency” to the task at hand.  Calm efficiency is so much more sane than the energetic craziness that has been such a part of my life.  I think my inner-self might actually be beginning to believe that peace and serenity really is a superior state of being.  

And just for today, I think I’ll keep working for that.  

How Time Flies!

How Time Flies!

I was horrified to realize that my last blog was posted on December 2^nd.  It feels like a lifetime has passed since then.  I will give this condensed summary of my adventures:

Monday, November 22—flew to Las Vegas, rented a car and drove to St. George, Utah. I spent the week in St. George celebrating Thanksgiving and partying with my fam—all six brothers, my dad and his new wife, and several of my children.  Fun Times.

Saturday, November 27^th—drove up to Provo where, spent the next two days helping my daughter, Lindsay, and her husband finish packing their moving van and then drove one of their cars in a caravan down to Blanding, Utah—hence the post, ‘Greetings from Blanding’. I spent a wonderful week with Martin and Lindsay helping unpack and organize their house.

Tuesday, December 7^th—drove the six hours back up north, spent a little time in Provo finishing up some business and visiting Alisa and Megan.

Thursday, December 9^th—flew to Portland, Oregon to stay with my daughter’s four children while she accompanied her husband back to Baltimore to be a kidney donor for his dad.  That was a nasty ordeal  (for him, not for me!) but happily he is pretty well recovered and happily, I had a great time with the grandkids and getting hear my daughter’s Cantico concert.

Monday, December 20^th—flew to Austin, Texas to spend two weeks with my son, David, and his family.  The weather wasn’t the greatest that day, and as a result of flight re-routing and several delays, I arrived at about 2:00 a.m. in the morning.  However, it was the beginning of two absolutely wonderful weeks with more family.  We spent Christmas and New Years there and managed to fit a trip in to Austin and the NASA space center.

I originally had planned to finally fly back to California on Jan 4^th—just over 6 weeks from when I left.  As it ended up, I extended my time in Austin, arriving home on January 11^th—SEVEN weeks later.   During that time, I was living out of a single suitcase—okay, I went with one suitcase and came home with two…but it was Christmas!  I went for a four week stretch without seeing my husband…a record long absence in our 33 ½ years of marriage.  AND, I tried to stay on my food plan and work my recovery program the entire time.

So, how did I fair?  Quite well.  Not perfectly.  But, I have to say that I exceeded my expectations by a long shot.  I came home weighing less than when I left in spite of three major food-related holidays and all the travel. [I was gone for two 1^st-of-the-month-weigh-ins, so I will have an official report on weight come February 1^st.]  I came home happy and grateful for the wonderful time I had to spend with loved ones.  And…I managed to counteract the normal “re-entry” craziness-depression-disorientation I usually experience when I got home from traveling by diving into my recovery program even deeper.  It was miraculous.  My notebook is filled with things I am dying to share.  So, I’ll do that as my schedule permits…one piece at a time.

Greetings from Blanding

I am currently in Blanding, Utah.  What does that have to do with recovery, you might ask?  Well, it puts me in a totally alien culture which I have never experienced before and raises some interesting food dilemmas. 

Background info:  Lindsay told me how to get to her new house, which is approximately 5 hours from Provo.  After taking a little highway through a 7,600 ft. pass in the Uinta Mountains, you get on I-70 going east toward Denver.   Before you get to Colorado you take the exit for highway 191 toward Moab.  Once you get off the interstate, you drive to the first stop sign and turn right, which takes you right to her house.  The catch was, of course, that you have to drive another 110 miles on highway 191 before you get to the first stop sign. 

That should have been a clue that I was in for a culture shock.  I don’t want to be deceptive…we did go through Moab and then Monticello on the way.  Monticello actually has one stop light, which happens to be the ONLY stop light in the whole county. 

We got to Lindsay’s new abode at about 6:40 in the evening.  Miraculously, people started showing up to help unload the rental moving truck and the two cars we had driven down.  45 minutes later, everything was in the house.  Amazing.  We met lots of nice new neighbors.  One actually offered to drive me down to the grocery store and give me a little tour of the town on the way.  That was pretty exciting.

Clark’s grocery store is about the size of a big Walgreen’s and is surprisingly well stocked.  On one side of Clark’s is Family Dollar, which is (don’t act surprised) a dollar store.  On the other side is ALCO, which is a “Big Lots” type of department store.   I could easily navigate every isle of all three stores in 20-30 minutes.  I decided that Blanding is not a good place for a shopaholic to live.  We were, however, thrilled to find out a few days later that there actually is another little dollar store AND a “True Value” hardware store in town.  Wow…talk about Heaven!  The hardware store has a small isle with some fabric and sewing supplies as well as some yarn.  Lindsay will be okay here.

Since I arrived I have been asking everyone I meet three questions:  1) are you a native of Blanding or a transplant?  2)  What do you do for a living? and 3)  where do you go when you really need to go shopping?  The answers to the third question are very insightful.  One person goes to Cortez, Colorado, which is only an hour and a half way.  They don’t have a mall, but do have a Walmart and few other stores like that.  Many people suggested going to Farmington, New Mexico or Grand Junction, Colorado.  Both are about 3 hours away.  That makes for a 6 hours round trip, but you do have clothing stores, mall, etc.  Many just plain drive the 5 hours to Provo occasionally where they can find what ever they need.  I never appreciated shopping in Provo enough before.

Lindsay and I were certain that there had to actually be some place you could buy clothing that we hadn’t yet discovered so we searched the Blanding yellow pages.  We looked under “Clothing” and “Women’s Apparel”.  Both headings had listing for three or four clothing stores….all of which were in Moab, 75 miles north!  The most promising was “Anasazi Outfitters”.  None of the stores were part of a chain or any department-type of size.  Fashion isn’t nearly the big thing here that it is in other parts of the country.

Just as an interesting side note, Marty got sent on a “business trip” Tuesday.  He had to drive to Grand Junction, Co.  That is 3 ½ hours each way.  Purpose of the trip?  To pick up rental tables, chairs, decorations, etc etc etc for his company’s Christmas party tomorrow night.  I wondered how people handle festive occasions like that here in this neck of the woods.

For statistical purposes, Blanding is about 6,000 feet in elevation (higher than Denver) which explains why it is so cold even though it looks kind of like desert.  It has between 3,000 and 4,000 people—half Caucasian and about half Navajo Indian.  It is within visual sight of Colorado, right near the four corners area of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.  It’s claim to fame is that it is the “gateway” to adventure—close to Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Mesa Verde, Lake Powell and lots of other cool places.  The flip side of that it is about 6 hours away from the nearest airport!  You don’t get here in a hurry.

So back to the issue of food:  fast food places include one A&W inside the local gas station/mini-mart, one Subway sandwich and a mom-and-pop hamburger place that is supposed to be really good, but doesn’t serve anything I can eat on program.  There are two sit-down mom-and-pop restaurants, but it didn’t take long to figure out that the “eating out” dilemma was NOT going to be a problem for me here.  I have eaten every meal at home, with my scale, except for the first night we arrived when we did go out to “The Old-Timer’s” Restaurant since our kitchen was not unpacked. 

As far as how I am doing on program: 

Plus side:  eating out not a temptation; grocery store has the basics I need

Down-side:  Since I don’t have a few of the basic staples I am used to, I am eating a pretty boring menu each day:  1 banana, 2 corn tortillas, 2 oz. cheese for breakfast.  12 oz. salad, ½ oz. olive oil, 1 apple, 2 oz. of cheese for lunch, and I really spice it up for dinner by eating variations on breakfast or lunch with occasional beef instead of cheese and sour cream instead of olive oil.  Hey, it sustains life!

I am happy to report that Thanksgiving went well.  I cooked my own food items, measured them out and took them to our Thanksgiving feast.  I have stayed abstinent.  I haven’t even had any artificial sweeteners.  (NO sugar-free chocolate, however tempting that was yesterday.)

I am now two on day 30 of being completely abstinent and proud of it.  So, for today, I think I will keep it up and enjoy the opportunity to see a different view of the world.  It is nice that life doesn’t have to be all about the food.