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I won’t bore you with the details about my brother–I’ll just tell you what is relevant here: he is in jail for either a DUI or drugs (I’m actually not sure which is the offense, but both are problems).  Over the past several weeks I have realized, profoundly, and for the first time, that I cannot help him.  And by that I mean: not only is my help completely useless and insanely inappropriate–like an Alaskan moose telling an African lion how to behave–but also I cannot allow myself to help him because it does more harm than good.  My help is a bail-out, just like the government bail-outs we hear about in the news lately.  In my brother’s case (as, we fear, with the banks, car companies, etc.) the bail-out just enables more of the same bad behavior and delays the necessary consequences.

I had lunch with a friend last week and she said, “Isn’t it amazing that the two of you come from the same family?”

Here I am, relatively successful, with a job and a house and all the trimmings.  There he is, losing everything–truly everything.  And we started from the same place.

But we do have plenty in common.  I suspect that my out-of-control appetite is my return to addiction.  While my brother deals with his addiction, I am doing my “sympathy eating” as if I were the husband of a pregnant woman.  No, I am the sister of a drug addict.

This is hard to articulate because it is still partly subconscious, but my being overweight was meant to communicate something.  For me, being overweight said to the world, “Things are not okay.” I suspect my brother does the same thing, but using drugs and alcohol.

Blogging would be a healthier form of communication.

Hello, world.  Things are not okay.

The past month has been not-so-great for me as far as health goes.  I have plenty of reasons/excuses and the situation “is what it is.” But the facts now are: I am out of my exercise routine, my appetite is out of control, and I am gaining weight.

Interestingly, several physical symptoms have returned that I had never before attributed to my old health condition.  This past weekend I had a migraine–the first one in months.  Today my shoulder is cramped up–that used to be a daily occurrence but I haven’t felt this in months either, maybe even a year.  And I can’t stop eating sweet stuff.  And all I want to do is rest and sleep.

All this feels familiar, too. This is the way I used to live.  And when I lived like this, I was depressed.

I can use this blog to chronicle my way back out of this.  I can, but will I?

I found a weight loss blog to recommend – and as many weight loss blogs as there are, there are precious few that contain helpful information and aren’t simply full of plugs for products.  This one is Diet Debunker by Craig Ballantyne, who writes for several health magazines. In his blog, Ballantyne covers recent scientific studies about diet and exercise, and brings some of these technical tomes down to earth for us.

One of my favorite recent posts is “How to MaintainYour Weight Loss,” which cites a study of weight-losers from the journal Obesity.

For the gajillionth time: It is time to get back on track.  I was just reading the Weight Watchers message boards and blogs and it is all the same, over and over: people are perenially getting back on track.  That is how Weight Watchers stays in business.

For the past 4 weeks I have been off of my usual life routine for a number of reasons.  Now I am back with not much else to do except live my usual life.  That is a relief.  That means I need to pick back up the best of my regular habits: eating well, exercising regularly, and generally keeping an orderly life.  All these things have slipped over the past month, and it is hard to crank them up again.  It is always more compelling to take things a little easier.

Ironically, the Breast Cancer Walk didn’t have the effect on my life and weight loss goals that I thought it would.  It was a wonderful experience, and I will probably do it again.  However, all things considered, it didn’t help me to stay healthy–it was a distraction from my healthiest habits.  It gave me an excuse to exercise less and eat more…an excuse that I didn’t have to use, but I did.  It was compelling to take the easier path.  So, I’m not saying that the Breast Cancer Walk was a bad thing–but I am saying that I didn’t use it as a good thing to the extent that I could have.

The bottom line is that no matter what I do, there is simply no escaping the need for self-discipline.  There are no breaks.  Every time I stray from self-discipline, I regret it, but every time I stay disciplined good things happen.  It’s just danged hard.

I have a friend who often asks me, “What do you want?” and encourages me to stay focused in that direction.  So if being healthy is what I want, why is it so difficult?

In subsequent posts I want to explore this topic and come up with some positive and helpful answers.