Day 20 of My Resume: My Checklist Manifesto

Do remember Chester "Sully" Sullenberger? He was the airline pilot who landed a US Airways flight in the Hudson River in 2009 when both of its engines had been disabled by flying geese.

Sullenberger was immediately acclaimed as a national hero. He appeared on daytime talk shows and glossy tabloid magazine spreads. He became a household name. Yet he always stressed that it was a full crew effort. And as Atul Gawande points out in his wonderfully thought-provoking 2011 book, The Checklist Manifesto, Sullenberger and his team also succeeded because they followed a humble checklist. (You can also read a great account of Gawande's ideas in this New Yorker article.)

Gawande makes a compelling case that checklists, like the kind airplane pilots use in emergencies, have the power to transform our world. As the world has become increasingly complex, and the amount of knowledge required for complex activities like surgery and airplane pilot has increased, it has become more and more difficult to ensure that critical actions be performed consistently and correctly.

A powerful tool to overcome this difficulty and to ensure success, he argues, is the simple checklist. Checklists have been proven to reduce errors in complex surgical operations and to save lives in airplane disasters.

Gawande doesn't delve much into how ordinary people can develop and use checklists for their own lives. His book is a manifesto about their worth, not a how-to book.

But it got me thinking about how a humble checklist can be a remarkably powerful tool in my own life, especially my work to overcome unhealthy eating habits.

I've been keeping a nightly checklist since I began this journey. It lists the things I try to do every day:
-- Meditate
-- Daily inspirational reading
-- Blog or Facebook post
-- Listen to an inspiring audio or podcast
-- Daily self-care activity
-- 7-8 hours sleep
-- Home-from-work ritual (cup of tea, scented candle, slippers)
-- 3 daily gratitudes
-- No sugar
-- No flour
-- Weigh all meals
-- Eat only at mealtime

Over the past two years, I've mostly treated this nightly checklist as a habit tracker. A way to monitor my actions and see how well I'm doing.

Missed meditating for three days? Better get back on track. Ate flour four out of seven days last week? Tighten that up. A checklist works well this way.

But I wonder if I can make it an even more powerful tool to get me through a difficult phase as I'm trying to resume? What if, at least temporarily, I made it one of my most important tools?

Since I'm trying to resume, what if instead of seeing it as a habit tracker, I instead think of it as something like a pilot's emergency checklist to save a plane that's spinning out of control.

I have set myself the task of using my nightly checklist as an emergency daily to-do list. I have decided to complete each step on my nightly checklist. Every day.

Because really, I know if I do that, my chances of success go way up. In fact, people who've traveled this path before me say my chances of success will be virtually guaranteed if I complete everything on my nightly checklist every day without fail.

I know that many leaders will warn against aiming for this kind of perfection. They will say you don't have to strive for perfection. And in general, I agree with them. When you're pursuing something that's not life-or-death, beating yourself for a lack of perfection can derail your efforts. You should aim for consistency, not perfection, when it comes to most things in life.

But what about when you're in an emergency or are stuck trying to get out of an especially critical sticky place? Maybe it can help to have clear, specific steps -- steps that are laid out simply on a checklist. Follow the steps, save yourself.

I'm going to try an experiment. For the next two weeks, I am going to treat my nightly checklist as a pilot might treat an emergency checklist.

For the next two weeks, I am Sully Sullenberger trying to bring my airplane back to a safe place.

Day 17 of my Reboot: The Joy of Abstinence

My mind today keeps pondering over something a fellow food addict said to me once, "Nothing brings me joy the way food does."

This idea keeps coming up in my mind over and over again. That food is not just a shortcut to joy and happiness, but is the only pathway to happiness.

If life is a pendulum --  you can't experience true peace without knowing trauma, you can't feel joy without knowing what pain is -- then maybe I have been putting food too much on the "happy" side of the pendulum. Maybe I need someway to convince myself that food belongs in the negative category. That it is in abstinence that I find joy, not in overeating.

In that vein, here is a portrait of me when I am stuck in over-eating:

The "Before" Me, Where Eating Equals Pain

I am deeply embarrassed by my inability to control my eating. Empty wrappers and containers litter my car, hidden from my family do they won't know how much I'm eating. I worry all the time that my fat is straining against my clothes -- or that I won't be able to fit into the clothing I need for work. Headaches come all the time. My face looks bloated. My out-of-control eating behavior is increasing and I feel powerless to stop it. I hide my eating, I steal food from my husband's stash. I believe food is necessary to help me deal with uncomfortable feelings. I worry that I'll develop diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, and heart disease. I am sick of not living up to my promises to stick to my no-sugar, no-flour food plan. I am sick of restarting this food plan over and over, only to fail again. I am sick of using food to escape my depression. I don't want to be that person.

and here's my vision of me transformed:

The "New" Me, Where Abstinence Equals Immense Joy

Every day, I wake up so proud of myself for abstaining from sugar and flour and feeling excited and energetic about making my life the best it can be. I am grateful for the lessons I learned in solving my food issues and passionate about creating the life I've always dreamed about -- one where I am confident, trust myself, and handle challenges with ease. I am full of life, love, and energy. I radiate as bright as the sun. I am strong, slim, and self-confident. The more I fuel my body with healthful things, the more alive I become. Living without sugar and flour is just so much more joyful. If I am feeling down and need a jolt of joy, a walk in the woods or a warm bath with scented candles and a good book soothe me better than food ever did. I am immensely grateful for all my relapses for the learning and beautiful gifts they gave me. I am so proud of myself.

OK, these feel really corny.

But they also feel really true.

I do wake up the morning after a binge feeling bloated, headachy and lethargic. And I do wake up on abstinent mornings feeling energetic and rested. I might have gotten the same 7 hours of sleep or whatever, but abstinent me is joyful. This is a pretty powerful brain shift.

If I can hold these images in my head, maybe they can help me rewire my brain to place abstinence in the "joy" category permanently.

Grateful Hearts Don’t Eat

When I get myself stuck in the overeating mode, my brain settles happily into a cove of negativity. It love — and I mean, really really loves — to focus and refocus on everything that stirs up negative thoughts.

I could and often did spend an entire night (sugary snacks in hand) roaming around my house of resentments and disappointments:

— Remember how much your father messed up your life by making you believe you were unlikeable? By showing so clearly how much he preferred your sister and thought you were too awkward and too smart? Telling people things like how he can’t imagine you ever getting married?

— Remember those girls in junior high who singled you out and teased and bullied you for months? And no teachers ever stepped in to help even though you had no idea what to do about it?

— Remember how when you got engaged, both you and your fiancé were in really bad places work-wise and finance-wise, so you never got an engagement ring? Everyone else you know who is married has a pretty diamond ring, but you don’t get to have one.

I’m really really good at finding things to get my brain all wound up with unhappiness and despair. Like, really good at it. And my mind loves to schmooze around in negativity.

I know, I know, it’s an evolutionary things and we’re probably hard-wired to pay attention to the negative. Wolf coming to your campfire? Better be prepared for it.

But of course, in today’s world, all that negative focus can be tremendously hurtful. If I ever hope to get myself out of my overeating, I have to got to get my brain to stop focusing so obsessively on the negative.

I believe the research that gratitudes are really useful in rewiring the brain. But gratitudes have become rote with me — lately I’ve just been jotting down “pretty trees,” “warm house,” “nice complement”.  I want to take more time with them and really soak up the gratitude daily. 

I know that’s the best way to get my mind out of its usual negative-nelly, “let’s review everything wrong with your life right now” mindset.

Gratitudes:

1. Trees and branches covered with a light dusting of snow are breathtakingly beautiful.

2. At the coldest time of winter, with real-feel temps at 15 below, I have a cozy house with a working furnace that keep me warm and comfortable. I am immensely fortunate to have a warm, safe, comfortable house.

3. Someone told me yesterday that I was so good a public speaker that I could read the phone book and people would come out to hear me. Complements make me very uncomfortable (putting this out here for all of you to read is making me cringe and worry that you’ll think I’m a big diva). But since my brain likes to focus way too much on what I do wrong in work than what I do right, I paid attention to accepting the complement with a grateful heart. I am deeply grateful for having found work that I genuinely enjoy and that I do well.

People in AA sometimes say that “grateful heart don’t drink.” It works just as well for over eaters. Grateful hearts don’t eat.

The Difference Between 99% Committed and 100% Committed

Think of something you would never, ever do, under any circumstances. Commit murder? Do crack cocaine? Break into a house and steal something?

I can't imagine a situation in which I would even be tempted to do one of those things. Put me in a party where people are doing crack. If they offer me some, I'm not going to do it.

I am 100% committed to not doing crack. There's no discussion.

I wouldn't spend time at that party there pondering, "should I or shouldn't I?" The thoughts wouldn't be driving me obsessively crazy. Crack cocaine is something I don't do. I also don't murder people or break into houses and steal things or, I don't know, eat laundry detergent pods. It's not a question of "will I or won't I?" There's no willpower involved. The debate never even begins.

That is what a commitment to not snacking and not eating sugar or flour must be. Right now, I'd say that on a typical day I'm 99% committed to not eating sugar.

But there's an enormous difference between 99% and 100%. At 99% I'm the addict who drives themselves crazy thinking over and over "will I or won't I?" A package of cookies in the pantry will become an obsession.

But at 100%, there's peace. There's no thinking involved. It's just calm.

For today, I'm making a 100% commitment to not eating sugar. Not 99% but 100%.

Day 13: Moments to Remember -- Not the Good Ones

In Catherine Gray's brilliant new book The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, she notes that in her first days of sobriety, she felt like Dory in that animated film, Finding Nemo. Remember that little blue fish? She's always forgetting who she is and what's she's doing? 

Gray describes how in her first 30 days, she felt like Dory. She was constantly forgetting WHY she was doing the sober thing. WHY she had given up drinking. She had to keep replaying in her mind the worst moments from her drinking life.

I often feel that way too, in my journey to stop overeating.

This week, I had a really bad 1-2-3 punch of emotional experiences. Three completely different events happened, each of which sent me emotionally into a tailspin. At each of those moments, I simply forgot why I had given up overeating. And I ate.

So, in the spirit of Catherine Gray, here are most of my worst moments. These are the moments I need to replay in my mind to get me to remember why I am doing this healthy eating thing:

—      Once, when I was in the grip of my sugar addiction and starting to binge because of food restriction, someone gave me some cookies to take home after an event. I told myself I’d give them to my husband, wrapped them up in napkins and put them in the backseat of my car. Driving home, I got obsessed about them. Could NOT stop thinking about them. Finally found myself reaching behind to the backseat to get them … while driving down a busy highway. Yes, I could easily have gotten myself into a terrible crash, just for the sake of reaching cookies in the backseat.

—      I hit my heaviest weight while finishing my Ph.D. Dissertation. I was so fat and miserable that I didn’t permit many photographs on my graduation day, the one day in my life where I got to wear actual Ph.D. robes with the velvet stripes on the sleeves. As a result, I have virtually no photographs from the time when I hit one of the major achievements of my life.

—      Someone sent me photographs of myself when I was performing Jackie Kennedy at a venue in Maryland. It was a great achievement because the organization had flown me in specifically for this event. But it was clear in the photos that the costume did not fit me. The pink skirt was stretched tightly across my bulging hips. Knowing how visibly obvious it was to the audience that the suit did not fit (and that I was waaayyy bigger than the real Jackie) was mortifying. I still think of that photo and cringe.

—      After I’d been doing Bright Line Eating for a while, I found myself binging whenever I broke my lines. This was upsetting because I’d never been a binger before. And because my family thought I was so great for giving up sugar. I began resorting to addict-style tricks like

o   Hiding the plastic wrappers and bakery boxes in my car and throwing them away at gas stations so my husband wouldn’t see them

o   Driving out at night to buy junk food because there was none in the house, the way an alcoholic might drive out at night to get booze.

o   Keeping treats in my car so that I wouldn't overeat them (and my husband wouldn't see them), then sneaking out early in the morning or late at night to retrieve them

o   Coming home at night and sitting in my car in the driveway, stuffing cookies in my face so that I could get as much sugar in me before going inside.

—      Seeing my father become increasingly vegetable-like, unable to stand or walk by himself, in part because he refused to give up his existing eating habits when he developed Parkinson’s disease. He now has brain dementia, brought on in large part by eating sugary and processed foods and refusing to exercise. Knowing that I have a family history of Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases, I have got to get my food addiction under control.

Whew. These are embarrassing moments to revisit. But I think they are just as important as the vision in my head of the "happy, thin and free" me. In fact, in the moment, when the chips are down and the food is staring me in the fact, it might be more important to remember why I don't overeat anymore than to remember why I do eat healthfully.

I say no to all these moments.

Day 7: The Unexpected Gifts of Relapse

Relapsing frequently can be enormously frustrating and heart-rending and depressing. It feels like you’re on a road trying to get somewhere, but all you keep doing is making U-turn after U-turn and never getting anywhere.

And. And it can also be incredibly educational. When you’re paying attention to why you relapse, you get the gift of understanding what causes you to relapse. And that’s the best way to prevent it.

So as one part of my current resume, I’m trying to take a more preventative approach. What happens right before I relapse?

Well, looking over everything I’ve journaled about during relapses, it’s pretty clear that one of the following likely has happened:

— I’m tired. When I’m not getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, I feel tired all day. It lowers my coping abilities. Little things get magnified. Things that normally would roll off my back — an irritating co-worker, unexpected traffic, my dog misbehaving — suddenly seem much more stressful.

— I’ve overloaded my calendar. Typically, I aim for no more than two big “things” every day. It could be two work things — giving two public speeches. It could be one work thing and one family thing — a public speech and then dinner with my husband. But it’s when I try to do three things that the going gets tough. When I try to do two public speeches and then dinner out, my stress level goes up and my willingness to break my abstinence increases.

— I’ve drifted from my abstinence check list. I’m not doing the things on my nightly checklist consistently. Maybe I skipped meditation or didn’t write three gratitudes. I didn’t feel like doing a daily reading. Whatever. My checklist isn’t complete.

— I haven’t planned ahead. I didn’t prepack my lunch or I decided to just wing it at the restaurant.

— I haven’t been keeping up with self-care. I haven’t been taking time every day to sit quietly with a cup of tea, take a warm bath, get myself an abstinent treat, or something like that. I haven’t taken time to appreciate and care for myself.

All of these things, really, are part and parcel of the same thing.

In all of these cases, a little something — a little lack of sleep or a little dip in keeping up with my checklist — turned into a snowball, which turned into a relapse.

So, turning it around, perhaps the best way to see a relapse coming and stop it dead in its tracks, is to watch out for the tiny little drifts away from your abstinent supports. A tiny little miss is the first sign that you might be on the path to a relapse.

Day 4 of My Resume: Where the Rubber Hits the Road

MAN, I WISH I COULD WAKE UP FILLED WITH JOY AND CELEBRATION!!! 

I mean, come ON, I made it through three days of my this current resume and it hasn't been easy:

-- It's been a big work week already. I debuted two new programs. Lots of memorizing. Lots of work.

-- The period of late afternoon has been hard every day. Hunger sets in and gets bad.

-- The period from about 6:30 to about 8:30 has been hard. That's my witching hour. Lots and lots of cravings to nosh. I've been working hard on self-care in those hours -- warm baths, hot tea, walks with my dogs, connecting with other BLE folks.

And, hooray, I made it through these first three days with my food plan intact. No sugar, no flour, no snacks. I woke up today with no headache and with a good amount of energy.

So why aren't I dancing around the house with joy? I mean, this is cause for celebration.

Sigh. Maybe it's because I know this is when the s--t gets real. It's in the time frame between day four and day 14 or so that I've been most likely to fail in the past. The gee-whiz excitement of resuming starts to fade. Cravings settle in. It feels like "I'm so close to the beginning. I can just give in and then resume again."

Maybe it's just my brain reminding me that this isn't an easy journey. Don't get complacent. Don't stop using every tool. Stay focused and on-target. Make the food your top priority. Keep the course. Eyes on the target. You got this.