My BIT

All right. Since Wende and scb are feeling self-conscious about being alone together in this enterprise for a better body, I have to join them, if only to encourage their efforts. Besides, I need encouragement too, and it makes no sense to me to let this opportunity go by.

Years ago, I purchased Bob Greene's "The Best Life Diet." At that time I was researching diets and low-glycemic index foods, healthy eating and lifestyle changes, and so on, and it seemed quite a sensible approach. So, that's what I'm going to use as my guide.

There's just one thing about it I really don't like, though it was probably important to me at the time I bought it. Greene places a lot of emphasis on analysing why you overeat. Are you stuffing down your anger? Your disappointment? Your frustration? Find new and better ways to deal with it, he says, and "have the best life you deserve."

(bleh)

Oprah wrote the introduction (of course). In it she writes:

Loving yourself means honoring yourself and your own feelings first. When I was 237 pounds, I didn't even know what I felt. It was like living behind a veil of fat.

I hesitate to say this, for all sorts of reasons, but I do not believe, in spite of being 75 pounds overweight, that I am living behind a "veil of fat."

No, I am living behind a veil of smoke.

I use cigarettes to "manage" my feelings. I have promised to quit and I have quit a few times in the last eleven years, but never for more than a month at a time. I've invested in courses from the Lung Association, pills from the doctor, nicotine gum...and now that the patch is available without prescription, I'll do that too.

I have to set a quit date and dig out my little cigarette charts to track and cut down on the number I smoke each day (about 20, now). Crikey, just typing this makes me so nervous, I'm reaching for the pack! They steady me.

Managing my emotions in a different way is going to be HUGE. I can't tell you.