How I Overcame Food & Alcohol Addictions

Sober: (i) free from excess, extravagance, or exaggeration; (ii) showing self-control; (iii) sane or rational.

That’s what sober means to me. To others, it undoubtedly also means not intoxicated or drunk.

The reason I make this distinction is that no matter how much of a drinking problem I might have had, it was dwarfed by my weight problem. Here’s my story of how I became free from excess, extravagance, or exaggeration; began showing self-control; and became much more sane and rational.

In 1988, at age 29, my weight was out of control. I weighed 367 pounds and I was miserable. I ate poorly and ate too much. I drank too much. I partied too much.

None of this affected my work—professionally, I was quite successful. But all the while, I was committing what I have since come to call “slowcide.” I didn’t put a gun to my head or anything like that. Nevertheless, I was slowly killing myself.

All my energy was going into my professional life. Very little energy was going into my body, and the energy I did give it was poor. What I was feeding my spirit was poor as well.

I was slowly falling apart.

Then in 1990, I joined Weight Watchers to do something about my weight. I lost 100 pounds over the next year. Problem is, I didn’t learn:

• How to deal emotionally with the issues that led to my unsupportive eating habits in the first place
• How to eliminate unsupportive foods from my diet (I simply ate less of them)
• How to give up alcohol

As a result, 60 pounds of my lost weight began coming back the moment I ate my first cookie. I hadn’t addressed the causes of my unhelpful behaviors, and I hadn’t learned how to replace those behaviors with helpful ones.

Fast forward to February 1st, 2001. I was married and weighed 320 pounds at the time.

My knees hurt. I hadn’t had a heart attack (yet). I wasn’t on high blood pressure medication but probably should’ve been.

I was four months away from my fiftieth birthday and I was upset. I was thinking that I had so much potential and I was wasting much of it. I woke up and told my wife:

I’m going to stop tolerating BS in my life, and the first person I’m going to stop tolerating it from is myself. The second person is you, and the third person is everybody else.

(My wife and I are still married and we get along quite well.)

I then said:

I’m going to start eating better NOW, and I’m going to start exercising regularly NOW—and my exercise of choice is going to be walking.

Since that moment more than 15 years ago, I have:

• Walked more than 65,000 miles
• Walked the equivalent of going around the circumference of the Earth, at the equator, 2.62 times
• Walked 100 marathons (that’s 26.2 miles or more in a single day)
• Gone from a weight of 320 pounds to 142 pounds (with no drugs or surgeries)

I didn’t stop drinking at the start of this journey, but I quickly realized that drinking scotch was incompatible with my desired walking activities. Something had to give and the booze was it.

I took my last drink May 28th, 2009, and I don’t miss it a bit. I’ve kept the weight off and it hasn’t come back.

There were bumps and twists along the way, but any time my actions were less than ideal, I didn’t beat myself up. I simply returned to my new, supportive habits and kept going.

Over time, the bumps and twists became fewer and fewer. Now, more than 15 years later, they’re pretty much non-existent.

How did I do this? I created a system to help me develop the appropriate mindset—then stuck to that system.

That system is based on the following, all of which helped me overcome the hold of addiction and realize my fullest potential:

• I learned to “tell it like it is,” admitted I had a problem, and adjusted my actions accordingly.
• I adopted long-term thinking and started focusing less on short-term gratification.
• I started taking personal responsibility, stopped blaming others (and myself), and started fixing my problems.
• I changed my perspective and realized that everything I give and everything I receive in life is a privilege. I don’t have to give up addiction; I get to give up addiction.
• I aligned my thoughts, actions, and deeds with my stated words and expressed desires.
• I learned to persist, despite all obstacles.
• I learned to respect others—and myself—in order to receive respect from others.
• I took steps to bring things in my life into balance: identifying my deficiencies and increasing them; identifying my excesses and decreasing or eliminating them.
• I was willing to make permanent, positive changes in order to achieve permanent, positive changes. I chose to believe this was possible.
• I developed a disciplined approach and fully committed to staying the course.

For me, everything above made a powerful, life-changing difference. It also taught me that we’re capable of far more than we might have ever imagined.

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