Determined To Succeed

Day twenty-three.

“Ugh.” That’s all I have to say. I am finally up and around today after having a massive allergy attack last night. You know the kind I mean. The ones where you sneeze yourself into a headache (where you can’t stop sneezing at all), where your eyes are all puffy, throat is all drippy and nothing seems to help much. So I say again, “ugh!” Although, and on a positive note,  I did alright food-wise having had a great homemade beef stew. Not only that but only having an appropriate portion of it, too. This way I have lunch AND dinner tonight as well. Awesome.

It just sucks ass when your sick. That sneezing, head-achy allergy attack turned into something of a summer cold and my throat is dry and hurting today. Now, the good news about all that is that I do not feel like eating. The bad news is I don’t feel much like doing anything today except, well, laying around saying “ugh.”

Let’s talk for a moment about the virtues of lying on one’s couch flipping channels. You get to catch up on talk shows, game shows and “reality” TV (reality is in quotes because, if you know anything about TV, there ain’t much of it that’s real. It’s contrived and staged with heroes, villains and victims just like scripted TV shows). Or, you get to catch up on a good book or a few movies, whether they’re on cable or in your DVD cue. You get to curl up with one of the best inventions ever – the heating pad – and just be a slug, allowing your body to get the rest it needs to get better.

Now, let’s talk about the bad parts of just lying around. Nothing gets done. Not work, exercise, errands, exercise, laundry, exercise, cleaning and, most of all, exercise (did I mention that already?). And when you do flip channels you realize that the only thing on the tele is crap because 90% of the country is at work so they put on reruns of crap, marathons of whichever “Housewives of” show is being aired and show you what antics Snooki and Jwoww are up to at the “Jersey Shore.” And never mind the fact cable, especially premium channels, are running the same three movies ALL THE TIME. I mean seriously, how many times can the Decepticons take revenge against the Autobots while Shia LaBeouf yells “no, no, no, no, no, no!”

So there’s my catch 22. Rest or push myself. The fact of the matter with me is that I do embrace being sick, I do, and I am content with lying around putting up with bad TV and excessive reruns if it gets me better faster so I can rejoin life. But with these extra pounds to lose I am torn. I wish I could sneeze them out and throw them away in little wadded-up balls of tissue. But I can’t. It takes work, work (and workouts) that I have almost zero energy for today.

So maybe I will compromise with myself. I will get going and do some work and maybe, MAYBE, if I am up to it, go for a walk later. At least that will be something. And it might do me well to get out for a bit and let the hot end-of-summer air work its magic on my nostrils and nasal cavities. That sounds good, but then again so does my couch. Alright, alright, I will get up though and do something to start.

Thanks for listening to me rant today. Being in a weight loss struggle ain’t easy, especially when you’re sick. But good and bad, we are in this together. Hopefully, I will be better enough to kick the bag decently tomorrow in martial arts class. Hell, even the energy for that walk today would be good. But no matter what, I am just thankful to be here, present and sober today. And sick or not, that is an amazing feeling, even when you start the day saying “ugh.”

Day twenty-two.

It’s quiet this morning. I can actually hear myself think. And what am I thinking about? The fact that I had a weekend that was good, really good, and sober. That I was here and present and a participant in my own life instead of being so detached from it I could hardly remember what day it was. The fact I had great workouts and went shopping, and the fact I now have to re-lose some weight because I have been eating a bit too much again because I am, well, stressed.

If you have ever studied addictive behaviors you will find that people almost always replace one addiction with another and an extremely high percentage of them replace their usual drug of choice with food. Being that I am a dual addict and my first drug of choice WAS food it was easy to begin eating a little bit of this and a little bit of that to deal with the stresses of sobriety. Yes, there are stresses in sobriety. Of course there are, and these stresses are constant because you’re always working on your sobriety, like you’re always working on maintaining your weight loss.

I can’t speak for anyone else out there but I stress because I want to make sure I am now on a clean, good and honest path. Because I always want to do the right things and am not sure if some of the things I say are right or not. I struggle with being the newer, better me and having that have the best parts of my personality and not the shitty parts that dominated it before. I struggle because I never want to go back to old Bill again, either in addiction or in weight, and because I struggle I stress eat.

It’s stupid, I know. I do know better. I know that I shouldn’t eat a stupid gyro wrap from my local diner with fries. That was stupid (especially since it wasn’t very good at all and made my stomach all messed up). It’s stupid because I know in my brain eating doesn’t calm stress, it only adds to it eventually. Sure what I eat may taste good at the time but any addict will tell you that the quieting of the brain during addiction comes from the endorphins produced when you give yourself the drug. But when they wear off you feel ashamed and never want to do it again – you just don’t know how to break the cycle.

I am at 235.9 today and I am pissed off at myself. I am pissed off because I can see in my face my cheeks get chubbier again. I feel bloated. I see the numbers creeping up on the scale. Most of all, though, I am pissed because food is so automatic for me I didn’t realize I was eating too much again until yesterday really. That the old patterns were coming back and I need to arrest them, too, especially if I want to maintain the “high” of being sober in other areas of my life.

Look, food is fuel. It isn’t the answer to a problem. It won’t solve money issues. It won’t make pain go away. It won’t solve what’s going on in your life. Used like this it’s only a distraction, a distraction from what’s really going on inside. But like any addiction you need to recognize you are in need of help, in need of control and in need to stop and face what is really causing you to seek out food (or your drug of choice) in the first place. Today I vow to fight that addiction, too. I made that vow yesterday and did O.K. in my eating. Not the best I could have been (I had an extra helping I shouldn’t have) but I was better and I will strive to be better than that today (no matter how delicious Jersey corn is).

And how will I be better? I will be better in my eating because I will tackle the day as I began my day. Listening to the quiet and hearing myself think. And when I can think like that I have the power to change the things I want to change about myself including that stupid number on my electronic scale. And no matter what, I will think about how I no longer want to feed either addiction. How I just want to be me and the best me I can be.

Day nineteen.

I woke up this morning and I cried. I cried because of the realization that I was finally becoming a whole person again. I cried because all those parts of me and my soul that had been scattered to the four winds (despair, shame, guilt and gluttony) have started coming back and are now a part of me again and for the first time in my recent memory I am here and present.

I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like having your soul, brain, heart and energy segmented like that.  Sad to say it is something you have to experience to know. To use a movie analogy it’s like being Voldemort from the Harry Potter books. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Voldemort uses physical objects to place parts of his soul so that, no matter what happens to his physical body, he can return. In that world it is the darkest, blackest magic there is. In this world, my world, it was the darkest and blackest my soul had ever been. It’s so bad that you put yourself aside for the drug. You do, and the motions you go through aren’t for you. They’re for the drug.

Being addicted to something – anything – means you not only get a high from it but you eventually start trading things, including pieces of your life and soul for it. If you know anyone who’s an addict they will tell you that. They will also tell you what withdrawl is like – that maddening craving for the drug when you ween yourself off of it. But what I am going through isn’t withdrawl, it’s reverse withdrawl.

I cried today because I really felt myself coming back together today. I felt the parts of my soul that had been gone for so long come back home. I watched the sun rise a bit this morning, listened to the birds sing their morning songs of hunger and felt myself take in such good, deep breaths that I felt almost overwhelmed. I felt heavier. Not just because I’ve been eating like a pig lately but because the best parts of me rejoined me. My mind wasn’t in one place while my soul was shoved away in a closet somewhere. I wasn’t spending my time being an addict and splitting my time, energies and self between so many different things. I was here again and I was at peace.

The last time I felt peace like that was when I sat with my mother, JoAnn Larson, as she lay dying from pancreatic cancer. I’ve said it before and I will say it again I know exactly how lucky a bastard I am because I was able to say to my mom “I love you, mama” and hear her say “I love you, too, son” back. Those were literally her last words to me. Those were literally her last words. After that she slipped further and further away until finally she became eternally free and healed from that terrible bitch disease. Those words brought me peace and they are what I held onto as her hand grew cold even as I held it watching her take her last breath on this earth.

Reclaiming what had been gone so long makes you heavier. I don’t know how but it does. They say when your spirit leaves your body you actually lose weight. Well, I now know what it’s like to breathe and live again. I was dying. Maybe not physically, but emotionally and spiritually. This morning, and these past few weeks, have all been part of a process I hope to and want to continue. I love this reverse withdrawl. It’s renewed my senses and it’s making me whole again.

I talk all the time about seeing the “promised land.” In the past I meant about weight loss and I still do. I lost the weight of a grown person and I will never, EVER regain it back because I knew I would be dead had I kept it. But I have also seen the “promised land” of what it’s like to crave something so much it takes over your life, and yes, that can be food, too. But I would try to save you that pain and have you learn from my experience to stay away from that rancid hell on earth.

No matter what your addiction you are worth so much more than that which drives you. Our souls must be one within ourselves to truly be alive and that cannot happen craving something else. Yesterday I made a kick-ass soup (the Delicious Bean Stew I listed the recipe for – it’s awesome, by the way). Today, Friday, and tomorrow, Saturday, I’m going to workout with my martial arts instructor, Doug Shaffer, and it’s going to feel great. I am going to see and talk with friends and I am gonna drive with the windows down to feel the warm air on my face. That is life, and I am embracing it again after such a long, long time.

If you are new to reading me, welcome. I truly appreciate you stopping by to check out this website to gain inspiration in your weight loss journey. I am still on that path and will forever be on that path with you. There are two parts of it, you know. Losing weight and keeping it off, the latter being the on-going, lifestyle-changing part. It may be rough, and I know it is, but there is a difference this time as there is now a difference in my life.

I am here and present, and when we can say that, and really and truly mean it, we can and will do anything because we have our lives back and finally back in our control. Have a great weekend.

Day eighteen.

Today I am a bundle of energy and a bundle of nerves. What a way to start the day. You know that feeling. It’s anticipation, that feeling when you are expecting something or waiting for something to happen but don’t quite know when it is so you sit and wait…and wait some more.

Yesterday I met with Dr. John, the first of two appointments I had and I have gotta tell ya, it was a meeting well-worth going to. He was awesome. In just five minutes of talking to me his experience told him so much about me that I sat there, dumbfounded, at how much he could read me like the pages of an open book. He told me about behaviors, and he told me about addictions and addictive traits. Most of all, though, he challenged me. He challenged me by slicing through my bullshit and hitting me with one gut-wrenching but true fact.

He said, “Bill, because of your addiction, you are only using 20% of your full potential.”

It’s not easy when you’re told how much better you could be if you didn’t piss away a portion of your life wasting time on something that had such control over your life like this did mine. What he said hurt and it was on my mind the rest of the day. Not necessarily in a bad way but in a “wake up” way.

I used to be so fucking arrogant. I always used to think I was better than most people, especially people you can look at and say “damn, they look fucked up, don’t they?!” The “rode hard, put away wet people” who look drugged out and knocked out even when out in daylight. Why do I say this? Because one of the reasons I am in this predicament is that I was arrogant enough to believe I was above this kind of shit. I went to college, got a degree and used to hold a $70K-a-year job. I hung out with people who were not like the people you see hanging out on street corners. I hung out with like-minded, well-educated people who talked politics and drank martinis, not baby-mamas and daddies who couldn’t put together a cohesive sentence if they tried. I was arrogant, conceited and just plain wrong, and in the end I learned I was no better. Not only that, I was worse because I knew better! I had access to all the resources in the world. I just chose to ignore it all for my addiction. That’s what an addiction does to you. It puts you in a leaky-ass boat on the river of denial without a paddle.

I once thought my accomplishments were pretty cool, and some of them are. I’ve met people who were pretty important, politicians, celebrities and the like, and have done things I am very proud of (like having the Chicago Sun-Times print the American flag as a pull-out page so people could show the flag after September 11, 2001 or helping a mom give her dying son the experience of a lifetime simply by setting up a movie screening). But these are moments, moments that showed signs of the potential I knew I could reach but never did because I was afraid. Stupidly but plainly afraid, and part of that fear was letting go of the addictions in my life.

When I started attending twelve-step meetings I was nervous so I sat and observed minor details, like that the meeting was comprised of this many women and and that many men, some older, some younger, some white and some not (there was one woman who was Filipino, I think, and one black guy which, with me, made one-and-a-half black guys, I guess). And they all looked normal. And ain’t that a shitty thing to say, “they looked normal.” Like you can tell what an addict looks like on sight. But as I am being honest here (truly, a new thing for me) and since I am trying to keep this as real as I can I was half-expecting to see people who looked like they did crack as a hobby or never left the world of Dungeons & Dragons and used the internet as their own personal girlfriend or boyfriend.

But that’s not the truth. The truth is the people I saw and met looked like the people you stand in line with at the store, take your orders for crappy merchandise on the phone and do your taxes. They are normal every day people who were nice, accepting and non-judgmental. In other words, they looked just like you and me. People like your neighbors, friends and family members. People who are in front of you at the drive-thru in the morning and behind you in church on Sunday afternoons. We are everywhere and we need help and I, for one, am so glad I finally admitted it to myself and others.

That is why I am a bundle of energy and nerves today. I am ready. Finally fucking ready to not be a coward any more. You see, honesty in any shape or form was such a foreign concept to me and lying such a way of life that anything honest, truly honest, felt wrong. I even made attempts to stop my behavior and failed and that shame held me back. My actions held me back. But I am not accepting failure anymore.  I am committed to getting well again, gaining control over my life and being my mother, JoAnn’s, son again. And I am finally ready to live up to my fullest potential not just in career but as a human being. I am.

This road we travel is a scary one but I am doing my best to hold my head up high and make that inventory of myself to make sure I never do the things I’ve done again. And everything I’ve said here and the past three weeks is absolutely applicable to weight loss, it is, because food can be an addiction. It certainly was for me. And once we restore that sanity, regain that control and live up to our fullest potential we can achieve our goals and dreams.

My name is Bill and this is my on-going story. Thank you for listening and thanks for letting me share.

Day seventeen.

Did you ever have one of those days when a whole bunch of stuff happens and your mind is just racing with it all? Thoughts about this here and details of that there and you just want it all to go the fuck away? Shit. It’s enough to drive you buggy (as my mom used to say). Sometimes you’d almost rather have a physically-trying day rather than a mentally-draining one, or worse yet, an emotionally-draining one. Yesterday was like that for me. I don’t know what it was, maybe the moon was out of its alignment or something, but yesterday just didn’t feel right, and that caused my brain and emotions to go into overdrive. I felt lost, nervous and scared. That is when being a food addict sucks. Everything everywhere looks and sounds good (and comforting) to eat and drink, including a nasty-ass soda called Mello Yello.

It had been a long day, and an emotionally draining one, and my old patterns of emotional eating came back and came back with a vengeance. Even though I did a workout I ordered myself up some Chinese food for dinner and, while sitting there waiting for it, I perused the soft drink case. I saw my old friend, Coke, sitting there waving “hello,” but I tried my best to ignore it casting my gaze elsewhere in the cooler. There were many other soft drinks and I tried to be good – Diet Dr. Pepper, Orange Crush, Sprite Zero and the afore-mentioned Mello Yello. I was in such a mental state yesterday I stupidly bought at least one of them all. It wasn’t until later, as I was getting ready for bed and pouring myself the last Mello Yello over ice, did I realize what I was doing.

For those of you who don’t know, Mello Yello WANTS to taste as good and as refreshing as 50/50 but ends up being a cross between Mountain Dew and Sprite (which is not a great combination). The thing that got to me most was the color of it. It looked like an irradiated greenish yellow. It looked nasty. It tasted O.K. but it looked nasty and I sat there and looked at this concoction in utter disgust.

Here’s everything that went through my mind:

“I drank that?!”

“I put that in my body?”

“I can’t believe I just did that!”

“It was awful.”

“I will never do it again.”

Ever since my catastrophic failures of a few weeks ago I look at things slightly different now. I am an addict twice-over. Being addicted to food was how I got to be 400 pounds, and I admit that part of me reverted back to that “needing food” guy last night. But what is changed is how I see what I am doing. Sometimes, you can’t see the forest through the trees. You’ve heard that phrase before, right? C’mon, everyone has. It’s a phrase that essentially means when you’re too close to something you can’t see the big picture. Before when I would eat and drink I was so in the depths of that addiction I couldn’t see the entirety of the cause and effect of it all on my body and health. I just wandered through the forest from tree to tree eating this and that, not looking at it and saying “I’m lost. Please help me.”

Since then, I at least know I am an addict and can stop running through that forest and finally scream out “I need help!” That is the first step in the twelve steps: recognizing your addiction is greater than you are. Sitting there last night looking at that putrid green/yello “soda” I just knew I needed to stop. This goo wasn’t going to calm my mind, a sense of peace was. Sitting there and getting a handle on what the day brought and how to deal with it and how I am going to deal with it in the future brought a peace that quieted my mind as well as my want for food.

At that moment I did something I am very proud of – I stopped drinking that stuff. I got up and threw the rest of it out and I know I will never drink it again. The sense of peace I am finding is helping me finally see the forest and my true path through it.  Today I have two therapy appointments and I am very much looking forward to them. And as far as food goes, I am going to get back to my good patterns, including exercising later, as I pray for today to be as mentally and emotionally peaceful as sleep. That is why these days I am not as lost, nervous or scared as I once was, because I am finally recognizing that the forest I am trying to navigate has been me all along and because of that I will find my way through. It will just take time and knowing I will need help along the way.

Download This Episode

Day sixteen.

Honesty. Funny how such a simple word and concept can have such a different meaning to different people, me included. There are even qualifiers attached to the word at times, words like total honesty, brutal honesty and radical honesty, which is the type of honesty I am trying my best to practice these days. But let’s break down each of these and what they mean knowing completely that this not only extends to addictions, but to weight loss, work, friends, school, family, you name it. It applies to all.

Let’s begin with the phrase total honesty. Its wording implies that simple honesty or honesty by itself wasn’t honest, and that a portion of the truth was hidden. You see it every single day, I bet. Now ask yourself, how many times has someone said to you “O.K., to be totally honest…” And yes, this is the one I am guilty of most of all.

Yesterday I mentioned how there was ever only one person to whom I told everything and that was my mama, JoAnn. After she said “nobody needs to know our business but us” I knew at once I had both a confidant as well as a co-secret keeper about things starting with the way we lived. A one-room, roach-infested apartment inside a hotel was certainly not the worst it ever could have been. I was never abused, verbally or physically, my life could have been in danger from neighbors or visitors to the building, etc., and my mom did the best she could to keep that roof over our heads with her meager wages especially after my father left. That wasn’t failure that was love, I just never opened up about it because, to a kid, that wasn’t what you saw on TV. It wasn’t what I saw when I went to other people’s houses. Yes, I was never totally honest until this part of my life.

Now let’s talk about brutal honesty, which is a phrase employed when you want or need justification for being truthful with someone when you may or may not have lied to them. It is also a way certain people in this world say mean-spirited things and get away with it because they shield themselves with the word “honesty” while brandishing the razor-sharp sword of “brutal” in their verbal attack on someone. I’ve heard so many people in my life say “to be brutally honest, this is terrible….” blah, blah but while they were hurting feelings they used that word honesty, as if they were such good people for saying it the way they did.

Now let’s talk about radical honesty, which is what I am practicing these days. This is a form of honesty where the doors are finally thrown wide-open and halls, closets and attic filled with boxes of lies and deceit are cleared out and lights brought in to finally see the spaces inside. In opening up to people as I have been lately I have been exploring the many parts of my brain and soul that have been locked away for so long I never thought anyone, not even me, would see them again. That’s how radical honesty works.

But what about poor and simple honesty, who, if it were followed, wouldn’t need to be total, brutal or radical at all. It would simply be the truth. Not the truth as you see it, not the truth that fits an agenda, not a truth that makes you more likable but plain and simple truth. No having to muscle up strength to offer the “total” or “brutal” truth to undo omissions or lies offered to spare feelings or get what you want. Just truth.

When the concepts of truth and honesty are employed it’s as if a weight is lifted, like me saying to you I ate like crap yesterday. I had a ton of pasta (O.K. maybe not a ton but a helping more than I should have) and it shows today in my weight. It doesn’t just make me know I have to do better in eating today, no. It lets me know I was honest with myself. I was honest with myself about what I did and that I have to make it up to myself because we all start the day looking at one person – ourselves – and we end our days the same way.

Honesty may have varying degrees of definition from one person to the next and from one situation to the next but it does help. It does. It may sting at times. It may hurt. It may not even make you very well liked. But it will mean you are respected, and always keep in mind in this weight loss journey (and in other areas of your lives) that the one person who needs to respect you the most is you, because when you have self-respect you will find the world is a far more accepting, kind and honest place to live.

Day fifteen.

It’s a bright and sunny day today.The sky is clear, absolutely clear and the rest of the day lies ahead. How many times did I say that to try to look at the day optimistically? To make the most of the time and beauty in a day? Many, many times, I know. And there were times, especially in my weight loss, where I did make the most of that time, like when I made time to get a workout. But in my addiction that gradually regressed until many of my days were pissed away with me only doing the bare minimum.

I attended my fourth twelve-step meeting yesterday and my first direct appointment on Saturday, and both were great at helping cut through the stuff and get to the core of what brought me to this point.  It was the fear of not being liked and it was that fear that truly got me so far away from who I was that I lost sight of me for a long, long time…and made me eventually lose sight of my religion, as well.

When I say religion I do not necessarily mean going to church and praying, although there is a component to that, too. No, I meant my religion in terms of taking care of myself and working out. These past couple of weeks have truly challenged me into acknowledging how much I let that slip in all this. I am a believer in God. I know there are many variations of higher beings out there for many different people and beliefs, and that’s cool. But I do believe in God and as much as I haven’t attended actual church I stopped praying at the alter of the elliptical, free weights and leg presses, too.

This last week specifically I have been making that time to reconnect with working out. I added in at least one hour every day solely dedicated to hitting the gym. And almost every day last week (save for one where it was unavoidable to not workout) I got my ass back to the gym to not only supplement the martial arts training but to get back to my core, the man I want to become physically, too. And it’s working. It really is working.

Like I said attending the meetings has been such a wonderful thing in so many ways, but it also serves as a reminder that I do have an obligation to restore the healthy in my life and to strive for that every single day because some people cannot or do not have the strength to do that. The meetings are the great reminder of one’s core gifts, and while we are all the same in that room you can tell, just tell, who is O.K. coming out of a meeting and who is holding on this/close to losing it all.

I came that close. I really did. Everything that’s happened has brought me to a point in life where I not only really face me for the first time but also deal with what’s really going on inside, what really made me act this way. I am actually excited again about things, among them going back to “church.” My church. The church of the gym and of fitness. The only thing I did right all this time was lose weight and I have to keep doing it right if for no one else than myself. But also for you guys, too.

We all lose our way. I know we do. In the twelve-step meetings they explain how there is no shame and no judgment. Just a way to connect with people going through the same stuff so you do know you’re not alone. The same can be said for this blog. I am human. I’ve always said that. I slip up and eat shit I’m not supposed to and there are days I don’t feel like working out. But there is no way we will get the results we want until we address our stuff and get to work. Not just physically but mentally, and not just mentally but physically. Plain and simple.

These past couple of weeks, part of what’s saved me and made my mind free is that exercise, the actual sweating, kicking and hitting a bag, doing six push-ups kind of exercise. Also, part of what’s saved me is the actual going to the gym by myself and hitting the elliptical, doing my kicks and punches in there, too, my tricep dips and my crunch turns. That is awesome. I am glad to say I am getting back in touch with religion. I know we all don’t believe in God, or a God, or even have something/someone to whom to pray. But that’s alright. That is a very personal thing, and it’s for each and every one of us to find whether we pray at the alter of the Lord or pray at the alter of the gym.

Thankfully, these days I’ve been doing both.

Whenever you visit a new city or country I think it’s absolutely imperative to sample some of the local culinary fare. If any of you have ever been to Chicago, which is a great food town whichever way you slice it (ha, I made a food joke), it behooves you to sample some foods that us Chicagoans can point to and say “yep, that is uniquely Chicago.”

There’s a “stuffed” pizza, a pizza so thick with gooey cheese and other ingredients you HAVE to use a fork and knife. There’s also the Italian Beef sandwich, made up of slices of rump roast beef marinated in a gravy of its own juices and spices, placed on an Italian roll, covered with sweet or hot peppers (maybe even cheese) and dipped whole back into its gravy of savory juices. Yum. But the most delicious (and portable) Chicago food is your good old-fashioned, classic Chicago-style hot dog.

I know what you’re saying, “there are hot dogs everywhere. Why not make or get one where you live?” My friends, the answer is simple. You can’t have a Chicago-style hot dog just anywhere because only in Chicago can all the proper ingredients be found, not to mention you’d then be enjoying it in the town that made it famous. Everyone has their favorite place to get their dogs (mine is Portillos or Superdawg), but throw a rock anywhere and you’d most likely hit a place that serves Chicago-style hot dogs especially if you get out to explore Chicago’s wonderful, eclectic and amazing neighborhoods.

The “Chicago Style” hot dog got its start from street cart hot dog vendors during the hard times of the Great Depression. Money was scarce, but business was booming for these entrepreneurs who offered a delicious hot meal on a bun for only a nickel. Thus, the famous Chicago-style hot dog was born! They’d start with a Vienna Beef hot dog, nestle it in a steamed poppyseed bun and cover it with a wonderful combination of toppings: yellow mustard, bright green relish, fresh chopped onions, juicy red tomato wedges, a kosher-style pickle spear, a couple of spicy sport peppers, cucumber and finally, a dash of celery salt. This unique hot dog creation with a “salad on top” and its memorable interplay of hot and cold, crisp and soft, sharp and smooth, became America’s original fast food and a true Chicago institution.

The Chicago-style hot dog is one of my favorite foods and is definitely “worth the splurge.” When I tried to find the calorie count for a typical Chicago-style hot dog I couldn’t find a consensus from one place to another, one website to another. So, erring on the side of caution, I am going to most-agree with the highest calorie count I found simply because this column is called “worth the splurge” and I want you (and your waistline) to be prepared. But even if this calorie count is true, at almost 400 calories you could do far worse in terms of eating, I think, especially given all the non-unique food choices we face every day.

• Calories: 377
• Total Fat: 19.7g
• Cholesterol: 30mg
• Sodium: 2387mg
• Total Carbs: 38g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.3g
• Protein: 12.4g

If you go, the legendary Superdawg is on the corner of Milwaukee and Devon (pronounced de-VAHN by us natives), while Portillos is a chain whose location in the heart of downtown is on the corner of Ontario and Clark. That’s tasty eatin’, indeed, so enjoy!

Day Twelve.

Odds are, at some point in your life, you will visit a cemetery or two. Personally, I find them and their history fascinating, especially when their history, in part, is told by the inscription on its tombstones and grave markers. Some of them are funny, and some tell a story, but all of them list a birth year and a death year. I don’t know one that doesn’t. In the past few weeks I’ve come to realize just how much of an addict I’ve been, one created when I was a kid and finally admitted to now.

There are so many similarities between the different types of addictions that it usually becomes just a matter of which drug you choose. You’ve heard me say over these past couple of weeks how I merely went from one drug to another, but that lesson got hammered home to me yesterday when I was cooking.

There was a huge time in my life when food was my drug of choice. Food was my escape. It was my security. It was my warmth. It was always there. Dammit, I wish I could have seen how much I was “using” back then. Because I grew up with no money and only a hotplate on which to cook (we owned two pans – one to boil water in and one frying pan) my mom and I ate out almost always. Most kids would kill to eat out as much as we did and have the foods I had – Chinese food, pizza, meatball sandwiches, McDonald’s – but they didn’t realize how good they had it because the meals they had were created in their own homes by people who spent time, energy and love making whatever was served, not food picked up on the streets. The meals my friends had were honest meals, and while in no way, shape or form am I saying my mom failed (she did an absolutely amazing job doing the best she could to feed us) what kid – what adult – doesn’t like a good home-cooked meal not just because of the food but what it means…that its earned from the journey and not acquired.

Yesterday I got a wild hair to actually cook something. I was sitting around thinking to myself how much I wanted to get my hands dirty and create something from scratch. I dug up and old recipe I’d been saving for a seven-cheese mac and cheese and headed off to the store. It was exciting to be in the store looking around for the ingredients, eventually enlisting the help of one of the store’s workers to help me find the cheeses I needed. He was awesome and the more and more I put the ingredients in my cart the more and more I knew this was going to be good. I could feel it in my bones.

When I cook there’s always a mess. I’m not the neatest cook there is. I don’t throw bits of this and scores of flower or that everywhere but food that’s created has a certain mess and I embrace that mess. It’s part of the process and part of the journey. And I have to say I enjoyed destroying my kitchen. I loved seeing it dirty. I loved even grating off part of my hand as I grated some of the cheeses. Yes, you bet your ass it hurt but I was creating something, something that was coming from hard work. And just as an aside, it’s bloody strenuous to stir and huge ever-thickening mixture when more and more cheeses are involved. Whew!

When I was done adding and mixing and baking and cleaning this incredible mac and cheese came out. It was bubbling from being so hot and it looked and smelled incredible. And there was sooooooo much of it (ok, note to self – half the recipe next time) I will be eating it for days. When it cooled and I actually had some I was triple-pleased. One it was delicious (as I was hoping it would be since I smelled like butter and cheese the whole night). Two, because I actually cut pieces and exercised portion control. I may have had a half-helping too much (I did mention it was delicious) but I put the rest away and was content to do so. Three, because it was an honest meal, once created by me and not merely bought by me. Created from my own two hands from hard work.

When we look at our lives and realize that what we’re addicted to isn’t what we’re really searching for the doors open and we can truly begin work on the hard things, including and most of all changing how we think and act so we can see that it’s always been about finding that which we need within ourselves. And yes, many messes are made in the kitchen of the mind when that happens, but only because you always have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. If in this weight loss journey food is your drug I can honestly say you don’t need it to feel better. It is delicious and wonderful but it is not something that will make you feel better. That can and will come from inside you once you get down to what the issues really are in your life, and I would spare you the pain of becoming an addict if I can. And I say that because, at 39-years-old, I am finally ready to begin the next, honest and healthier phase of my life so I can finally carve the death date of my addictions on that particular tombstone.

It’s never too late start, so don’t be afraid. Creating the best meal you can be will always begin with the true recipe and the willingness to get dirty in the process. Have a great weekend.