My newest truths about food and mood...

Okay. I know what they say. Diets don't work.

If you take the "t" off the word "diet" – what you have? Die.

Anyone who's struggled with his or her weight all their lives knows all these cutesy cliches. We now know our weight is genetically predetermined, but that doesn't help. We still have to lose weight to be healthy. Genes or no genes.

The bottom line is, if you want to lose weight to be healthy you have to consume fewer calories than you burn.

That means either continuing to eat they way you like and spending 23 out of 24 hours seven days a week working out ... or cutting back on calories. 

And if you want to live long, it helps to eat a healthy diet. As Susan, a friend and one of my regular commenters mused yesterday:

"Why is it that all the good things in life are fattening, and stuff like carrot sticks, eewww."

It's not fair, but as my psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, often reminds me: "Life isn't fair." 

So, I'm now on Day Six of my first week of Weight Watchers. I'm dieting. They call it a lifestyle, but not yet for me. Right now, it's a diet.

I know I'm not going to lose weight on a diet of toasted whole wheat baguettes slathered with sweet butter. Or egg white omelettes loaded with melted cheddar. Or chocolate covered almonds. I'm feeling a craving coming on. 

The point is I'm in the midst of changing my habits. It takes a long time.

A lot longer than they tell you at a Weight Watchers meeting. 

My friend psychologist John M. Grohol found a new source of information about changing habits "across the pond" at University College London – from scientific psychology researcher Jeremy Dean and his PsyBlog. 

In a recent post, How Long to Form a Habit? Dean says it takes on average –  66 days to change a habit – with no guarantee this new habit will stick. He cites a July 2009 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology. 

It's complicated. Depends on the habit. Eating habits are probably among the hardest to change permanently along with quitting smoking and giving up alcohol or breaking a drug addiction. (What's the difference between an addiction and a habit, I wonder?)

If I could abstain from food altogether, it would be easier than moderating what I eat. One chocolate covered almond is harder to eat than none at all. 

At Weight Watchers they tell you it takes 31 days to change a habit. Marty will love this news. According to Dean, we're in for another 60 days of struggling to change our eating habits. If I announce this at my Sunday meeting, I'll be pelted with two-point snacks.

Here's my problem. 

I take one (1) 200 mg tablet of an anti-convulsant called Epival/Tegretol/Carbamazepine twice daily to stabilize my manic tendencies. It works for me. 

I also take eight (8) other different drugs, including three (3) different immunosuppressants, to keep me alive with my transplanted kidney. 

My complex daily cocktails of drugs don't exactly ease the weight loss process. 

Monica, pointed this in a comment to yesterday's post: 

"It could be your med making you hungry. I gained 100 lbs. while on Epival/Depakote, and I met a man in a bipolar support group who had the same experience. He lost it all when they switched him to Topamax. Me, I'd manage to lose 20 or 30 lbs. but then I'd start a new med and gain it all back. 

"Since I started Truehope and got off all my meds my appetite has plummeted. I eat a fraction of what i used to eat. I just am not hungry all the time any more.

What works for Monica would kill me. I need my drugs to survive. 

We're all as chemically different as we are emotionally different.

I'm going to struggle to lose my weight and reach my goal, again. 

For 60 more days – to change my habits – and every day after that.

Life isn't fair. It's life. That's the point.

Speak soon.

Dying of cigarettes...

This past week, I have learned that too many people I know or have know of – are dying of cigarettes.

Yes. That's right. Not lung cancer. Or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease – COPD. Those are symptoms.

Their cause?

Smoking cigarettes.

In the penultimate paragraph of the death notice in today's Globe and Mail, the family of Dr. Mary Cone Barrie, courageously wrote:

"Mary's life ended all too soon. The cause of death was cigarettes, which first addicted her at 14. In lieu of flowers, contributions to the crushing of the tobacco industry would be greatly appreciated-whether in dollars to the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, or by persuading someone you know, in Mary's name, to quit now."

Dr. Mary Barrie was an extraordinary person. An educator, years ahead of her time, specializing in Andragogy, the art and science of teaching adults. My husband enormously enjoyed teaching at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Education under Mary Barrie's watch, when she was its Director from 1994 to 2005.

If you're addicted, as I am, to CBC:Radio One and Andy Barrie, who anchors the morning show. If you wake up with Andy, as I have, for so many years, I cannot remember. (Long before I started waking up with my husband.) If you have missed Andy desperately, as I have, since last November when he took an "indefinite leave" for "family matters" – you know that Dr. Mary Barrie was Andy's wife of 40 years.

She was 64 years old.

At close to 3 a.m. this morning, I was crying at this computer as I read a blog new to me called Life as a hospice patient, written by Judi Chamberlin, a pioneering activist in the psychiatric survivor movement.

"I believe that until people labeled as 'mentally ill' have the same rights as others, we will continue to be marginalized and discriminated against," she states in her Blogger profile.

Judi has COPD but she is not a candidate for a lung transplant. In her first blog post, Trying to make sense of it all, on December 4, 2008, she wrote, knowing that she doesn't "have a very long life expectancy," she hoped to see Barack Obama inaugurated and to be around for the Super Bowl. "After that, I'll set another goal," she said.

On Wednesday of this week, she called her post The Good Things, which says a lot, though not nearly enough, about Judi Chamberlin's take on life. It is also her gift. One of many.

Judi is 64 years old.

Last week, I received a note from a woman, a family friend, who found me though this blog. I had not heard from her for many years. She is a friend of my mother's. Brilliant, charismatic. A dynamo. When I was a kid, I babysat for her three children, now grown, with kids of their own.

Superbly accomplished. Anything she tries, she masters. With pizzazz! You never forget her. She's a force. Funny. Fabulous. I adore her.

"I've had two bouts of lung cancer (clean at the moment) and suffer terribly with my emphysema... Mind you, some days I can manage and others simply cannot breathe. That's a trial. However, I AM STILL HERE," she said her in note.

And finally, during a call this morning to my mother who is wintering in Florida and I knew would not yet know of Dr. Mary Barrie's death, she informed me of yet another amazing man I had known, a smoker, who had died recently after battling lung cancer.

I was a smoker. My husband quit 20 years ago. Addictions don't often appear here in "Coming Out Crazy," but they should. Often, addictions are highly complex and comorbid – linked to deeper psychological trauma and pain.

Timing is everything. Who knew nicotine was a highly addictive drug 50 years ago? Toxic. Poisonous. Deadly.

Alcohol is highly addictive, too. The founders of Alcoholic Anonymous knew that back in the 1930s.

Food can be highly addictive. I know. I'm an addict.

The pleasure pathway in the brain is the same for nicotine, alcohol, food – even sex.

We are human. I don't judge anyone. But I applaud the bravery, the integrity, the honesty, the audacity and the leadership of the late Dr. Mary Barrie and her family for stating boldly in her obituary, that the cause of her death was cigarettes.

Graciously and generously, they are giving all of us a unique opportunity to take action – to become activists. By either supporting the Non Smokers' Rights Association, or by helping someone to quit smoking, we can join in honouring and memorializing Dr. Mary Barrie's wonderful life and legacy.

We may make a difference for the Greater Good.

We may help each other choose to "Say yes, to life."

And, finally... Andy, Jess and Wrigley and those grieving with you – please accept my profound sympathy.