Mod.er.a.tion– The avoidance of excess or extremes.

I fought a good fight. I stuck in there ten years beyond the prime of my drinking. A decade (which is the entire life cycle of three boy bands) passed before the evidence illustrating moderate, social, drinking wasn’t my bag was enough to warrant change. I keep thinking I’d outgrow my persistent inclination to over-do it and throw up on people. Surely that was a college thing? A mid-twenties crisis thing? A new mom thing….

I really wanted to be a social smoker. Or, the kind of woman who could enjoy a cigarette only after a nice meal or with the occasional cup of coffee. I remember standing on patios with fellow smokers, tipsy at some bar in some town and hearing other girls say, “Yeah, I only smoke when I drink,” and that sounded so much less filthy and sad. Cigarette in hand I’d scratch my head thinking, Well, I only smoke when I’m awake. Like, I literally never smoke in my sleep. Which is more than I can say for eating. Cereal. Or Chocolate. Really, whatever is in the pantry will do just fine.

Food– the life-sustaining, delicious, in my case, (and probably most of yours) brain-hijacker of the waking hours. What am I going to eat? When? Will it be enough? Will I feel bad about myself after I eat it? Should I apologize to the table for ordering it? Make excuses? Please don’t. Whatever you choose, as a recovering eating disorder person and more importantly, a women in our first-world nation, please. Don’t. You order it. You own it. I can barely manage the noise in my own head, I certainly don’t need to hear yours. More on food moderation in a minute…

I have a complicated relationship with “fitness.” In so many respects, I’m just over it. My Lulu Lemon jersey: retired. I’ve logged more miles on treadmills than an entire high school track team. I’ve spent days laced together taking classes at the gym, high-fiving dudes and exchanging fake-smiles with women I don’t know. Not once in the twenty-plus years I’ve been at it, have I looked in a reflective surface and thought, “hell to the yes! That is the post-stomach flu, Malibu Skipper aesthetic I’ve been working for! Mission accomplished.” And I know, its about the journey, and heart health, and whatever, but in the twenty years you’d think there would have been some glimmer of self-satisfaction.

When I’m working out, I’m all-in. I get shin splints, and the micro-tears in my pelvis flare and it all starts to ache. Because I quickly get hooked on that daily endorphin fix and the stress-relieving magic of a good sweat. Followed by four Advil.

Which leads me to my next problem, which just this fall involved an endoscopy which is a fancy way of saying, we’ll knock you out and look in your stomach with a lil camera. You know what they found? The lining was shot. Inflamed from drinking, smoking and taking NSAIDS (all things ibuprofen-ish). The problem with that: I haven’t had a drink or been a smoker for nearly five years. Which lead the doctor to conclude, I take entirely too much Aleve. And those four Advil I mentioned, turns out they’re serious about only needing to take two at a time. If you have taken the time out of your day to read this and gleam nothing else, take that: take only two Advil.

Saint Bernard (whoever that is) said moderation is a virtue. Christy Turlington says she does everything in moderation. I think I speak for all of us when I say, bravo Christy Turlington. Ozzy Osbourne on the other hand declares he can’t do anything in moderation.

Whenever discussion of diet or whether or not wine is actually good for you come up, they always seem to end with the bow-tie of, “all things in moderation.” Which is fine, except as Ozzy and Christy clearly illustrate, moderation doesn’t work for all of us. Begging the cliche, moderation even in moderation.

Gretchen Rubin, (bestselling author of The Happiness Project and general happiness journalist/guru) addressed this issue in an article I came across a few years back identifying some of us are more inclined to be moderators and some of us are better off as abstainers (link to article). Essentially the seemingly sage advice of letting yourself off the hook, indulging once in a while, being moderate, creates more frustration and exhaustion for some people than total abstinence. Whether you are a moderator or an abstainer, can even vary based on category.

For instance, I’m an alcohol and tobacco abstainer. Both of those substances are addictive, so that’s really not that fascinating. As a former medalist in the dieting-Olympics, I no longer abstain from any categories of food; bread, candy, cheese, pasta, cake, fruit, its all on the table so to speak. Some of it, I eat often (candy), some of it I rarely get into (bread), but it’s on the menu. Eliminating turns me into a crazy-er person, I know, because I’ve tried. So, please. Spare me your Whole 30, Biggest Loser, and Anti-Inflammatory diet reviews. The last time I tried a program like this I literally ended up in the garage on day 3.5 eating Rice Krispie treats from electric blue wrappers  and chugging Diet Coke. I eat something sweet after every meal. Maybe one day I’ll look at my addiction to sugar, but not now.

I belong to a closed addiction recovery group on Facebook. While scrolling through my feed today I came across a post by a woman still counting days. She noted she’s on day eight, and that its great not being hungover and tired from drinking too much. Then she said something I thought was really brilliant: she said, “It’s also great when I happen to look at the clock between 3-6pm, and know that drinking just isn’t an option. When it is an option, it’s a daily obsession that I consistently give in to.”

That I believe is the litmus test: When its an option is a daily obsession that I consistently give into?

Watch what your brain does here. You’re thinking about your thing, whatever that is, and you think, well, not everyday. I mean, I take Sundays or Tuesdays off. Sometimes I get busy and forget. 

We want to separate out, to be not-hooked. We want to be someone who can moderate.

And maybe you are. And that is so fantastic! I wish I could meet you at the mall today and we could go to lunch  and have just two glasses of wine (never one!), and I could still pick up my kids from school on time. I wish I was just like Christy Turlington, for some many reasons, in so many ways.

But wishing doesn’t help anything, in only wastes time.

Yesterday I went to a movie by myself. Which is something I really don’t ever do, because it seems so indulgent– wasting time like that. The movie theater is at an outdoor mall complex and when I initially thought I might be early (don’t worry, I wasn’t) my default thought was to walk around browsing in stores. Because, what else would I do? Just…. sit there?

Browse– survey goods for sale in a leisurely and casual way

Its not like every time I browse I end up buying something. But every time I end up buying something its because I’ve been browsing. Kinda like, I didn’t get into trouble every time I drank. But pretty much every time I got into trouble, drinking was involved.

Saint Bernard may have said moderation is a virtue. But from what I’ve observed, whether or not one can avoid extremes has a lot more to do with brain chemistry than moral behavior. So I’ll stick with Saint Augustine on this one, because he observed, “To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”