It seemed appropriate that I would start this blog on Thanksgiving - the holiday of the glutton. I heard a great thing in my regular Overeaters Anonymous meeting this last week: "Here at OA we have a name for Thanksgiving. It's called Thursday." And really that struck a chord with me. We always hear that others only have power over us if we give them that power, but the same thing is true of days as well.
The 4th Thursday in November. December 25th. January 1st. February 14th. March 17th. July 4th. These are all just calendar days. If you hadn't been told otherwise, you never would have known there was anything special about any of these given days. But magically being near the "holidays" leaves people feeling lonely or depressed. And for compulsive overeaters that fourth Thursday of November is a daunting day of food and temptation. Why? Because we've made it that way.
This is my first abstinent Thanksgiving. My abstinence right now is simple: no soda, no coffee, no beer, no hard liquor, no french fries, no doughnuts. These are all things I just can't handle with any semblance of sanity. The biggest part of my abstinence is the non-food portion: no vomiting, no eating until you feel sick. Stopping when I was full was difficult this year, but I ate each of the foods I love in moderation - avoiding the pitfalls of soda and alcohol - and I felt good about my day.
My first sponsor told me to pick items that "set me off" rather than try to do a highly restrictive abstinence from day one. She felt that starting off with a tough abstinence was a quick trip to failure. That had been her experience and so that was how we worked the program together. My sponsor was wonderful and I'm sad that when I decided to take a break from OA during my pregnancy that we lost touch. I miss her.
But I will be starting a very strict abstinence with a new sponsor in the coming weeks. Next Thursday my husband and I are finally taking the honeymoon that we postponed last year. My new sponsor agreed to start being my sponsor when I get back from that honeymoon (seeing as how week two is a bit early to be battling to stay abstinent on a cruise ship when I'm still learning the rules of the program!)
But there were a number of things that greatly bothered me about agreeing to do this abstinence program. First was the impact this would have upon my husband and son. In the beginning the meals are very uniform from day to day, and I have concerns about how this logistically will work with them. But second, and sadly most importantly, I worried about those "special days". How could I give up my birthday cake? Or Christmas dinner? Most of the rest of the holidays I could live without - but no birthday cake was really something I was stuck on.
My husband told me to order a birthday cake for myself before the abstinence started. We are writing all the numbers between 30 and 90 on that cake, and it will be my birthday cake until I am 90. Because March 23rd is just a calendar date. Sure I was born on a March 23rd, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be anything other than another day on the calendar.
With a little luck and a lot of leaning on others, I think I can do this.
