Newcomers. . .

The May 4th Voices of Recovery quotes The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous:  "All who have experienced the pain of compulsive eating and want to stop are equally welcome here."  It goes on to tell the story of a woman who came to the meetings fighting the program.  "I had no desire to refrain from compulsively eating.  Instead, I wanted to diet.  I did not take the suggestions seriously.  Tradition Three illustrates the reason for my inability to grasp this program.  I wanted the weight loss and even the pleasure of it without having to earn it first.  Today when I watch newcomers struggle with the program as I did, I try to show the same compassion and acceptance as those before me."

I remember my first day in Overeaters Anonymous.  I came into the rooms believing that I didn't need the program - I was fine.  When the woman who shared told my own story, I was shocked.  But I decided to sign up.  She'd lost all her weight so clearly whatever these people were selling worked.  I asked her to sponsor me at break and felt I had put a check in the box to have them wave the magic wand that would fix me.

She told me to read from the Big Book, and I read Bill's Story and put the book down again.  Not only did I not relate to the story, but I figured that all the Big Book contained was a collection of people's stories.  Why would I bother reading about a bunch of alcoholics when I could sit in a meeting and hear people tell me about their own stories of recovery - and on topic, too!.  I was already sold on the program, just get to the good stuff!

That sponsor told me to write down three things I loved about myself every day. I thought it was the dumbest assignment in the world.  And yet when I sat down that night I couldn't think of a single thing.  Everything I loved had a "yeah, but. . ." attached to it that was a disqualifying factor.  I eventually found myself on the phone with another woman I'd met in meeting, sobbing because I couldn't find anything to love about myself.

Eventually I was able to identify a few items - I have a set of freckles on my leg that looks like a happy face; I always have a flower painted on my big-toenails; and I have three freckles on my foot that make a straight line.  Each night I came up with three new things - sometimes it was that I loved a dish I cooked, other times it was that I loved knowing how to knit.  But each time I failed to understand what the point of this exercise was.

Every time I asked that sponsor why we were bothering with this (get on with the wand waving, already!) she told me we were working on my first step.  She asked me to identify trigger foods, so I started cutting out things like soda and coffee.  Eventually my "abstinence" was to not eat French fries, doughnuts, or drink coffee and soda.  Yet I still binged on sweets and snack foods to my heart's content.  So after three months I decided I was wasting my time and left program.

When I came back I decided I could do it on my own.  For the first two months back in the rooms I was back to my original "abstinence" - still binging away - and I decided that I could identify my own trigger foods.  Since my first sponsor didn't "do anything" for me, I'd sponsor myself!

But through this all, I was just as clueless as that woman was.  I wanted the results without the work.  I didn't want to surrender to another person.  I didn't want to work the steps.  I didn't want to change my life.  I just wanted the magical fix.

But there is no magical fix.  There is a miraculous one - but that requires work to attain. 

It wasn't until after I'd gotten another sponsor, surrendered, and gone through my first step that I learned what my first sponsor was doing:  she was trying to show me that my life was unmanageable.  She was waiting for me to notice just how hard it was for me to find things I loved about myself, and she was waiting for the light bulb to click that maybe, just maybe, whatever it was I was doing to run my life wasn't working.  But because I never left the disease, I never was able to see what she was trying to show me.

Today's reading was a good reminder of just how much I struggled as a newcomer, and just how much I need to show compassion to those still suffering from compulsive overeating.

Finding a Higher Power, Part 1

When I came into program I didn't have a higher power let alone a Higher Power with capital letters.  It isn't to say I didn't believe in God.  Being an atheist involves a certain measure of faith.  While it is impossible to concretely prove the existence of a Higher Power, it is also impossible to concretely disprove the existence of some Higher Power.  So the act of being an atheist is as much an act of faith as the belief that Christ is the Son of God or that Buddha obtained enlightenment.  And faith was something I was fresh out of.  So I was indifferent to the notion that there was a deity out there, but one thing I was most certain of was that any deity that might exist most certainly wasn't interested in me.

So I needed some sort of starting point.  I have met people who have chosen non-deity Higher Powers, such as mathematics (no matter how much you dislike the outcome, 2+2 does not equal 5), the laws of physics (gravity is a cruel taskmaster. . .),  mother nature (not much you can do if good ol' mother nature decides to drop a tornado on your head at lunch time), the door knob (this seems to be the classic example I hear in meetings, so for a few months I told the door knob on a regular basis what a shit job it was doing running the universe), the ceiling ("I am powerless over whether that ceiling decides to collapse and crush me"), their sponsor (if you have made them your "boss" then you have placed them as a "Higher Power" over you - although this one is a sticky one long term), the people in the OA rooms (this was the route I went with once I stopped thinking that the requirement for a higher power was stupid),  a celebrity (I've heard people go with Chuck Norris' beard, Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds' moustache, and other such silliness - but guess what: it worked for them), time (you can't stop it and you can't control it), and the universe (we can all agree that the universe exists).

I have heard two things in meetings that have stuck with me.  One person who struggled with active atheism was told by his sponsor, "Can you believe that I believe in a Higher Power?"  That was a starting point. 

The other thing I heard was:  "All I need to know about God is that I'm not Him."

In my experience with program there are two stages of the Higher Power proposition.  The first is accepting that you are not calling the shots for the universe.  There is some force outside of your control deciding that Joe down the street is going to have a heart attack next week, or that there is going to be an earthquake next month, or that you're going to suddenly have the worst food poisoning of your life the day you have a big interview.

The second part of the proposition is learning to trust that somehow things are going to work out for the best.  All you need to do is do the footwork (i.e. if you want a promotion then work hard and show up on time, if you want a college degree then enroll and go to your classes, if you don't want food poisoning then don't eat the leftovers growing mold in your fridge, etc.) and let The Great Whatever do the rest. 

This second proposition is much harder to reach.  It involves not only the understanding that you aren't in control of the world, but surrendering to whatever is. And us addicts hate surrendering anything.  It is the difference between deciding to sky dive and actually jumping out of the plane.  In my experience you can't force this part - it just comes with time.

But for today, you don't need to be at that second part of the proposition.  All you need to do today is reach the point where you know that "I'm not Him/Her."  And that isn't a hard point to reach.  On an intellectual level, most of us know that we didn't create the universe.  (Those that don't know this have much bigger troubles than compulsive overeating.)

But the most important thing about finding a Higher Power is understanding that it really doesn't matter if that Higher Power actually exists.  What matters is that you act as if you believe one does.  My sponsor once shared in a meeting that she didn't know if there really was a Higher Power out there.  But even if there was nothing - well, nothing was sure doing a better job running her life than she did.

Do You Know Who You Are?

I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy that posed three questions.  The patient was a man who had been paralyzed from neck down in an accident.  The doctor was asking if he wished to be taken off of life support as he would never be able to live without machines to breathe for him.  To confirm that he wished to be taken off of the machines he was asked three questions:

Do you know who you are?

Do you know what's happened to you?

Do you want to live this way?

It shocked me just how appropriate these questions were for a compulsive overeater.  Really, for any addict.  Before program the answer to all those questions was a resounding no. 

I didn't know who I was.  Indeed, I spent nearly every waking moment trying to avoid figuring that out.  I ate, I drank, I played excessive video games, I read, I did anything and everything to not think about who I was.  

I didn't know what had happened to me.  I woke up one day and I was 305 pounds.  Sure I saw myself getting larger and larger, but somehow it still snuck up on me.  I kept expecting that tomorrow would be different - tomorrow I'd find the will to change.  Tomorrow I'd eat healthy and exercise.  I'd suddenly know how to act and be like other people.  But tomorrow never came.  So I got a gastric bypass.  I lost the weight but it came right back on.  And again tomorrow never came.

The only thing I knew before program was that I didn't want to live this way.  I couldn't live this way.  I was hopeless.  I was desperate.  I was completely unwilling to surrender my life and will to the care of a power greater than myself.  It took the complete and total annihilation of my willingness to live before I was able to put down the reigns and hand over control. 

That day I waved the white flag and got a sponsor.  That's when the miracle happened.  How different today is.  I went from 305 pounds down to the 169 pounds I weighed today (and I'm still losing).  I went from a size 24 to a size 10.  A size XXXL to a size M.  I went from constantly depressed and angry to a genuinely happy, optimistic person.  My life has never been better.

I now can confidently answer all three of those questions with a yes.  I discovered that the answer was surrender.  Sweet, simple surrender.

A Metaphor

Today I wanted to make a long outreach call, but having a very high energy toddler on my hands I knew that was unlikely to happen.  So in a moment of mad inspiration, I did what any mother would do.  I taught him how to drive.

In reality, he was sitting on my lap while I allowed the car to roll forward at a staggering 4 miles per hour.  He steered and I gently reached in to correct the wheel when he looked likely to hit a curb as we rolled our way around our cul-de-sac.  A few neighbors paused to call some greetings to us, and the bright smile on my son's face was infectious.

Every once in a while he didn't want to let me correct his steering and swatted my hands away.  When that happened, I applied the breaks and told him he wasn't going anywhere until he let me help.  He pouted but eventually realized that he needed my cooperation if he wanted to keep driving. 

I realized with surprise just how much this is like my own interactions with my Higher Power.  When I allow Him to gently guide me, He lets me steer and keeps things moving forward.  But when I refuse help, He puts on the brakes and lets me sit in frustrated misery until I'm willing to surrender.

Why Sponsoring Yourself Fails and Facing Relapse

After a span of 15 months of solid abstinence, I slipped.  I have plenty of excuses for why it happened.  I was exhausted.  I was distracted.  But the fact remains that my 2-year-old son left part of a cookie on the floor.  I was cleaning up the assortment of cheerios, pretzels, fruit snacks, grapes, and other detritus he'd dropped on the floor that afternoon when I picked up a piece of cookie and popped it in my mouth. 

Had it stopped there, I may have salvaged my abstinence.  But once the cookie piece was in my mouth the curious insanity set in.  "It's already in my mouth, I might as well eat it."  We all have moments where we pop a food item in our mouth unthinking.  When this has happened to me in the past, I have spit out the food item and told my sponsor about it.  Well this time I was between sponsors - meaning I was my own sponsor.  I'll give you a hint - sponsoring yourself doesn't work.  Because you see, as my own sponsor, I told myself, "It's already in your mouth, you might as well eat it."

It was a slippery slide from there.  I bought my boyfriend a box of doughnuts.  My son took one and was done with it.  Well I wrapped it in a napkin and threw it away.  In a weak moment, I figured out that I had enough calories left in my daily budget to eat that doughnut.  Since it had been carefully wrapped before finding its way into the trash can, I figured it was fair game to eat.  Never mind that my baseline abstinence is no flour, no sugar, no compulsive eating behaviors (i.e., eating off the floor and pulling items out of the trash can).  I counted that as an abstinent treat because I budgeted for it in my calories.  I hadn't felt triggered by the cookie, and that doughnut hadn't set me off on a binge, so clearly I could handle flour and sugar again.  But to be safe I wouldn't eat any breads or salty treats - that might not go over as well.  I was the man who believed it safe to drink whiskey with his milk from the Big Book.

The next thing I knew, a few days later I went to the store and purchased six more doughnuts.  I budgeted them into my calories but wound up eating them all in one day.  So instead of a calorie cap for a day, I started using my calorie cap for the week.  I ate all six doughnuts, but now I was struggling to find a way to control my calories for the week.  Well then I started to look at my "average calories on plan" - this is something in my calorie counting application that tells me how many calories I typically am over or under budget per day over the span of my tracking period.  Now I figured as long as I averaged out being under calories I'd be fine.  So I bought and ate a dozen doughnuts over the course of two days.

When I got on the scale I discovered that in three weeks I had managed to gain eight pounds by steadily eating up the calorie deficits that I'd spent three months accumulating.  It was time to face the music.  I knew that my abstinence had been broken and I was in relapse.  So I did what any compulsive eater would do.  I went to the grocery store, picked up about $50 worth of binge foods, and took them home.  My son sat with me as I ate two Twinkies, a Hostess cupcake, a store made chocolate chip cookie, and about 9 Oreos.  (While eating I discovered they no longer tasted that good, much to my disappointment.)

It was then my son's bed time.  I got up to give him a bath and discovered I felt buzzed.  Being an alcoholic, I used to laugh when people described getting a buzz from food, but I honestly felt like I'd been drinking a bottle or two of wine.  I had a strong buzz.  I got sober when I got abstinent, so the two had always overlapped.  Now I knew that I was feeling that sugar high people spoke about.  I was high and I hated the feeling.  I gave my son a bath feeling completely numbed out and disconnected.  It was like life had lost its color, and I didn't want any more of that feeling.  I spent so many days wishing for sweet oblivion while I went through the pain of writing my fourth step, and here I was with that sweet oblivion and I discovered there was nothing sweet about it.

So I put my son in bed and proceeded to throw out the rest of the binge foods.  I then picked up the phone and asked someone to be my sponsor. 

When I first came into program I was suicidal and so desperate for help that handing my life over to the care of my sponsor was an incredible relief.  This time I wasn't holding the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I was living my life working the steps.  I was doing daily 10th steps.  I was praying and meditating.  I was saying the serenity prayer when things got difficult. What I wasn't doing was being honest with myself.  As soon as that honest appraisal happened, I did the most amazing thing:  I picked up the phone and used my tools.  I surrendered without the feeling that the world was crushing me.  For this gift of willingness I can only thank my Higher Power, because with my pride there is no doubt in my mind that I didn't surrender on my own.  I heard in meeting tonight that when we stop listening to God's whispers, he starts throwing bricks.  God had to throw skyscrapers before I came into the rooms and got abstinent.  Yet somehow I listened to the whisper over the roar of the food.

One of the horror stories we "grow up with" in program is the story of the person in relapse.  When you go out, you never know how long it's going to take you to come back in.  The fear of relapse is what kept me from acknowledging it for so long, because I had a fear-driven belief that relapse meant that I would gain all my weight back and more.  I'm down 135 pounds from my top weight.  That is a long road of pain and heart ache that I saw stretched before me.

Those stories gave me the idea that relapse was a creature with a mind of its own.  I would be hijacked by my disease, helpless to stop the weight gain.  I'd lose everything I'd gained in program, and gain everything I'd lost whether I wanted to or not!  And yet I have four days of abstinence.  The food speaks to me, but when the food talks to me, I talk to my sponsor.  I make outreach calls.  I do readings.  I go to meetings.  I am doing all those things I did before relapse when the food got loud.  And I am ending each day abstinent.  I will admit that I want to go back for more doughnuts.  That's fine to say and fine to feel.  But I don't have to act on those feelings and thoughts.  As long as I let myself be guided by my Higher Power working through my sponsor, I can choose abstinence.

Today's For Today Workbook posed the question:  "When has believing in the possibility of being abstinent enabled me to stay the course to better times?"  The answer is: today!  When I first got abstinent my sponsor told me that I didn't have to worry about tomorrow or next week or next year.  All I had to worry about is today.  For today, I can do anything.  So when the craving for that doughnut hit me, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and whispered to myself: "Not today.  Maybe tomorrow, but not today."  It was the mantra I used before relapse, and it worked just as well today as it did then.  The anxiety, the panic, the craving settled down.  Because I don't have to worry about tomorrow.  I believe I can follow my meal plan today.  I can't tell you about tomorrow or next week or next year, but for today, I can be abstinent.

A friend of mine with over twenty years of abstinence once told me that he really only has one day: today.  And for today, I've discovered that I can believe in abstinence.  I don't have to surrender to relapse.  I'm a compulsive overeater.  I am powerless over food and my life is unmanageable.  It is the first step, and it's just as true day one abstinent as it is day 500 or 5,000.  I can't. God can.  I think I'll let God.

12 Steps to Total and Complete Insanity

[A spoof on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. . .and oh so true!] 

1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing. We could manage our lives perfectly and we could manage those of anyone else that would allow it.
   
   
2. Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.
   
   
3. Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and their lives over to our care.
   
   
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.
   
   
5. Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of their wrongs.
   
   
6. Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
   
   
7. Demanded others to either "shape up or ship out".
   
   
8. Made a list of anyone who had ever harmed us and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them all.
   
   
9. Got direct revenge on such people whenever possible except when to do so would cost us our own lives, or at the very least, a jail sentence.
   
10. Continued to take inventory of others, and when they were wrong promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
    
11. Sought through nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn't understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle under and do things our way.
    
12. Having had a complete physical, emotional and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.

From The ACA Communicator - March 1990 - Omaha, Council Bluffs Area Intergroup

Staying On The Train

First Bite

Today I wanted to eat those little sugary frosted cookies they sell in the grocery stores for holidays. They are this beautiful floury sugary mush and I love them. It started when thinking of St. Patrick's Day and why we'd need a meeting marathon for that holiday. Then I thought of the cookies. And damn it I wanted one. Badly. I still want one and it's been 7 hours.

I tried all kinds of rationalizing. I said to myself, "[My Sponsor] doesn't need to know if I just ate one cookie. Or not even a full cookie but just a BITE of the cookie. That would be fine. Oh, and you know, I probably could manage one box of them without it impacting anything. The next day I'd be right back on the food plan and no one would need to be the wiser. I could just eat the cookies in the parking lot of the grocery store, toss the carton, toss the receipt, and no one would ever know."

Then that fucker who doesn't want me to enjoy a beautiful box of green frosted shamrock shaped cookies thought, "but that wouldn't be rigorous honesty, and rigorous honesty is how we got to peace." It then went on to remind me how happy I have felt lately. How much energy I have had to do chores and be attentive and playful with my son.

So I thought, "you know, I can just close my eyes and remember how they tasted and felt in my mouth. They can't take that away from me." [Because, you know, everyone in OA is conspiring against me and my cookies.] But it wasn't enough.  I just wanted one bite of cookie.  That was all I needed and I'd throw the box away, scout's honor. [Which is especially convenient since I was never a Girl Scout.]

And I had to go to the grocery store to pick up my husband's medicine. I thought, "I bet they don't even have those cookies yet. It's still February. They won't have them until March. I will just go and check and prove to myself that they aren't even there."

Well God was on my side today.  [One of my daily outreach calls] felt bad we hadn't talked in a few days so she called me as I was in the car on the way to get my husband's medicine. I made it a point to stay on the phone with her the entire time I was in the store. Because I know if I see the cookies I'll buy them.  If I take one bite of that cookie, I'd eat the whole box. Then I would raid the candy aisle. I saw the Starburst licorice sticks today and they looked amazing. I'd eat those next. Then some Mike & Ikes - I miss those. Then I'd keep grazing on sugar until I made myself ill. Ooh, then I'd hit the doughnuts and maybe get some more cookies. And I'd top it off with some garlic bread or maybe just get a whole big sourdough loaf thing and eat it with oil and balsamic vinegar. And Ding Dongs. I'd have to eat a box or two of those.

So really, I think it's easier to just not eat that first bite of cookie.

Yesterday



Relationship With God

This is an excerpt from a blog written by an incredible young woman named Sheila.

"Having a relationship with an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful being who doesn't talk back is really, really hard.

This post is to summarize those things I do know about God. Some of them are things I know by instinct; others I have to remind myself over and over again, because there's a part of me that can't quite wrap my head around them. I find myself just defaulting to Jerk-God because the real God is just too puzzling to understand.

What do I know about God?

First, I know his definition. He is the creator of all things. That is what most people mean when they say "God." I tend to explain by saying that all things we know of in this world have a temporal beginning and a cause. But we know, because the universe is here at all, that something had to come behind all these causes -- something different, something that didn't have a temporal beginning or a cause. . . .

And when I look at the created world, really look at it, I feel like the person who made all these things is someone I would very much like. I mean, think about it. He could have created us like the plants, just needing some sunshine but never having to eat. But he made us able to bite into a juicy steak or crunchy apple. We could have reproduced by budding, but he gave us sex, pregnancy, birth -- things so weird and wonderful I sometimes imagine the trouble I would have explaining them to aliens. He didn't paint everything with a broad brush; every detail of creation is worked out perfectly, so that no microscope can see the infinitesimally small but absolutely organized structure of everything.

This comforts me more than anything. I know that Jerk-God could never create this wonder. Jerk-God would have had the world be so much less fun. Real God gave us a place we could really delight in, because he wanted us to be happy.

Someone who would go to the trouble of all that creating wasn't going to be happy just setting us on our way and letting us go. He wanted to have an actual relationship with us. Now I think we all know that it's impossible to have a real relationship that's forced in any way. God made us able to say no to him. . . .

This God is someone who is awfully eager to get to know us. . . .

I was struggling internally a few weeks ago with all this when [her son] started singing to himself. He sang a song from Mr. Rogers: "It's you I like, the way you are right now, way down deep inside you." I couldn't help but think, "If Mr. Rogers can love me just the way I am, what kind of person is God if he can't manage the same?"

It's hard to believe in this. It is so, so hard to believe that at the same moment a person could know everything about you, and I mean everything ... and at the same time love you. It's hard to believe that there could be a person who couldn't deceive or be deceived, who is pure unchanging truth ... and at the same time love you.

We tend to pick one or the other, love OR truth. Either God lies and says everything I do is a-okay and I never do anything wrong, in which case he can love me, or he sees the reality of what I am and the people I've hurt and the lies I've told, in which case he can't possibly love me. I think this is one of the mysteries of God that we'll never fully understand, how he can see us and our faults and still smile at us, the way I smile at my boys, and say, "I love you just the way you are, not later when you've earned it, but right now."

All of my spiritual life . . . has been a process of trying to be worthy, to be good enough. I feel that God has made a terrible mistake by loving me, and the only way to make it right is to try to be good enough so it won't be such a mistake. . . .

. . .  I want to be a better person because everyone wants to be a better person, this is a good thing to do. But God isn't my personal trainer. Sometimes he might want to talk about other stuff besides how awful I am.

In fact, I think that, if he's anything like all the other people who love me, he doesn't like hearing about how awful I am. Think how you feel, if a person you love starts bashing themselves. You want to run in and yell, "Don't talk that way about the person I love!" Why wouldn't God be the same?

To understand God, I have to redefine my terms.

God loves me.
Old definition: God tolerates me and gives me things for no apparent reason, considering how much I suck.
New definition: God actually likes me, enjoys being with me, and sees all the good in me.

God wants me to be happy.
Old definition: I'd better do what God wants, even if it makes me miserable, because if I don't things are going to be even worse.
New definition: God wants me to be happy, and if I'm not, it isn't his doing. He hates seeing me suffer, and though he can't always rush in to fix everything, he really does care about my struggles.
. . .

If God is like this, I really do want to know him. Not because I feel guilty that he loves me so much and I've loved him so little in return. God can handle that. He wouldn't have created mankind if he couldn't take a little rejection, and anyway I actually do love God at least to some extent, so it's not like he's actually getting rejected by me. The reason I want to get to know God is because he seems like the sort of person I would like to know."

Step One, Question 1, Page 1

I think it's time I take the plunge and start writing on the first question in the workbook.  It has been sitting on my desk, open to that page, for weeks.  I will begin working the steps with my sponsor this week and I have some time before bed to do a bit of work, so here goes nothing (or perhaps, everything)!

1. "In OA we are encouraged to take a good look at our compulsive eating, obesity, and the self-destructive things we have done to avoid obesity - the dieting, starving, over-exercising, or purging."  Here is a First-Step inventory of my compulsive eating history.

A lot of my early compulsive eating is blurred by the haze of the sugar high.  Or perhaps I should say "glaze".  I remember not being allowed sweets because my mom was worried about my weight.  It wasn't consistently enforced, though.  It was like her own warring opinions on whether she could eat sweets spilled over into what she permitted me to eat.  But here are a few compulsive overeating memories:

I would sneak into the pantry when people were busy/sleeping/away to steal food.  My favorites were fruit snacks and granola bars.  The best was the "Fruit O's" from Costco - fruit snacks in a huge container from Costco.  I knew I could take one or two of those a day without being caught.  Granola bars were another love, but I knew I had to take those slow.  I would take one bar a day.  There was a very strict order to how I ate my closet foods: 2 Fruit O's, 1 granola bar, 1 of this, 1 of that.  It depended on what we had at the time.  Gold fish had to be smuggled one handful at a time.  If the container went missing I would get caught and I'd either get lectured or in actual trouble.  The number of items became just as important as the theft of the food and it's consumption.  No matter how much or how often I smuggled, I always wanted more.  It called to me and I craved it, but I knew I had to wait until the next day or they'd notice the food was disappearing too fast.  Thankfully my brother was assumed to be the one doing the eating.  Eventually he hid the food in his room to keep me out, which upped the stakes.  I only could sneak in maybe once a week to get the food then.  Even now, when I go to fast food restaurants, I find that I get a list of foods I want: 1 of A, 1 of B, 1 of C, 1 of D - the ordering of the food is part of the ritual, even when I ordered far more than I could possibly consume.

I remember being excited about the food come the holidays.  It was the one day I knew my mom wouldn't chase me about how much I ate - until the car ride home when both parents would scold me in front of my brother.  I would make the obligatory round of hugs and then settle next to the appetizer table.  I would eat non-stop until dinner.  Then I'd eat a plate of two of food at dinner, maybe sneak back for more appetizers.  Then I'd get one of everything offered for desert, after I snuck in plenty of cookies, fudge, and whatever else was sitting out for deserts.  The sad truth is: I can't remember much about the holidays other than eating and hoping my parents weren't watching how much I was putting into my mouth and body.

In elementary school I used to offer to put anything people wanted to give me into my yogurt to eat it.  I wanted the food, so even if they put tuna salad in my cherry yogurt, I'd take it.  Mostly it was things like Oreo cookies [yum] or half eaten sandwiches.  I ate anything people wanted to throw out.  I never fished in the school trash cans [although I did in the kitchen trash can at home] but I was a mini garbage disposal for anything and everything no one wanted.  My friends eventually started bringing extra food for me.

In college I remember thinking constantly about food.  Classes were the things I did between meal times.  I loved the cafeterias because I could get as many plates as I wanted, and if I went alone I didn't have to worry about anyone following me.  Mostly I didn't think about people watching me eat then. I was out of the sight of my parents, which to me meant I was out of the sight of everyone.  I frequented the vending machines in my building - I think I stopped on the way to and from every class for something, usually those little doughnuts.  Once I had a car, my food adventures were usually in the form of 4 or 5 large meals a day at fast food as well as the dining halls.  I went every Tuesday to a Thai food restaurant where I ate until the point of pain.  I also always had snacks in my room to nibble on between meals.  This part is a bit fuzzy, because I didn't pay a lot of attention to what I was eating when.  I have always been a grazer so I had meals I paid attention to, and meals where I just grazed along without paying attention to what I was eating.

In grad school I think I lived on pizza, sub sandwiches and chips, and fast food (including an awesome fast food Italian restaurant that had cheese covered baked lasagna that I would eat with garlic bread sticks - carb heaven hell.) I ate huge quantities of food, including in the middle of the night while studying.  I would go to IHOP, order 2 or 3 meals and eat it all before I left.

After grad school I got the gastric bypass stomach surgery, which severely limited my ability to binge.  They literally sewed off part of my stomach and rerouted my intestines.  So once I was recovered enough to eat normal foods, I would still go to the restaurants and order all my food.  The ritual was still in place.  I just ended up throwing out most of it.  I would eat a bite or two of everything and make myself ill, but I would do my best.  I often grazed on my meal all day long - one monstrous breakfast-lunch-dinner mishmash of a meal.  Eventually I managed to eat back on most of my weight since there was nothing that caused the infamous "dumping syndrome" for me. 

When I joined OA, I had gained back some - but not all - of my gastric bypass weight loss.  I gave up certain "trigger foods" but binged freely on the others.  It was retaliatory binging.  I took away french fries? Then doughnuts it was!  I took out doughnuts next, then I went to those little fruit-jelly filled pies and cookies. Eventually I gave up and went back to before.  Then I came back and tried it again - with the same results as before.  Before I started with my current sponsor I had a two week long binge that was pure hell [described here]. And I haven't compulsively overeaten since.

Now to move on to the memories involving restricting/anorexia/bulimia:

These three were always lumped together for me.  I remember in second or third grade hearing my mom talk about how she dieted as a kid: hard boiled egg for breakfast, and she kept lunch and dinner each under 200 calories.  So I did the same.  It stunted my growth and I stopped growing at age 10.

In sixth grade I started the anorexia.  I would skip every meal I could get away with.  It was not that hard to get away with: I would tell friends that I was eating at home, and family that I ate with friends.  No one paid attention to what I ate at school, so I didn't have to worry there.  Sometimes I ate at school because I liked the food, but it depended on the day.  I think it got bad when I was between sixth and seventh grade, actually.  During the summer months.  When I had to eat dinner with my family, I'd squirrel the food into my cheeks and spit it out into napkins [because I wasn't smart enough to think that people would notice].  I just pretended it was gristle.  My mom wasn't inclined to feed me sweets, so that was never a problem.  When I couldn't get away with the gristle ruse, I'd rush to the bathroom and spit out the food in my squirrel cheeks.  My parents obviously knew what was going on but chose to do nothing about it.  Eventually my friends at school held me down at lunch time and force fed me.  Once I was eating it seemed that this phase of my life had ended.

Bulimia became something that popped up intermittently with my binges.  I can't really remember much about the bulimia, except that it took me a while to figure out how to make me puke since my gag reflex isn't very sensitive.  After my weight loss surgery I was lucky that as soon as I overate I would need to vomit.  So the purge just took a few extra bites of food and out it would come.  I often used that route to get more food, but sometimes it was a way to clear the binge.

Eventually I would alternate as an adult between binge, purge, and restricting days.

Compulsive exercising hit me around eighth grade.  I wanted to be skinny so I signed up for every sport my school offered, including cross country.  Later I ran for the love of running, but at first it was all about the burning of calories.  In grad school I exercised five to seven days a week as a means of telling myself that I was working on my weight and clearly it wasn't my fault that I was fat.

I can honestly say I've tried just about every diet over the years:  calorie counting, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, HMR, Liquid Only, Slim Fast, Lean Cuisine, not eating after 6/8/10pm, skipping breakfast, eating no breads, eating no dairy, eating no red meat, vegetarian, alcohol only, eating no pasta, eating no snacks, eating five small meals, etc.

That First Step's A Doozie

The speaker at my meeting this evening talked a lot about the steps.  He expressed something that resonated with me: he couldn't start the program until he was willing to take the first step.  Of course, he was referring to the actual First Step: We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable. 

While in a step study meeting focused on the Sixth Step (were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character), one speaker stated that we are always ready to have the consequences of our defects removed if not the defect itself.  We cling to our defects like treasured friends.  So too do we cling to the notion that we are not compulsive overeaters.  We may want to have the symptom removed - our excess weight - but we are often not ready to admit that the excess weight was brought on by our powerlessness over food.

I have heard the road to recovery begins when you take that step into the door of your first meeting.  But the fact remains that recovery simply will not happen until you are able to admit that there is something you need to recover from.  As the Big Book says, "Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." (Page 58)

I walked into my first meeting to be moral support for a friend.  A very clever friend who knew exactly what I was even if I didn't know it myself.  At the end of the meeting, I was able to declare with absolute certainty that I was a compulsive overeater.  I marched up to the speaker and asked her to be my sponsor that very same meeting.

The problem was, I didn't necessarily believe that I was powerless over food, and I most certainly didn't believe that my life was unmanageable!  I had done quite well for myself - or so I believed.  All I needed was someone to help me with a food plan and to give me accountability.  Then I would lose my weight, keep following my food plan, and not need to worry about silly things like meetings.  You see, I had it all figured out.

Every time I asked my sponsor when we would start doing step work, she would tell me that we were: we were working on the first step.  I would protest, "but I already admitted I was a compulsive overeater."  She would just smile and tell me to trust her.  So for months I was performing exercises designed to show me that my life was unmanageable.  I just didn't realize that was what we were doing. 

The exercise that caused me the most pain and suffering was so innocuous that I never suspected what I was in for.  I was told to perform one simple task: write down three things you love about yourself every day.  I rolled my eyes at this task, but when I sat down that first night to write down my three things I was in a quandary.  I couldn't think of a single one!  So I tried to go through my laundry list of achievements.  But no matter what achievement I looked at, I found a way in which it wasn't good enough.  I should have done better.  In the hour I sat there, I turned every last accomplishment I'd ever had into a personal failure, right down to my first place trophy for my seventh grade basketball team's undefeated season.  (Yes, I was digging that deep to find something to be proud of that I could love about myself.)  After running out of accomplishments, I then went to tear down every aspect of my physical appearance, from my wild curly brown hair to my big ugly feet.

That was the moment I made my first outreach call to a woman named Diane.  Looking back I almost feel sorry for that poor woman.  As soon as I verified who I was speaking with I broke down into a loud wailing sob and announced "I don't love anything about myself!"  It is to her credit that she didn't even miss a beat.  I can't remember what she said that day, but it was apparently exactly what I needed to hear.  After getting off the phone I sat down and came up with my three things I loved about myself.  1) My purple sparkly toenails (I usually have my toes painted).  2) The three freckles on my left foot that form a straight line diagonally across my foot.  3)  The way my wrists pop and I can make little popping sound music with them.  The next day, the cluster of freckles on my right leg that look like they could make a smiley face if you connected the dots was at the top of my list.  Of all my accomplishments, these were the things that I could identify as something I loved about myself.

Not once during the time with my first sponsor did I ever reach a point where something about my personality or my accomplishments was found on that list.  Yet still, I didn't see that my life was unmanageable.  I left program ten pounds lighter but no better off emotionally.  I got married.  Had a baby.  Lost the baby weight while nursing.  Then within a matter of months gained almost all of it back.  To put this in perspective, I weighed 230 when I got pregnant. I weighed 290 when I gave birth. I weighed 220 when I stopped nursing 6 months later, and 250 when I went back to OA 3 months later after having been completely incapable of keeping that weight from coming back.

Yet still, I wasn't ready to let go.  I thought to work the program on my own, and for two months I was able to maintain a personal abstinence while not getting any healthier mentally or emotionally and while only losing five pounds.  I realized I had to do something.  So I sought out my current sponsor and asked her to take me on.  As I discussed in my earlier post (here), I allowed myself to go off the deep end. 

I can remember the exact moment that I realized both my powerlessness and the unmanageableness of my life.  My husband and I were in Honolulu.  We had just eaten dinner and were walking back to our hotel.  I was quite full, but we had discussed getting Coldstones on the way back from dinner.  I didn't really want the ice cream, but seeing as how we'd already said we were going to get some I didn't feel up to backing out.  So I walked into the store not wanting the ice cream.  I ordered the ice cream - and not the smallest size either - thinking I would rather not have the ice cream.  Then, I proceeded to finish that ice cream while still thinking I don't want this.  I didn't enjoy the ice cream, I didn't want it, but I couldn't stop myself. I ate it anyway.

That night I stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, and thought.  The middle of the night is a terrible time to be alone with my brain.  I realized that I was going to die unless I could find some way to stop eating.  As the Big Book words it, I was finally licked.  That night I waved the white flag and knew hopelessness and despair like I had never experienced before.

I had finally taken the first step.

God and the Willingness to be Willing

Today I sat in on a phone meeting that I normally would not have attended because I am going to be having [abstinent] dinner with family friends.  So it came as a surprise that the meeting topic was something that had been on my mind all day: the willingness to be willing.

To go back a step, I want to talk a bit about my abstinence.  I love my sponsor, and I love my program.  When I came into program this second time I wanted to be in the driver's seat.  I saw the program as a tool that I could use in building my own recovery.  But after 2 months of being abstinent with my own program and not seeing any improvement, I realized that I couldn't do this alone.

So I told myself I couldn't just wait for the right sponsor to drop into my lap.  I would pick up the first sponsor I could and just run with it until I found my perfect sponsor.  The very next meeting I attended, my sponsor's close friend was the speaker.  I listened to his story and thought he was really wonderful.  He had so many good, helpful things to share.  And my sponsor, who was present to support her friend, stood up to identify herself as a person who sponsors.  It was perfect timing.  The best way to describe it is that I got good vibes from her.  She was lovely, slender, older than me (but not by much), and I just had a natural inclination to like her (and have since discovered that she is warm, loving, supportive, and funny as well - I hit sponsor gold).  My gut instinct said "yes please."  So I approached her at the break and she started to tell me a bit about her program, promising to go over it the next day with me on the phone.

When I heard just how strict my abstinence program would be, my first thought was complete and utter horror.  I didn't want to hand over control!  I wanted someone who I would be accountable to, not someone who wanted to run the show!  I wasn't ready for this, and my husband wasn't ready for the craziness to start right before our vacation.  So I put it off until we got back.

Knowing I'd be starting fresh at day 1 as a beginner, I went on that vacation and thought "what the hell, screw my abstinence.  I don't get credit for it anyway!" (Because, of course, abstinence only counts if someone is watching. . .)  And I went wild.  It was the last hurrah of last hurrahs.  I ate myself silly and managed to gain nearly ten pounds that week.  By the time I got back, I was finally defeated.  I'd been miserable letting my disease drive, and I didn't know how I could stop!  I needed help and I was finally ready to surrender.  The phrase "willing to go to any length" suddenly had real meaning for me: I would do anything to not live in the state of compulsive overeating torture one more day.

It turns out that my sponsor is exactly what I needed.  I discovered that surrendering my food to her was the only way I would find sanity.  My sponsor arrived in my life at the exact moment I needed her, in the exact manner I needed her to, and with the exact program I needed.  It was thinking about her that I was able to make the connection to God.  I'd always had a notion that a God was out there, but I'd never felt he took any particular interest in individuals.  But realizing the serendipity of meeting my sponsor, I suddenly knew that God had put her there for me to find.  He'd heard my prayer and he'd answered it just when I needed it most.  He knew what and when and how - and He made it happen just right.

Well fast forward through seventeen blissful abstinent days living on the pink cloud and I am speaking to a beloved family friend.  She is desperate to return to program, and she told me how she needs a sponsor.  Well, she asked me about my program, so I told her what my days are like.  Immediately she began to go through the same objections that rose to my mind: she didn't want to hand over the steering wheel.  She wanted to be driving her own recovery.  But that wasn't true - she wanted to have a reasonable abstinence, just a different one from my own.

So when I left her house I made a call to my sponsor and my three outreach people, leaving a message to ask them to keep an eye out for a sponsor with the characteristics my friend was looking for.  Even if she never picks up the phone or doesn't pick up the phone to call the people I find for her any time in the next X number of months or years, I'll have done my best to help her find the help she wants.  I also gave her the information on how to find online and phone meetings [since she is often too depressed to leave the house].

But the first thought that went through my head was that she was not willing to go to any lengths for her recovery.  She wasn't willing to be willing.  And this thought has been stewing with me ever since.  Just like no two people are the same, no two recoveries are either.  So who am I to doubt her.  Maybe she is ready, she just needs something different than I do.  There is nothing wrong with that.  There is no one right answer.  As yesterday's Voices of Recovery pointed out, the problem is within.  No one has the answers, they don't even know the question.

I am far too ready to look into other people's lives and other people's recoveries and think about what it is they should be doing.  But I am not in charge of their lives or their recoveries.  That's God's job, not mine.  There was a great quote from my Thursday night meeting:  "The only thing I need to know about God is I'm not Him."

So while I'm thinking that she isn't willing to surrender, that her ego is going to get in the way unless she finds that willingness - I realized that I am showing that same ego I was internally accusing her of displaying.  Here I stand with my whopping seventeen days of abstinence feeling so high and mighty and proud of myself.  Like I have all the answers and have found the cure.  In reality, I should be the one eating humble pie!

Listening to the readings in that meeting tonight, as well as the shares, helped me realize what was bothering me about the situation with my friend.  It wasn't that there was anything wrong with her, it was that there was something wrong with me.  I thought I was doing good by trying to be of service to her - helping her locate a potential sponsor and find meetings.  Being supportive of her and explaining that there are many ways of finding abstinence, not just my own.  But deep down I was being prideful.  It was my pride that was making the gesture feel hollow, not the doubts about her ability or willingness to accept the help.  My sponsor assigned supplemental readings to deal with my issues with my in-laws, but it applied to this problem as well.

What keeps striking me is the random luck of my meetings.  It always seems like these meetings cover exactly the subjects I am needing that day.  It just makes me realize that God is talking to me, I just need to stop talking and listen.

I realized that I'm willing to let God run the show in my own recovery, but I need to be willing to be willing to let God do the rest of his job.  Because if I can't manage my own life, I have no business managing anyone elses life either!

A REALLY Bad Day

Today was a major BAD day.  It really reminded me why I need to be in OA, because today the disease brought on the serious crazy. 

 

I slept later than I wanted to, which meant I didn't have time to get work done. Which isn't the end of the world - I can do it tomorrow - but it means I can't start researching tomorrow. Then we went to lunch and ate at the restaurant, which meant I had to split my food and not have it as my salad. Again, not the end of the world. We came home and put the baby down for a nap, but he only slept for half an hour because he pooped. So we had a cranky and grumpy baby the rest of the evening while we tried to go grocery shopping.

We went first to order his birthday cake. The woman apparently was a perfectionist, because she rewrote the order on 4 slips before it was "right". All the while I am staring at the bakery display. And this isn't your usual grocery store bakery display. There are a TON of cookies, mini-cakes, little tuxedo strawberries with dark chocolate buttons, and all sorts of cookies I have no idea what the names are but that look HEAVENLY. And I'm trying to order a cake that my husband says, "are you really not going to eat his cake?" - "No sweetheart, I'm not" - "Not either day?" - "No, not either day" - "But what about the other candy, are you really not going to eat that either?" - "No, my love, I'm not eating any of that stuff." - "But they make Lebanese food for Christmas, you love that! Are you going to be ok?" - and at this stage I wanted an ice pick so I could start stabbing him repeatedly with it. My poor husband was oblivious to the fact that this was going to upset me.

The baby is fussing so we grabbed a few of the items at Gelsons - although they didn't have the seasoning - they didn't even have a Latin food section! - and then I was looking at their chicken display and it was obscene how much they were charging. And I started getting that claustrophobic feeling, and my husband is standing WAY in my space bubble the whole time. This meant that while I'm trying to read labels and find things, I have a baby smacking me in the face and pulling my hair and him breathing down my neck nagging me to just grab corn tortillas. I'm trying to make sure there isn't any sugar in them - and he wants to go.

I just wanted to SCREAM! We go order dinner because I am now starving and everywhere I look there is junk food, it seems. So we go get the next meal, even though I haven't even gotten to finish my salad yet [I turned what was left from lunch into a salad]. We bring it home and the baby goes to bed. Now I am just frazzled and while I was ok with the little things going wrong, when I take a sip of my supposedly light lemonade and it is regular I about broke down and cried.

I tried to stay calm, so I put down the lemonade and went in and got a diet Lipton green tea. I would drink that instead. Problem solved. So I made my salad while my husband put the baby down to sleep and proceeded to mix my lunch remainders in with the dinner. Good - now it is all together and I can work on my food.

I sit down and locate the next phone meeting - it was set to start in 6 minutes. Perfect. I am listening to an amazing speaker and loving my meeting. And then I start getting booted from the call. Of course, being already in crazy mode, I start to take this personally. I was booted around nine times before I finally got in and was able to stay in. I don't know what was wrong? I was on mute, so it wasn't like I was doing anything special. I mute the line on their side AND I mute my side as well just to be safe! So now my great meeting is now ruined for me because I am feeling like I was getting picked on. Oh, and I was terrified that the leader was my boss because he sounded just like him and had the same name. Thankfully it wasn't him, but I spent a good chunk of that meeting not sure if I should slink out and wait for the next phone session.

 

I was sad that my meeting didn't lift me up like usual. So I picked up the phone and made my outreach calls. All answering machines. I even called a few people from my We Care Phone List - same thing. I gave up on the calls and told myself that I was being irrational, and that I was responsible for my mood. I should be proud of myself for following my instructions and staying on plan. But I wasn't.

 

I realize I was being vile to my husband and snapping at him at the grocery store. So I apologize. The baby wakes up from his evening nap and we get bundled up to walk him around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights while he drinks a bottle. My husband starts complaining about how this one thing hurts - and I get so annoyed because he whines and complains about aches and pains all the time. If he has the sniffles it is like the world has come to an end and he tells me "I feel sick" in misery every ten minutes. Except that I've listened to these whines and complaints for two years every single day.

So I am biting my cheek to keep my mouth shut. I have tried to get him into the doctor, but he just says "oh, this doctor at a walk in place didn't help me when I told him I hurt my shoulder" so he won't go see a doctor who specializes in the types of injuries he has. Meanwhile the fact that I have torn cartilage in both my knees, arthritis in my hands and feet, two blown discs in my back, and adhesions in my abdomen that all cause me pain on a daily basis rises up to the front of my thoughts. And you know what I don't do? Complain to him about them. He knows I have these problems but he'll forget unless they're really bad - why? Because I keep it to myself. And it isn't a martyrdom issue. I simply don't see the point in harping on it when there's nothing to be done about it.

 

So I get home with knees that feel like there's broken glass inside of them, my abdomen feeling like someone is repeatedly stabbing me, and listening to him whine about an ache in his shoulder. The baby has had the bottle and the dogs are now pleased that they've had their walk. The baby goes up to bed and we proceed to watch television.

I make my evening oatmeal and it isn't the kind of oats I like. I tried this rolled oats thing that doesn't really gel together into oatmeal. It's more like having Smacks cereal without the sugar/flavor. In water. And then my husband makes himself a few slices of sourdough toast. And when I give it a longing look he then takes a big bite and goes "mmmm it's delicious" - and proceeds to tell me it is revenge for me being snippy in the grocery store. I was within a millimeter of punching him in the face. And when he sees I am genuinely upset, he says "I was just teasing you, what's wrong?" Like he even needs to ask.

And then, he proceeds to talk through the whole TV show. He knows that is like nails on chalk board for me. Most nights I pause and stare at him, so he eventually gets the point and stops. But tonight I was just not able to be calm about it. I knew if I paused I would yell at him, and I didn't want to yell at him.  So I sit and I stew.  I drank water because I wanted to eat that sourdough bread so desperately.  So of course I had to pee constantly.

 

Then we are going to get ready for bed and he starts up one of our repeating fights.  The problem is that he is epileptic and can't remember a lot of what happened while I was pregnant.  So he starts going off on how the baby made him sick.  And I remind him that his insistence on not taking his medicine - against his doctor's instructions - is why he got so sick.  And he argued with me that the doctor didn't go against it.  And I just stared at him like he'd gone mad. 

 

Then he got angry at me because I didn't agree with him.  I am actually able to give him written proof of the doctor's instructions, but he is getting mad at me because I won't tell him what he wants to hear.  But I am not going to let him say that our child is the reason he is so sick when he did it to himself!  Because I know him.  If he gets it into his mind that he is sick because of the baby I'm going to hear nonstop about how my having the baby ruined his life.  I was just floored.  But I stopped myself and didn't scream.  I didn't yell.  I just agreed to not have the conversation since he was getting angry.

 

And he wanted to get a hug and kiss goodnight before I went downstairs to do my Big Book report to my sponsor.  I gave him a stiff hug and kiss and went downstairs feeling livid.  Because today I do not have my cool.  And even now I know it's nearly three in the morning, my baby is going to wake me up in two hours, and I'm too angry to sleep.

 

But on the positive side - I'm feeling my feelings, and I stayed on program.  I attended my meeting.  I made my outreach calls.  And when I finish this journal post, I'm going to write to my sponsor and summarize my five pages.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Resentment

I attended a phone meeting today* that was discussing resentment.  There is a quote that I love that I heard in one of my face to face meetings:  "resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

I really resent my in-laws.  I am able to get along with most people and look away when people wrong me, but I can't stand these people.  I was fine with them until I had my son, and now I hate that I need to share him with these people.  Part of it is that they were raised [and raised their son] in a way that is very different from how I want to raise my child. 

My mother-in-law is a passive aggressive nightmare who second guesses everything I say.  She has given my lactose-intolerant child ice cream and told me that the doctors can't tell if a child has a problem with milk at this age.  Well, I was the one dealing with the rashes and the diaper-consequences of that little gift.  She will wake the baby and/or opt not to put the baby down at nap time if it suits her mood.  She will opt not to feed the baby because it's a hassle.  She will decide she doesn't want to change his diaper and instead of telling us he made a mess, will simply hold a stinky baby so she doesn't have to stop playing with him - and then leaves us to deal with the attendant diaper rash.  And if I try to tell her that the baby is sleeping, she rolls her eyes at me.  It is like dealing with a 13 year old child, not a grown woman.  And while she is snippy and nasty to me, she behaves like a saint to my husband, so he doesn't understand why I get upset with her.

My father-in-law likes to harass me on a daily basis to tell me how my husband and I should live our lives.  He wants my husband to quit his job [he is the primary income since I work part time to take care of the baby] and fiddle around with an unpaying, no benefits, lab project he has thought up - which experts in the field have already said will not work.  But my father-in-law won't let it go.  He believes this idea will make us rich. . . but my husband doesn't want to quit his job to prove to his father that this idea is a dead end [like the people he's approached have already told him].  And he calls me to tell me how to run my business.  And how to manage my life.  I don't like being told what to do, and all my polite attempts to tell him to mind his own business [and my less than polite attempts] have met a wall.  I have had my husband approach him to no avail.  My father-in-law believes he knows best, and says he is just "offering advice".  I have taken the tactic of refusing to answer his phone calls, instead calling my husband at work and instructing him to call his father back to find out what he wants.  Once more, he is much worse about this when he has me alone than when he is around my husband.

And they always tell us they want to help - but are angry if we don't give them a week of notice.  Unfortunately, we don't usually know we're going to need help until the day of - and a day or two in advance if we're lucky.  But when they want to see their grandchild, they call the day of and are put out and angry when we can't oblige them.  Then, when we try to call and schedule visits with my son, they have odd excuses.  Like - we can't come see the baby on Sunday because we are painting the hall on that day.  They have no deadline on painting the hall - they can do it before or after a visit - but they decide that they have something to do so my son takes second fiddle.  But when we have something to do, how dare we deny them access to their grandchild.  It just is a lack of courtesy that drives me crazy. 

I tell my husband that no matter how much I love him - and I do - his parents would have been a deal breaker had I gotten to know them better before the wedding. 

But it isn't just when they are actively doing something wrong that I feel this outrage.  I can't let it go.  It just gnaws at me and gnaws at me all day.  I hate that I'm trapped with these people and I find myself saying that they will die one of these days.  I look forward to the day when they die and stop plaguing me.  The rational part of my mind says I need to learn to cope with them because they are part of my life, but I just don't know how.  I plead with my husband not to die, because I don't know how I would maintain a relationship between my son and his grandparents if I didn't have my husband there to prod me into seeing them.  I want my son to have the best in life, and taking away two of his grandparents is not in that plan.

So tonight I'm going to stop praying for them to go away and start praying for God to relieve me of my resentment of my in-laws.  Someone mentioned in the call that anger is the luxury of the normal man - something the addict cannot afford.  I can't afford to keep harboring this anger at my in-laws.  I need to let it go.  So if anyone is reading this, any prayers you might want to offer up on my behalf that I let go of the resentment would be appreciated!

*For those who don't know, you can find phone and online meetings at The OA Website - these are a lifesaver since I can't always get out of the house to an in person meeting.

Preface - xvi to xxi

Foreword to Second Edition

This section discusses the beginnings of AA and the discoveries made b the physician and broker who started the group.

". . . the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God." - xvi

I was once told that your higher power can be anything or any one, so long as it is something you are willing to put your faith in and surrender the power to.  I'm not an atheist or even an agnostic, but I have a hard time believing that God will be the one to take away this insanity. At this stage my higher power is my sponsor.   I can't manage my own food and I can't manage my own recovery.  I'm just not equipped with the necessary tools to do this. 

The thing is, I have prayed to God for help.  I have prayed for many things, but it just never seems like He answers.  Or if He is answering, it isn't in any way that I'm going to be able to hear.  So if He's going to be inclined to answer now, He's going to have to do it through the voice of my sponsor.

And it isn't that I don't think He listens to prayers.  For instance, I really attribute it to His grace that I found OA in the first place.  But I can't sit and wait for something to happen.  There's a great joke about a man who goes to a statue of St. Peter and prays every day to win the lottery.  One day his forlorn tear strikes the foot of the statue and St. Peter comes to life and says to the man "for the love of God, buy a lottery ticket!"

". . . the theory that only [a compulsive overeater] could help [a compulsive overeater], but he succeeded only in keeping [abstinent] himself." - xvi

I always could remember getting angry at skinny people or people who were in great shape when they would talk to me about their "weight struggles".  My mother is a prime example.  She goes on about how she battles with food, and how it is so difficult for her to give up breads and all the other things she'll do depending on which fad diet she is following at a given time.  I get that she is tempted and she really wants to eat the bread or whatever it is she gave up. 

And I understand the determination it takes for those people who are in great shape to keep getting out of bed in the morning to exercise.  But most of those people never got out of bed carrying another person in weight and went for that run.  They get the satisfaction of feeling good after exercising and looking in the mirror and feeling accomplishment.  All I get is the feeling that I'm going to die and a view of the same old fat ass I always see.

It is like someone who once sprained an ankle trying to tell a paraplegic that they "totally understand."  My need to diet isn't about those extra four pounds I gained on vacation.  I need to lose, conservatively speaking, at least fifty pounds.  I probably should lose more like eighty or ninety pounds.

But my mentor's mentor lost over three hundred pounds - if there's someone who understands what it is to face a mountain, he's it.  The people at OA who are working the steps and fighting these demons - they understand.  They have a frame of reference for what I'm talking about and what I'm going through.  And they've managed to pull through to the other side.  And once I get to the other side, it's my turn to pull others across, because that's the only way to stay where I need to be.  To remember the struggle and the suffering.  Because if I let myself forget, like I did when I had my baby, then I'm going to be right back in hell again.

". . . in order to save himself he must carry his message to another [compulsive overeater]." - xvi

See above.

". . . began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with a willingness he had never before been able to muster." - xvi

It's amazing the power of hope.  At the end of the day, I am the one who is picking up the food and putting it into my mouth.  But if I leave control of the food choices to my sponsor, I can succeed where previously I failed.  And that's a powerful motivator.

But I love the description of this as the pursuit of a spiritual remedy for the malady.  It is such a beautiful way to describe this problem.  Whenever my mom gets on me about my weight and asks how much I've lost, I always tell her: "I don't weigh in."  She gets upset, but I shake my head and tell her, "the weight is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself."  That is what I learned in my first go at OA.  This disease is both spiritual and physical, and all the doctors in the world are going to be helpless to cure it without that spiritual remedy.

I am seeking a spiritual remedy for my malady.

"This seemed to prove that one [compulsive overeater] could affect another as no non[compulsive overeater] could." - xvi-xvii

See above.

"There were many failures, but there was an occasional heartening success." - xvii

The rest of this section goes on to talk about the spread of AA and the fact that people kept coming back.  Those who really tried either succeed immediately, eventually succeeded, or just simply got better.  And many who left at first eventually came back. 

This just resonated with me because I see and hear so much how people keep coming back to OA after they leave.  If people keep returning to this program for the answer, it obviously is waiting there.  And there eventually will be that one meeting that clicks.  So even if there are going to be failures on my road, I can still look forward to an occasional heartening success.

Preface - xi to xv

Preface pages xi to xv:

The first two pages describe the changes which have been made in the different editions of the big book.

Foreword to First Edition

"Many do not comprehend that the [compulsive overeater] is a very sick person." - xiii

I first went to Overeater's Anonymous because a family friend acknowledged that she had a problem and needed help, but was too afraid to go by herself.  I didn't believe that I had a problem.  In fact, I thought that my attendance at that meeting was going to be a huge waste of my time.  I patiently met the new member greeter, sat through the first part of the meeting, and then quietly listened as the speaker blew me away.

She was a woman in her fifties who sat there and told my story.  It was bizarre hearing about my compulsive and interfering mother, my closet eating, my feelings of shame and guilt and worthlessness, my focus on education to make up for my failure at maintaining a normal weight.  This woman could have spent the last twenty-seven years of her life watching through my windows. 

And then it hit me with a sickening thud.  These were my people.  I didn't want them to be my people.  I didn't want to have a problem.  But I walked up to that woman and asked her to be my sponsor that day and left that meeting with the understanding that I belonged in overeaters anonymous.  I started an abstinence program the next day and stayed abstinent until I got pregnant.

I had a difficult pregnancy and although soda was on my abstinence, it was the only fluid that would stay in my stomach.  I was too sick to drive, and spent most of the pregnancy on bed rest.  So I just didn't worry about anything but getting that baby delivered safely at full term.

When my son was born, I felt like that missing piece of my soul was found.  It felt like that gaping hole I kept trying to fill with food was suddenly filled with love for my son.  So I threw out thoughts of overeaters anonymous and threw out my sponsor's number because I was "cured".  I wouldn't need food because I had my son.

But it doesn't work like that.  I wasn't cured.  I wasn't fine. Whenever I held my son I felt that overflowing love - but eventually my son didn't want to be cuddled all day long.  He wanted to crawl and explore the world.  He loves me, and I'm his favorite person, but he wants to become his own person now.  And magically that gaping hole is no longer full all the time.  So I started to fill it up with food once more.  While nursing I'd lost my entire pregnancy weight and then an additional twenty pounds.  Now I've gained back those twenty pounds and added another twenty for good measure.  I'm not back to my pregnancy weight, but without help I'll be back there soon.

So I know now that this is a disease.  I can't just will it to be cured.  It isn't going to just magically go away, no matter how much I may want it to.  I belong here, like it or not.

I've talked to my mother and my best friend about my participation in OA.  They both are supportive of me working to lose weight, but they just don't seem to understand that this is a disease.  My mother goes on to talk about her own issues with food - and believe me, she has them.  But my mother is able to maintain a healthy weight.  She does "yo-yo" diet, but her swing is in the five to ten pound range.  As far as I know, she does not binge, she does not purge, all she does is eat like a normal person and cut back when she no longer is at a normal weight.  I don't think she understands that I just can't do that.  Believe me, she's baffled at the fact that I've never managed to get my weight off, and never managed to keep off whatever weight I have lost.  She always says "when you want it bad enough, you'll find the will."  And that's exactly the problem.  I am powerless over this disease.

My best friend takes this as a suggestion that she'll go on a diet with me.  This is just a diet club to her, not an actual illness.  She doesn't want to accept the notion that there is anything wrong with me other than a lack of determination to lose weight.  I think this may be because she also has difficulty losing weight.  I suspect she may also be a compulsive overeater.  So perhaps she fights against accepting that I am sick because she doesn't want to believe that she is sick as well.

When I first started with OA, my husband was skeptical but wanted to "humor me".  Now that he's lived with me off the program, he's a believer.  He's watched me suffer and he understands.  He's found enough of my random stashes of hidden foods to understand that something is very wrong!

"Being mostly business or professional folk. . ." - xiii

I have a close friend who has always had a weight problem.  She's blamed genetics, she's blamed her parent's divorce during childhood, she's blamed finances and time constraints.  I used to always believe that her weight problem stemmed from her unwillingness to be uncomfortable.  She won't wear under wire bras because they hurt.  She changed to an easier major because the other was too hard - she had the mental capacity to succeed, but it just was more work than she was willing to put in.  And I saw her weight problem as an extension of this aversion to discomfort.

But I am as heavy as she is.  I don't have an aversion to discomfort.  I went through eight years of college, and received my law degree from a university that prides itself on being one of the toughest schools around.  I work from home, take care of my ten month old son, and manage to have dinner on  the table by the time my husband gets home from work.  Before my pregnancy I walked half-marathons to help raise money for cancer research, and volunteered as a mentor even though I worked insanely long hours during the week.  I am not a lazy person.  (My husband may disagree when it comes time to wash the dishes or take out the trash, however. . .)

I am a compulsive overeater.  And seeing as how I am able to succeed in other areas of my life, it only seems logical that I would be able to apply the same diligence and fortitude that I have in other areas of my life.  Only I can't.  And as the Big Book mentioned, I'm not alone in this.  This disease doesn't care that I'm educated, or a professional, or a mother, or anything about my willingness to volunteer for a cause.  All this disease cares about is getting food from my plate into my stomach.  And when the first Big Book was published, the first members were "mostly business or professional folk" - not lazy people, not weak willed people.  They were people like me.

Foreword to Second Edition

". . .a New York stockbroker and an Akron physician. . ." - xv

Same thoughts as previous statement.

Happy Thursday

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.