Category Archives: Abstinence

3 ways out of dangerously sentimental food thoughts

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“We will not regret the past,” says the Promises that many meetings close with each week. Usually we think of this as referring to the stuff in our backgrounds that we’d rather not remember. But we also need to keep careful watch for sentimentalism, a gateway to self-pity.

Of course there’s nothing wrong for reflecting gladly on bygone days of glee. We rightly and naturally cherish the memories of our loved ones, special moments, successes, happy surprises, challenges overcome. But the disease of addiction is cunning and baffling, and so we must be on guard and monitor our thinking. Instead of keeping it in the day, our illness can turn our thoughts toward matters of food, weight, and body image quickly and almost imperceptibly.

What begins as a pleasant trip down memory lane can turn into lingering thoughts about certain foods or meals. Once our minds reach a place such as this, we can easily slip into self-pity over the foods we can no longer eat. Our disease can begin to tell us that those meals of yore were worth more than our abstinence. The cycle of addiction always beings with a thought or feeling.

So how do we recognize when we’re in danger of romancing the foods of yesterday? And what do we do if we enter that mindspace?

These are some warning signs heard from OA members that signal when we’ve crossed over from sentimental remembrance into self-pity:

  1. “I wish I could eat that again.”
  2. “Ooh, I remember that [holiday or special event]. The [food] was soooooo good.”
  3. “Wow, I can taste that right now.”
  4. “I wonder if that would taste as good to me now as it did back then?”
  5. “Maybe I could have a bite of that? It’s been so long.”
  6. “That food reminds me of my parent/sibling/friend who I miss so much.”

If thoughts such as these rattle through our mind, we’ve got to act quickly and decisively. The longer we polish this turd, the more it looks to us like a jewel. How do we get ourselves out of this tight spot?

  1. Pick up OA’s Tools: The Tools which will turn our thinking back toward our solution quickly.
    1. A plan of eating: Review our food plan to help remember why we don’t eat what we’ve been thinking about
    2. Sponsorship: Call our sponsor to talk about this slide into food-romance or call a sponsee to see how they’re doing to move our thoughts in a more productive direction
    3. Meetings: Get to a meeting quickly to hear about the solution and to be reminded of the hellishness of being in the problem
    4. Telephone: Talking to someone right away about the dishonesty our illness is trying to perpetrate on us is a sure way to be reminded of the solution
    5. Literature: Read any piece of program literature to remind us of the importance of maintaining our abstinence
    6. Writing: Journaling about our thoughts drifting foodward, writing a letter to our Higher Power asking for help, or continuing our 4th Step inventory will support sanity around food
    7. Service: What’s better for redirecting our thoughts than seeing how we can be of service to OA or any group that needs a helping hand?
    8. Plan of Action: Any other action that we regularly take as part of our program can help us keep our OA foundation strong.
  2. Do a 10th Step: Page 84 of the Big Book tells us to watch for selfishness, dishonest, resentment, and fear then gives us specific actions to take when these crop us:
    1. Ask our HP to remove the issue: Go straight to the spiritual source of our recovery!
    2. Discuss the issue with someone immediately: A sponsor or trusted OA friend is the ideal someone who understands how food addiction plays tricks our minds
    3. Make amends if necessary: Especially if our thinking is causing us to neglect other important responsibilities
    4. Turn our thoughts to someone we can help: Getting out of our own heads requires us to put ourselves second
  3. Remind ourselves of the nature of our illness: Our addiction always lies to us, and it even uses truths to deceive us. For example, it reminds us of the fleeting pleasure of food, but blocks out recollections of the daily torture of compulsive eating.

Additionally, we must remember that whatever direction our life in recovery takes, it’s an unfolding adventure that we get to live fully one day at a time. Rather than worry that tomorrow won’t be like yesteryear, we can instead rejoice that today isn’t as painful as our old way of living was. Rather than pining for the “good” old days, we can be grateful for this moment in recovery.

 

10 ways to know if you are obsessing about food

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Are you really obsessed with food and powerless over it? Here are ten common forms of obsessive thinking about food that many OA members have experienced. If you’ve experienced these or similar thinking, you may be in the grip of the obsession with food.

1. Moments after finishing one meal, you begin thinking about the next

You arrive at work at 9:00, having just tossed down a quick breakfast. For the next several hours, you fixate on what you’ll get for lunch. The minutes tick away. You tell yourself you’ll wait until 1:00, but at 12:15, you say “screw it” and yank the takeout menu from the top drawer of your desk….

2. Anytime you have a strong feeling (happy, mad, sad, glad), you get the urge to eat

The Red Sox win! Time to eat. My daughter has filed for divorce. Time to eat. The cable is on the fritz again. Time to eat. My doctor called, and the diabetes hasn’t gotten as bad as I’d feared. Time to eat.

3. Food thoughts pop unbidden into your mind throughout the day and over time

The deadline for that report is the end of the day. You’re about halfway done. This section is just killing you. Then this thought: Oh, remember that time in Denver when I had that dessert with….

4. The same foods or food types dominate your thinking

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5. You rationalize food behaviors

“Just because my blood sugar is at dangerous levels doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have a little fun. My doctor is such wet blanket. He’d eat too if he had to deal with what I deal with. What’s one little bite going to do to me anyway. I’m making too much of this.”

6. Ultimately, you always lose the argument with yourself about your eating

  • Good Self: Don’t eat that last helping that’s in the dish. You know it’s just going to make you fatter.
  • Bad Self: But it’s good. You deserve a treat.
  • Good Self: Think about how much more exercise or dieting you’d have to do to get rid of it.
  • Bad Self: Like you’ve worried about it lately, anyway?
  • Good Self: And your knees always hurt, and your back hurts, and your neck hurts.
  • Bad Self: Exactly, so just have a bite and we’ll take away the pain for a few moments.

7. The idea of going without certain foods creates a visceral reaction of fear or anger

Something is upside down if life wouldn’t be worth living without a favorite food.

8. You often plan elaborate meals months in advance, sometimes even for fantasy meals that will never happen

And you’re not a chef, caterer, wedding planner, or other culinary or event-planning professional.

9. Passing a convenience store triggers you to stop and buy food

Our dealer is on every corner and even has signs inviting us in. But we don’t really need those signs because we know exactly where the store keeps the goodies we want need.

10. Pushing away a half-eaten plate seems utterly foreign

She’s not going to finish that? Is she ill? What planet is she from? If she’s not going to eat, maybe I can.

11. I’ll never get skinny—I might as well just keep eating my face off

There’s a lot truth here. We likely never will get the body we want when our mind constantly thinks about food. That’s because we can’t fix ourselves. We can’t outwit our own diseased minds.

This is just a selection of the kinds of thinking we hear about in OA meetings all the time. These old tapes run endlessly in our minds while we remain in the throes of compulsive eating.

But there is a solution.

The 12 Steps of OA provide relief from the daily slog of trying to think ourselves out of a disease that works through our own minds. With OA’s help we can eat like a normal person, one day at a time.

Strategies and tactics for eating out abstinently

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Most OA members are not nuns or monks cloistered away from the world. We have lives that are variously complicated, sociable, compressed, or festive. That means we sometimes, perhaps often, eat out. Whether that means at a sit-down restaurant/function, a take-out place, a holiday party, or grabbing something at the supermarket or corner store, we need strategies and tactics that are portable and flexible. Because no matter how determined we are to plan every single meal we eat, the day will come when life throws us a curveball, and we’ll need to eat out.

So let’s look at a couple general strategies as well as tactics for each of the situations mentioned above.

GENERAL STRATEGIES

  1. Trust and rely on our Higher Power: In outside-the-house situations, our addictive mind might tell us that it’s OK to bend the rules to a place where we’ve warped those rules into unrecognizable untruths about our food. We can’t trust our thinking, so we have to turn it over to HP and listen for the intuitive thoughts that will keep us on the beam. Prayer is our number 1 best move.
  2. Check our motives: As the Big Book suggests, we ask ourselves whether we have a good reason to be there. Are we really hoping to indulge our interest in jazzy, sexy foods: fats, salts, maybe flours? Are we seeking volume? Are we trying to rekindle old romantic feelings for food?
  3. Have OA’s tools at the ready: The 9 tools are totally portable thanks to smart phones. We can read literature, make calls, text, write in the form of email, and tell another member what our food will be for the meal.
  4. Remember it’s just one meal: If the worst thing happens and we can’t get something we like that meets our abstinence requirements, we won’t die from eating something we’re not crazy about.
  5. Don’t eat no matter what; no matter what don’t eat: No matter what social awkwardness could result, whether sending a meal back or measuring at the table, we need to be prepared to not eat a substance that will send us into a binge no matter how strange it might seem to others. We can always tell them we have a deadly allergy, because that’s the truth.

Now here’s a few suggestions our members have shared for particular outside-the-house situations.

RESTAURANTS

  1. Steer clear of triggering establishments: If we are asked our opinion on where to eat, we aren’t shy! For example, if we can’t eat pasta or pizza safely, we tell our fellow diners that we don’t want to go to an Italian restaurant!
  2. Check the menu ahead of time: The internet is a wonderful thing for OA members. We can read a menu beforehand, and walk in with a committed plan.
  3. Decide on how much to eat before arrival: Some members commit to eating what’s on their plate and nothing more. Or to only having an entree. Some may order a half portion or decide ahead to eat only half. One of our local members has a “One-third rule” where they leave one-third of the food behind.
  4. Bring a scale: Some members’ diseases lie to them about quantities. They may choose to bring a scale with them to be as honest as possible.
  5. Ask questions: We can’t afford to accidentally ingest our triggering substances (e.g. sugar, flour, salts, fats) or specific trigger foods. We ask waitpersons about ingredients. They’d rather us ask first than send something back.
  6. Have a worst-case scenario: What if a restaurant prepares something in a way you didn’t realize would be non-abstinent for you? Perhaps you can scrape off a sauce or coating. Or you could trade meals with someone else. Or you can simply send it back.

PARTIES

Many of the suggestions for restaurants apply to parties, of course. But many times, parties have a spread rather than a sit-down, a buffet-style smorgasbord of appetizers or even main courses, and this scenario presents its own set of difficulties.

  1. Decide what a serving is: When we’re talking about little plates, this gets shifty, especially for those of us prone to grazing. We can talk with our sponsor about what exactly a serving will mean.
  2. Only eat food that’s on our plate: We don’t eat anything directly from its serving dish, a classic grazing maneuver.
  3. Eat before attending: That way we won’t be hungry, and we eliminate a potential justification for eating.
  4. Arrive late or leave early: Reducing the length of our exposure reduces our risk

MEALS ON THE MOVE

Uh oh. We’re running late to an after-work appointment (maybe an OA meeting!) and we just got out of work. By the time the appointment is over and we get home we’ll be ravenous! Classic HALT territory. So we might decide to get something at a store on the way or a take-out place. With both hunger and lateness affecting us, it’s important to make wise decisions.

  1. Take a deep breath: It’s hard to make sound food decisions when our brains are running 100 miles an hour. Before we enter the store or take-out joint, take a big, deep breath or two to clear out the craziness for a moment.
  2. Update our food plan for the day: If we committed something different than this on-the-run meal, we tell our sponsor about the change so that we are still tethered to a source of support and accountability.
  3. Have an emergency backup meal idea: Some members have an emergency back-up plan just for situations like this. A reliable, abstinent, appropriately sized meal they can zip through most any store to get quickly. For example, we might choose to have a piece of fruit, an adequate serving of nuts (often available in bulk or in sleeves with specific amounts), and a bottle of water. Or if a local take-out place has an appropriately sized, abstinent item, we might fall back to it in emergencies.
  4. Pause to read labels: When we are in a major hurry, we might pick up something that seems abstinent at first glance, only to discover later to our horror that it wasn’t. For example, some companies put sugar on dry-roasted peanuts. It pays to take a few seconds to check the ingredients while we are still in the store to avoid disaster after.

There’s lots more ideas for ways to eat out safely and sanely. Restaurants are not opportunities to go all wild-west on our food, nor should we sit in them acting like we’d rather be anywhere else. We let our HP show us how to be in the situation, we listen and engage with others, and we remember that it’s one day at a time.

9 choices every OA needs to make every day

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We compulsive eaters are powerless against food. Once we take the first bite, we lose the power of choice in eating, as well as in many other aspects of our lives. We come undone when we eat compulsively, and our disease takes us on a nightmarish roller coaster we seem unable to step off of.

That means that in OA we have many, many important choices to make to keep ourselves on the path of sanity, clarity, and serenity. Here are some of the most important of those choices that OAs face every day.

1. Am I choosing to acknowledge the truth about my food addiction?

We food addicts are great at denial. We’ve been telling ourselves for years or decades that  we’re going to get our eating under control any day now. That this will be the last diet program we ever need. That if we just exercised, the weight would come off. That our doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That the aching in our knees or back aren’t caused by our weight. Deep down inside, we know the truth, but we don’t want to admit it.

2. Am I choosing to consider this a killing disease?

So maybe we eat too much and can’t stop. So what? We’re probably just exaggerating the problem. We’re making too much of it. So maybe our A1C is nearing diabetic levels. Plenty of people live with diabetes. So maybe we’ve had chest pains from time to time. Could just be anxiety. So maybe we’ve wondered if life is worth continuing the way we’re going. Surely everyone thinks that at some point. A killing disease? Aren’t those OA people exaggerating?

No. We’re not.

3. Am I choosing to be in OA?

There’s a difference between being a member and being in OA. Claiming membership is very simple, and our Traditions tell us that the only requirement for membership in OA is a desire to stop eating compulsively. Being in OA means we are fully engaging with the program as best we can given our level of experience.

4. Am I choosing to attend meetings?

An old OA saying tells us that meetings are the first thing to go, and the food is the last thing to go. If life gets busy, are we making time to make meetings? Do we go even if we’re tired or would rather do something else? Those impulses to stay away one day at a time often indicate that we need a meeting much more than we realize. For newcomers unsure if they are in the right place or old-timers with only one foot in the door, our collective experience suggests that we might attend meetings until we are certain we are in the right place or until we are ready to drag the other foot back through into door.

5. Am I choosing abstinence?

Abstaining from our binge/trigger foods is one of the big points of OA. But abstinence is more than what we eat, it’s our mindset about our eating. It’s acting one day at a time on the belief that we won’t eat no matter what, and no matter what we won’t eat. It’s also using OA’s 9 tools and letting the fellowship support our abstinence instead of going it alone.

6. Am I choosing to do OA’s 12 Steps?

Many of us get scared by one or more of the Steps. We get hung up on the wording or hear internalize other people’s fear of them and stop in our tracks. But the Steps of OA are the program. They are what get us better. We must do them in order to recover, and they are not an a la carte menu. We do them, in order, and with the help of our God so that we can be well again. Without the Steps, we’re just doing another diet program.

7. Am I choosing to abide by and protect OA’s 12 Traditions?

 

The Traditions are to meetings what the Steps are to individual members. They are a set of principles for action that allow our organization to function safely and sanely. They also arise out of experience, not out of someone’s fanciful ideas. If we want OA to be around for us, we need to abide by and protect the Traditions as those before us have done. If not, then we will repeat the same mistakes that led to their creation in the first place! We need OA healthy and thriving so that we can be healthy and thriving. So we ask ourselves: Do I know the Traditions? Have I studied them? Am I willing to stand up for them when it’s time?

8. Am I choosing to help others who still suffer?

The most important person in OA is the newcomer. They are the lifeblood of OA. They also help our recoveries. When we help another, we get much of the benefit. Are we “too busy” to help someone? If so could that mean we are too busy to help ourselves? Self-sacrifice, as our OA literature reminds us, is part of this program.

9. Am I choosing to support OA by doing service?

Let’s be honest. Service is an issue in our area. Are we raising our hands, volunteering to do service of any sort when the call is issued? Do we speak when asked? Do we carry the bag or the key? Do we do the honor of serving our group as an Intergroup rep? Do we act as speaker seeker or treasurer for our meeting? Do we volunteer to support initiatives at the Intergroup level? We each have many helpful skills and talents that might support any number of helpful OA opportunities to carry the message to still-suffering compulsive eaters. We might ask ourselves why aren’t we doing service? What fear or resentment keeps us from saying yes? Why might we be content to let a small number of others do the work of OA for us?

OA is a program designed to help us make better choices with our food and our life. And these nine choices we make every day are crucial to our recovery.

Why the resistance?

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Bad guys in bad movies often say to the hero, “Resistance is futile.” Whereupon the hero promptly escapes whatever torture is in store, vanquishes the villain, and lives happily ever after.

It’s kinda different in OA. Our illness is the bad guy, and it uses our brain to tell us that resistance is vital. That we must maintain the illusion of self-sufficiency as long as we possibly can. Most of us will maintain that desperate idea until the very moment that the pain of our addiction becomes more unbearable than the insult to our pride that we suppose the 12 Steps must be. We cling and cling to the long-held notion that we can eat like other people and lead normal lives…if only we tried harder.

In OA, resistance is, indeed, futile. The longer we deny the truth of our situation, the longer we will be in pain. The sooner we acknowledge the truth and the sooner we take OA’s suggested actions, the sooner will find freedom from our disease. Even while we resist the program, we know we’re staying stuck in the problem. We sure do have a lot of excuses. “Work’s too busy.” “The kids.” “I’m buying a house/car.” “My child/spouse/parent/friend is sick and needs my help.” “We’re renovating our home.” There’s truth in all of them, of course. These things do keep us busy, but if we don’t make time for OA, we may no longer have a family, a job, a home, or even our life.

  • If we resist abstinence, we can ask ourselves why. Is it only that we have tremendous cravings? Maybe. But other people in OA have gotten past them. What fear lurks behind this resistance to giving up our misery-inducing way of eating?
  • If we resist Steps two and three, we can ask ourselves why we find it so difficult to identify a Higher Power then ask It for help. Atheists, agnostics, and unrepentant religious iconoclasts do very well in OA by defining an HP on their terms. What fear keeps us from unlocking the door to a source of power that helps us get better?
  • If we resist writing our fourth-step inventory, we can ask ourselves why it seems so long and daunting. Many others of all walks of life have completed it by writing a little bit at a time each day. What truth do we fear God will show us in this inventory?

These are just a few examples of common points of resistance that all of us have felt, said, or heard during a meeting. We are all human beings with flaws and with our own ideas of what the good life ought to look like. Each of us encounters many junctures in our OA journey where we just don’t want to take that next action. But we must, and we must remember that the longer we resist, the longer we’ll hurt and the closer compulsive eating may bring us to our death. Because in OA resistance is futile, but it may also be fatal.

Memorial Day

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Tomorrow we celebrate the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have given their life in service to our country. It’s a day of parades, wreath laying, and, of course, eating.

Many of us will attend picnics and parties where a spread of every salty, fatty, sugary, and floury food will be on display. And lots of it, free for the taking. We will be tempted, lured, attracted, and even admonished to eat things not on our food plans and in quantities no longer appropriate for our life in recovery. In our meetings this coming week, we will celebrate along with those who made it through cleanly, and we will encourage those who didn’t to get back on the horse.

Of course, the answer to how to get through Memorial Day is best talked about with a sponsor, but the same general guidelines apply to any similar occasion.

  • Ask God for help before, during, and after the event
  • Use the tools: have a food plan, use the phone if tempted, get to a meeting afterward if you still feel the compulsion.
  • Don’t go if you will be unsafe around the food.
  • Treat the day just as you would any other, not as an excuse to go off the wagon.
  • One day at a time!

But let’s take the conceit of Memorial Day and think of it in OA terms. We in OA have witnessed many who have died from this disease and its complications. In our own area, we know OA members who have died from heart maladies exacerbated by their physical condition as well as those who have taken their own lives from the desperation this disease causes. Among us now are those who count themselves as absolutely certain that without the benefits of our program, they would no longer be alive. Outside OA examples of the ravages of this disease show in the obituaries each day.

We have a life and death illness. It doesn’t go away, but it responds to the treatment known as OA. We survivors, however, are left with reminders. Those reminders might even help us get through Memorial Day weekend without eating compulsively. In OA our defects are turned into assets for helping us and our fellows recover. Our Higher Power uses these reminders of our disease when we remember how miserable our life as compulsive eaters was. Here’s some examples of those reminders:

  • loose skin
  • stretch marks
  • pitting in our skin from weight-related edema
  • limping caused by damage to our hips, knees, or ankles
  • surgical scars from joint replacements, organ surgeries, and other procedures
  • missing toes due to type 2 diabetes
  • dental work caused by eating too much sugary food or by throwing up
  • chronic acid-reflux or heartburn
  • breathing issues
  • sleeping issues
  • clothes we can no longer fit into—too big or too small
  • photos from the bad old days
  • wedding rings we no longer can wear because our marriage dissolved before the food problem was solved.

For us overeaters, it’s not a question of whether we are scarred by this disease, only where. Even if we can’t see or feel the scars on or inside our bodies, we probably also have many, many emotional scars in our psyches related to this disease. Shame, guilt, a feeling of unworthiness, depression, anxiety, remorse, regret, and loneliness, run rampant among us food addicts. Our disease may try to trigger us with flashbacks to traumatic, embarrassing, or merely difficult events in our lives. Like picking at an infected scab.

Instead of seeing all of this as pain to number with food, we have an opportunity to see them as the reason not to eat. Reminders of how lousy life can be when we eat compulsively and don’t stay in touch with God.

Unlike a war in the conventional, real-world sense, we OA members don’t get leave time, and our war never ends. The good news, however, is that we don’t have to fight the battle. In fact, when we surrender, we win! So on Memorial Day, we can enjoy peace by letting God do the fighting for us and by using what we know about the fellowship, the Steps, and the Tools to keep this disease from turning us into another casualty statistic in the war for our bodies, minds, and spirits.

12 Questions for Compulsive Food Behaviors…Not Related to Binge Foods

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Many OAs celebrate Easter today, and for most American families, this holiday includes baskets of candy. If we have arrived at an easy-going abstinence, those sugary items may not call to us, but even if we have abstinence, we have to be on guard.

Holidays don’t typically end with stockings or baskets full of candy. We might get through the initial assault of Easter baskets, only to find that the battle is far from over. Special meals (with or without family and friends) come soon after. There may be an enfilade of appetizers to weaken our resolve before the main bombardment of fatty, sweet, bready, and salty foods commences.

We are so used to overeating on holidays that we may not realize that our mind is heading in that direction. This disease is cunning, baffling, and powerful, and it will use our minds, our experiences, our memories, and anything else it can to reel us back into compulsive eating. It will also make us forget things! Like how awful we feel when we eat compulsively.

All of which draws our attention to OA’s statement on abstinence (emphasis added):

“Abstinence in Overeaters Anonymous is the action of refraining from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors while working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight. Spiritual, emotional, and physical recovery is the result of living the Overeaters Anonymous Twelve Step program.”

When you stop and read that bolded part carefully, this abstinence thing is about a lot more than our individual binge foods. If we stop eating M&Ms and donuts that’s great! But have we stopped eating compulsively? Are we still engaging in compulsive food behaviors? Here’s twelve questions that might help us spot some common compulsive food behaviors that don’t include binge foods:

  1. Are we gaining weight or stuck at an unhealthy weight even though we’ve given up our individual binge foods?
  2. Do we argue ourselves into the idea that a healthy weight for us is one that’s above what’s medically recommended for us?
  3. Are we licking pots, pans, or dishes?
  4. Do we feel compelled to get at our planned meal fast?
  5. Are we thinking about our next meal rather than the task in front of us?
  6. Are we overfull when we stop eating?
  7. Do we fear telling our sponsor what or how much we’ve eaten because they will tell us to get honest about quantities?
  8. Are we clinging tooth-and-nail to yellow-light foods that should go into the red-light category?
  9. Do we eat mindlessly in front of the TV, on the phone, in the car, or in any similar situation?
  10. Are we eating between planned meals?
  11. Do we reward ourselves with abstinent food before, during, and/or after a difficult situation?
  12. Is our mind, right now, trying to tell us we don’t do these things, even though our heart knows we do?

If we answer yes to some or all of these questions, we may want to remember what the “Doctor’s Opinion” in the Big Book tells us. It describes the cycle of addiction:

  1. We have some kind of feeling and want to take the edge off.
  2. These feelings initiate the mental obsession with eating and food.
  3. We eat.
  4. Now eating either activates physical cravings or returns us into compulsive food behaviors.
  5. We become remorseful.
  6. We resolve to do better next time.
  7. Next time comes, and we repeat the same process again and again and again.

Notice that the first thing that happens is a feeling, and then the obsession begins. It doesn’t begin with the binge foods or compulsive behaviors. Our disease may still be working on us, using our feelings to get us eating non-binge foods in compulsive ways.

OA wisdom suggests that the best thing to do is be honest with ourselves and another person. If we aren’t getting the results we want in OA, or if we feel like we’re missing out on some part of recovery, perhaps we are. Our sponsors and other members can help, but most important to ask our Higher Power for the willingness to be honest, listen to suggestions, and take action. After all, we have to be ready to go to any length for recovery.

 

5 Ways to Get a Full Serving of OA

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We compulsive eaters have never cheated ourselves. A full serving for us means enough servings to make us full…and then some. It means an extra dip of a spoon or scooper into whatever serving dish or container we’re holding. It means mounded measuring cups or eating those last bits because we’d “hate to see it go to waste.” We’d rather it go to our waist than to waste!

So why do we resist a full serving of OA?

What’s a full serving of OA look like? It’s about following an ages-old piece of OA wisdom:

  • Program first.
  • Then family.
  • Then work.

Our members share stories all the time about how our illness degraded or ruined their family relationships. How it made them less productive workers or even got them fired. If we don’t put program first there may be no family or job to return to. This disease kills, so eventually there may be no life to return to.

It’s like that old story about a reluctant OA telling a longtime member, “I’ve always had a problem with commitment.” The OA veteran, not giving an inch replies, “You don’t have a problem with commitment. You’ve been committed to compulsive eating for the last thirty years.” We all have the ability to work this program and to put it first. The question is whether we’re in enough pain to listen to the voice inside us that wants to get better.

Here’s 5 proven ways we can get a full serving of OA!

  • Treat compulsive eating like the killer disease it is: We can’t BS ourselves about the severity of this disease. It will kill us spiritually, emotionally, and physically. It destroys us from the inside out.
  • Keep making meetings: Sometimes we let our minds dictate our meeting schedule instead of listening to our desire to get better. We get “busy” or “tired.” Better to attend a meeting while tired than to be back in the place of being sick and tired of being sick and tired.
  • Get, and use!, a sponsor: If we are truly powerless, then we cannot get better alone. We must ask another person for help. If we have a sponsor and aren’t working closely with them, then it’s time to get honest about why we have a sponsor.
  • Work the Steps: OA is not an intellectual exercise. We can’t think our way out of the illness. The Steps are an action plan that gets us better. Do the Steps seem scary? Perhaps. But aren’t they less scary than the devastation of our disease? Of dying too young? Of a lifetime of physical debilitation, foggy thinking, depression, and enslavement to the likes of Betty Crocker?
  • Raise our hand to sponsor: If we don’t help others, we will eat again. Our literature and experience tell us so. Abstinent but plateauing? Raise a hand to “get someone started.” Done the Steps but feel uneasy about sponsoring? Trust God and raise that hand! Anyone with long-term recovery will tell us that sponsoring is the lifeblood of their recovery.

Get a full serving of OA starting right now!

Stuck Inside the Seacoast with the Winter Blues Again

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If you’re like almost 2.5% percent of the population and almost 10% of New Hampshirites, you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, aka: SAD. That is, sometime during Winter you go into a depressive period. Whether it’s related to the lack of sunlight, vitamin D deficiency, a lack of exercise, or anything else SAD makes winter much longer and colder.

For compulsive overeaters, SAD episodes can be frightening. Its sufferers may feel a general malaise during winter, but acute periods can be harrowing. Arising from seemingly nothing, they can come suddenly and last for a couple weeks or more. During times such as these, we are especially vulnerable to our stinking thinking. Our disease, progressive, always getting more powerful within us, can use times such as these to reawaken urges we hoped had been put to rest permanently.

In addition to SAD’s symptoms of depression, anxiety, and malaise, we compulsive eaters may experience echoes of the restlessness, irritability, and discontent we associate with the disease of addiction. Some of us, abstinent for long periods of time, report experiencing a sudden increase in food thinking. That is, we find our obsession with food heightened. Some of us also report food dreams and other similarly strange symptoms related to our illness. For those who have experienced abstinence, a ramping up of such thoughts can scare the dickens out of us.

There is, however, good news for us doubly privileged to have SAD and food addiction. We can successfully apply our program to the Winter blues. We look to OA’s spiritual principles as a guide. And we must if we don’t want our mental obsession with food to grow powerful enough to damage us again. [We may, of course, also wish to seek the help of outside professionals. OA takes no position on outside issues, but it does recommend that we get outside help as appropriate.]

First off, we have to admit to ourselves that we are in pain. Strange as it may seem, it can be hard to do so. We want to keep it together and not let others see what’s going on. Don’t worry, they know already. So let’s just be honest that it hurts and that we’re feeling a creeping sense of unmanageability.

We then have to tell our Higher Power that we need help, and that we’re willing to do what’s necessary to stay out of the clutches of our disease. Next, we need to examine our thinking and actions. Is SAD and our response to it causing us to turn toward self? To tell ourselves lies? To act self-centeredly? To be filled with fear? Of course that’s what depression and anxiety do! So we need to be honest.

For example, a chief dishonesty around SAD is the notion that we will never feel better. Our disease LOVES this one. It leads immediately to corrosive fear. What a great excuse to say f*** it and eat! But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know from past experience that these episodes don’t last forever, and that we will feel relief soon.

One of the most important tools we have against SAD and depression in general is telling someone else that we have it. Truly, we find some immediate ease just by admitting to another person that we are in pain and sharing how this pain warps our thinking and behavior. Then we check whether we’ve done anything while in pain that may require an amends and make any that are necessary.

We stay in touch with our Higher Power about all of this, and we pray not merely to have SAD lifted, but rather to have it lifted so that we can be of use to God and to those around us. Finally, we top things off with helping others. We make calls, send texts, chat with someone who is struggling, do sponsorial work, whatever we can to pass this message of recovery to those still suffering.

In addition, the OA Tools of Recovery can be particularly helpful. Picking up the phone, reading literature, writing, and going to meetings buoys us when we need it.

And soon, sooner, perhaps than we think, the period of bleakness will lift. The temperatures will rise, the peepers will start to sing, and we will feel more like ourselves again. And best of all, we didn’t have to eat over the winter blues.

Rites of Renewal

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This past week players reported to camp at Fort Myers for Red Sox spring training. It’s an annual rite of passage, and for many northern New Englanders, the first day of spring training is an early sign of the warmer months. Even if we can’t be with the team, we see footage of their workouts, and we can imagine ourselves in the warm Florida sunshine. We feel a little lift, a little relief from the winter blues. The cycle of renewal that leads us out of the post-holiday doldrums has begun again.

OA creates in us a similar cycle of renewal. We are led out of the doldrums of compulsive eating and toward a period of growth that leads not only to our personal rejuvenation but also toward a lifetime of better days. The Big Book tells us that when we do the Steps “we are reborn.” From the point at which our adventure in OA begins, we sense the hope emanating from those in our meetings who have experienced long-term recovery. Like a ballplayer whose previous season was ruined by injury, we realize that the slate can be wiped clean, and we can start over. We let others coach us and guide us so that we can tap new and heretofore hidden resources inside us. We do the legwork, the drills, the stretching because we are ready to go to any length for success.

Steps One, Two, and Three represent something like those thirty spring exhibition games that precede opening day. In them we are building the foundation on which an incredible journey will be taken. We round ourselves into willingness the way a player rounds into midseason form. Where the ballplayer is getting down his timing at bat and his footwork in the field, we are getting used to attending meetings, calling OA friends, taking a sponsor’s suggestions, reading OA literature, and becoming action-oriented instead of passive victims of our disease. Where a baseball player restores his confidence through spring repetition, we gain confidence in a Higher Power through the repetitions of OA actions that separate us from food and draw us closer to the solution.

The fullness of rebirth will come from Steps 4 through 9 where we will fully develop a relationship with a Higher Power that will solve our problem on a permanent one-day-at-a-time basis. This is like the long baseball season. Baseball plays every day, and it rewards those players and teams able to keep their focus on the day ahead, not on what other teams are doing or on where they will travel next week. We stick to the twenty-four hours ahead of us, and we work at the middle steps diligently. Unlike a baseball player who knows when the season is over, we don’t know when our window of willingness will close. Our disease is in the background, cunningly telling us that OA won’t work or that we don’t really need it after all. By working the Steps and continuing to attend meetings and use the OA tools, we keep this voice at bay long enough that God can change us from the inside out.

But unlike baseball, our season never ends. We are reborn, and then every day thereafter, we are renewed. Of course, we work at that daily renewal. We use Steps 10, 11, and 12 to stay in the spiritual game. When we fail to use them, when we allow the clatter and clamor of life to distract us from them, we feel it. So we keep at it. But it’s not such a grind. Ask anyone who has experienced long-time recovery, and they’ll tell you that trading a few minutes of prayer and meditation each day is entirely worth it. They’ll also tell you that working with others is one of the joys of their life.

There’s one other important difference from baseball. In OA there are no winners and losers. We are all winners so long as we keep coming back. No one is the MVP of OA or the world champion. Well, actually, perhaps God is, however we each define God for ourselves. But among the humans in our rooms, we are all just another player on the roster, each trying to recover and help others do the same.

So as reports from Florida drift in, you’ll hear that such-and-such is in “The Best Shape of His Life” or that so-and-so’s fastball looks faster than ever. It’s the hope of Spring. In our rooms, we get to listen instead to the reports of members who are experiencing renewal each day after their harrowing experiences with the ravages of this disease. True reports that give hope rather than project it.