So today's topic is admitting I am powerless over food and that my life has become unmanageable.
The first thing that stands out for me is the idea that I had trouble admitting that I was powerless over food. I didn't like the idea that it wasn't in my control (am I a control freak?) or that it was hopeless. To me that felt so negative. Before even thinking about that I spent so long either not being aware that this was a problem or a problem that was affecting me or not being willing to let go of my control over it.
I was living under the delusion that "someday soon I would again muster the strength of character needed to check my eating excesses, and this time I'd keep them under control. But the days of controlled eating grew fewer and farther apart, until at last we came to OA, looking for a new solution."
Like many people in OA, I tried diet programs. Many of the. I did Weight Watchers 4-5 times, each time lasting a shorter and shorter time and losing less and less weight and being increasingly disgusted with it and myself. I tried Jenny Craig and a shake diet center. None of it worked, and as I got older and gained more weight, the diets worked less and less well. I couldn't even seem to put together 24 hours of controlled eating by the end. They just made me hungrier. I think that is what having a progressive disease is. It got worse and worse. My last attempt (the shake diet center) even came after I'd been to OA at one point. But I didn't believe I had a problem, really, I guess. I wasn't willing to admit that just willpower and counseling alone would be enough. I needed to admit that I am, really, and truly, incapable of fixing this on my own. I need someone much stronger, more powerful than I to help me with this disease. Because it is a disease. And I need to admit that so I can "cease blaming" myself. I heard in a meeting the other day that something is broken in us. Normal eater's status quo or baseline approach to food is to eat normal, healthful portions. My baseline approach to food is broken. My body and mind want me to eat junk and large quantities of it. That means something in me is broken, which means, by definition, that I have a disease. And if you have a disease, you seek out a cure.
The hard component for me at this point is admitting that this is a disease that is not just physical, but emotional and SPIRITUAL. I get the physical part. Science ha shown that the more junk food you eat, the more your body craves it because it becomes addicted to it. The emotional part I also get. I am an emotional eater. When I don't know how to deal with my emotions (and I almost never do - and boy have I had a lot of them lately), I eat over them. I just want to numb out and not feel anymore. Not think about what I don't like in my life. And there's a lot of that too. The really tricky part for me is that this is spiritual. And that's the part that I actually think might be the key, even though it's the hardest to wrap my head around. If this disease were just physical and emotional, then abstaining from eating junk and trigger foods and going to counseling to address your emotional problems would be enough. But it's not. It is not. I need something else. A belief that there is something greater than will solve this problem for me, with my help. I've often thought I didn't need religion or god. But I've also found myself thinking a lot over the last few years that I was "morally bankrupt." What I could have said was "spiritually bankrupt," I think. I have had no reserve of faith on which to draw. Where should that faith come from? Faith in what? I don't know. But I need to find out.
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