Committing my food to you all
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My 12 step program was superstrict. Today I poured half and half into my tea without measuring it - yesterday same thing with olive oil into a frying pan, both times because I just happened to space out. When I was doing the program, that would have been considered a failure, basically, and I'd have had to start over, from one, counting my days of staying on the program.
Just as it is easy for the eating problem to be somewhat crazy-making, so it can easily be for the solution. At least that has been true for me, and I see it in others who - by necessity - require extreme solutions to an extreme problem. Finding that middle path is - again for me, anyway - the hardest thing.0 -
I feel like my personality simply cannot do this. I want to eat what I want to without consequence. I don't imbibe in other addictive substances or behaviors, just food. My family doesn't understand "just don't eat". Then the shame and the self hating sets in. I have no problem with exercise, just food, eating when I'm even just a little out of balance. I pray for another chance and know Higher Power is there for me, as are all of you, and I just have to STOP, ask for guidance and have the will to do what is being asked of me.0
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Sue, I liken it to being a rag doll. When I'm in the food, I feel like someone's got me by the feet and is swinging and smashing me around, and all I can do it hang on for dear life. That's how out of control it feels. People who say "just don't do it" or "just say no" have different brain chemistry from us, but they think everyone has the same life and brain as them. I've noticed this is pretty much true for all humans about everything, not just food and addiction, so that's helped me accept that others don't understand.
My brother, who's a doctor, once was watching me eat and said "something is wrong with your satiety center" - and that turned out to be a helpful observation, because it made me alert to the fact that what I do isn't normal.
Since I quit flour and sugar, I'm able to be more aware of other things that trigger me. One of them is overeating! If I eat too much, it makes me ravenously hungry...how weird is that? It triggers me as if I've had a donut or something.
I know you can do it...but if you're in the middle of a rag doll moment, you just have to hang on. If we could snap our fingers to get out of it, we wouldn't be on here talking about this.
Daniel
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p.s. Thanks for participating in my thread0
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"We compulsive overeaters are undisciplined". I have so much discipline in all other areas of life but this is a difference between me and others. I can understand the rag doll analogy, especially when I'm looking at my behavior with food when I'm eating compulsively. The food is controlling me.
Had a great day today! Stuck with my food plan and coped with everyone being home all day. Feeling peaceful.0 -
Where does the "we compulsive overeaters are undisciplined" come from? Is that from OA? The 12 step I did didn't like the "compulsive overeaters" description, preferring to call people in the program "food addicts" which makes more sense to me. And, from what I saw in that group, those weren't undisciplined people. Many of them were highly disciplined, highly successful - and they were able to apply discipline to food, inside the confines of that 12 step food addict program.
Interestingly, when I tried OA, I would describe it as undiscplined. I went to meetings in NYC and people used SO much profanity! I'm not a prude but it was weird. It was as if food had humbled them, so they were compensating in other ways. Then I went to meetings in upstate NY, and people would share for what felt like an hour about the food they ate, the dishes they used, why they didn't do the dishes, whether they preferred tin foil to aluminum foil - it was also weird, and also like they couldn't face their actual problems so they talked about other things.
The program I did is much more difficult, and people still got off track all the time - but it was a very disciplined environment. I don't believe food addicts are undisciplined. People don't get their lives out of control due to addiction due to a lack of discipline. That's my take, anyway.
Weigh in tmrw A.M. Hoping for the best.0 -
It's adapted from the A.A. Book.
I'm a highly disciplined person and have success in most areas of my life except with food. I know it's not about white knuckling through the desire to eat when I'm bored, stressed, tired, angry or let myself get too hungry. I ask Higher power to help, and I get it but it's an ongoing struggle (and I want that struggle to go away). I don't see myself as a food addict, and I do know that I would struggle with FAA because it is so restrictive. At some point I want to feel nothing in regard to food, to see it as just what it is, something my body, not my mind, needs.
I've enjoyed my OA meetings and didn't find any of the situations you described, although I did find one group too secular, allowing only Christian prayers and the other group had a consciousness that wouldn't, I don't know, develop? There was one leader who "kept everyone in line". I get s lot out of hearing other people share, but didn't like seeing people shut down in their search for recovery because it didn't follow someone else's rules, even if the rules were based on conferenced approved literature.
I'm hoping by spending time reading and commenting on these threads that i get through the daily times that I just want to eat, which is at night. I'm fine during the day, but after 2pm, I just want to eat.
I've been sporadically working my program for about 5 years now, I am finishing up a drastic weight loss plan these next few days, after losing 15# in 6 weeks. I think I'll lose another 5-10 by the end of the month and I just don't want to gain it all back (again). I don't want to go to meetings any more, even though I enjoyed them, but know I need other people who struggle like I do. So here I am...0 -
Here's what happened. I weighed in, was disappointed with the result, which then resulted in my all or nothing thinking, "screw it all, I give up" - an emotional over-reaction, and I stopped entering my food here, stopped coming to MFP, stopped trying to stay on plan. As you can see, for about two months. Then about three weeks ago decided to try low carb, Atkins style, lots of meat and fat and made myself kinda sick (though some of those things tasted good!).
A few days ago, I thought, I'd love to do FA, but I hate it. Today I went to my first meeting in a year, and am going to look for a sponsor. Not happy about it, but it's the only thing that's ever worked for me.
Well, food has kicked my %&*# again. In case I needed assurance that I am indeed a food addict. The 12 step credo is, can't do it alone, need a higher power. Well, I for one cannot do it on my own. Though I know I will continue to try!0 -
And - sue - check out the book about food addiction, The End Of Overeating by David Kessler MD. He shows really hard evidence that, whether your mind "needs" food, the brains of food addicts respond to food in much the way a drug addict responds to cocaine or heroin. It's chemical Lots of people in FA talk about the goal of being neutral about food, maybe there is a parallel concept in OA and other 12 step food / eating programs - as you describe wanting to just be normal with food.0
