The Twelve-Step Workbook of Overeaters Anonymous asks, in reference to Step One,
"When and how has my life become unmanageable?"
The following are ways in which my life is and has been unmanageable:
--I have had great difficulty taking on the responsibilities of an adult life. I have often been just scraping by financially. Even though I have now come to a point where I am able to trust that my finances will be taken care of, I find it difficult to do certain things such as keep insurance on my car, pay back student loans, achieve a salaried career. I know that my insecurity about my weight has held me back especially in terms of career. But underlying it is a greater fear, I think. A fear of not being wanted, of having to co-exist with people long-term who work with me, and that either I won't like them or they won't like me or some combination. That I'll fail.
--I have great difficulty keeping my home and car cleaned and maintained.
--I sleep too much.
--I do not embrace life fully.
--Since I am single and have no children, I have plenty of extra time that I could be using towards general maintenance of myself, my home, my finances, but I cannot seem to manage these things adequately.
--Because I have lost two jobs before, I always have a fear that I will fail and lose my current jobs (I have two part-time jobs right now, one which I've been doing for almost 3 years, which is by fear the longest job I've ever held, and one which I've had almost one year).
--At times my fitness level has been so bad (due to food addiction and not moving my body enough) that I have had great difficulty walking even a couple of blocks at a time.
--This is getting a lot better, especially since beginning OA, but I have had great difficulty in friendships in the past few years especially.
Showing posts with label step one. Show all posts
Showing posts with label step one. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
Finding Strength in Admitting Weakness
There were a couple times early in the week that I had major difficulty staying abstinent. I even had the thought at one point, "What would be the big deal really of having a 'minor' binge? I could get right back on track."
Then immediately afterward I thought, "But then you'd just be back in the very spiral/cycle that you have been in your whole life. You deserve better than that."
If I ever did binge again I would have to go right back to Step One, admitting my powerlessness over food. Why not just continue to reinforce that to myself now and use that admission as a way of preventing a relapse?
I am so powerless over food that my disease wants to convince me that I could have "just one binge here and there" and that that would be okay. ???? Funny disease, silly addiction-wired brain. Might as well fess up to my insanity here too while I'm at it (see Step Two). :)
Then immediately afterward I thought, "But then you'd just be back in the very spiral/cycle that you have been in your whole life. You deserve better than that."
If I ever did binge again I would have to go right back to Step One, admitting my powerlessness over food. Why not just continue to reinforce that to myself now and use that admission as a way of preventing a relapse?
I am so powerless over food that my disease wants to convince me that I could have "just one binge here and there" and that that would be okay. ???? Funny disease, silly addiction-wired brain. Might as well fess up to my insanity here too while I'm at it (see Step Two). :)
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
One Small Step
When I first came to OA and saw the steps I thought I could just mentally check them off. ;) (Nowhere to go, but always in a rush to get there.)
I've had a sponsor now for a little over two weeks. She tells me that working the steps is the way she learned to be and stay abstinent. I am already abstinent, but I do feel a little bit like what I think AAers mean when they call someone a dry drunk. In other words, perhaps I'm not overeating or bingeing, but I certainly am clinging on for dear life at times. I certainly don't feel like I've had any moment of great surrender. The only way to get to that, though, I suppose, is working the steps. Maybe not the only way, but a pretty tried and true way it seems.
I didn't really understand at first what "working the steps meant," but through talking to my sponsor I came to see that a part of it is about spending time studying literature on the steps and responding to what I am reading--responding by talking to my sponsor, by writing about what I've been reading, and by contemplating what each step means to me as I gain greater understanding of what it means to others who have written about it.
Of course, for some steps, there are also actions to be taken (such as the "moral inventory" making required by Step 4). I am in no particular hurry to get to that one. ;)
To me, Step One is about a.) realizing that I cannot do it alone b.) fully recognizing the degree to which I am addicted to food, and the spirals I will continue to go through if I do not seek help for this addiction.
It's kind of humbling. Easy to get a little down on yourself thinking how unmanageable your eating has become. I know though that what I want more than anything is to be able to eat normally. I don't have the ability yet to do that. Do I know about nutrition? Yeah. Do I know what a healthy amount of food would be? Yeah. But I am a compulsive eater and what I know about healthy, moderate eating I am too weak to put into practice.
Even now, though I may be abstinent, I am not by any means "eating normally." Normal people don't have to go to meetings about their food addiction! They don't have to submit their daily food plans to a sponsor. They surely do not feel so neurotic about every meal and bite as I do in my abstinence so far. Their brain is not still consumed with thoughts of eating even between meals, as mine is.
Step One is humbling also because it asks us to admit we are "powerless." I had a lot of trouble with this at first. In fact, I am just now kind of coming to understand it. We are powerless. It is just a simple admission of the truth. If I had the power to change my compulsive eating, I would have done it a long time ago. I know this is true because I have wanted to stop eating compulsively, but all my efforts to do so have failed. So if I've wanted to stop overeating, but have yet to do so, then obviously I do not have the power to do so (at least not on my own).
If we stopped just at the admission of powerlessness things would look a bit fatalistic, but fortunately peeking ahead to Step Two we see how a Higher Power greater than us has the power that we do not, and we can trust that Higher Power to deliver us from our addictive behaviors, and even more than that, to deliver us from the "insanity" that goes along with it.
"It followed that, if we had no power of our own, we needed a power outside ourselves to help us recover." --Overeaters Anonymous, published 1980, pg. 3. *
*(I have a masters degree in English and know this is not any formally correct way of citing a source, but I don't care enough to remind myself how to do it :P ).
I've had a sponsor now for a little over two weeks. She tells me that working the steps is the way she learned to be and stay abstinent. I am already abstinent, but I do feel a little bit like what I think AAers mean when they call someone a dry drunk. In other words, perhaps I'm not overeating or bingeing, but I certainly am clinging on for dear life at times. I certainly don't feel like I've had any moment of great surrender. The only way to get to that, though, I suppose, is working the steps. Maybe not the only way, but a pretty tried and true way it seems.
I didn't really understand at first what "working the steps meant," but through talking to my sponsor I came to see that a part of it is about spending time studying literature on the steps and responding to what I am reading--responding by talking to my sponsor, by writing about what I've been reading, and by contemplating what each step means to me as I gain greater understanding of what it means to others who have written about it.
Of course, for some steps, there are also actions to be taken (such as the "moral inventory" making required by Step 4). I am in no particular hurry to get to that one. ;)
To me, Step One is about a.) realizing that I cannot do it alone b.) fully recognizing the degree to which I am addicted to food, and the spirals I will continue to go through if I do not seek help for this addiction.
It's kind of humbling. Easy to get a little down on yourself thinking how unmanageable your eating has become. I know though that what I want more than anything is to be able to eat normally. I don't have the ability yet to do that. Do I know about nutrition? Yeah. Do I know what a healthy amount of food would be? Yeah. But I am a compulsive eater and what I know about healthy, moderate eating I am too weak to put into practice.
Even now, though I may be abstinent, I am not by any means "eating normally." Normal people don't have to go to meetings about their food addiction! They don't have to submit their daily food plans to a sponsor. They surely do not feel so neurotic about every meal and bite as I do in my abstinence so far. Their brain is not still consumed with thoughts of eating even between meals, as mine is.
Step One is humbling also because it asks us to admit we are "powerless." I had a lot of trouble with this at first. In fact, I am just now kind of coming to understand it. We are powerless. It is just a simple admission of the truth. If I had the power to change my compulsive eating, I would have done it a long time ago. I know this is true because I have wanted to stop eating compulsively, but all my efforts to do so have failed. So if I've wanted to stop overeating, but have yet to do so, then obviously I do not have the power to do so (at least not on my own).
If we stopped just at the admission of powerlessness things would look a bit fatalistic, but fortunately peeking ahead to Step Two we see how a Higher Power greater than us has the power that we do not, and we can trust that Higher Power to deliver us from our addictive behaviors, and even more than that, to deliver us from the "insanity" that goes along with it.
"It followed that, if we had no power of our own, we needed a power outside ourselves to help us recover." --Overeaters Anonymous, published 1980, pg. 3. *
*(I have a masters degree in English and know this is not any formally correct way of citing a source, but I don't care enough to remind myself how to do it :P ).
Saturday, December 29, 2012
First Step, First Post
The first step in Overeaters Anonymous is:
"We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable."
I had finally come to believe that I was powerless over food in July of 2012. My concern and heartbreak over the situation of one of my close family members triggered my food addiction in a major way, not that it really needed much triggering (I was letting my desire for food run rampant enough already), and I finally had to be honest with myself that this was an addiction, and it needed to be treated as such.
Even so, it took me 2 months to finally show up to my first meeting! After the first 3 meetings, I almost gave up. I had convinced myself that "those people" in O.A. were just in it for weight-loss. Well who was I kidding, it's not like I didn't also want weight loss. But what I wanted (and what everyone who comes to and sticks with O.A. wants really) is an end to the insanity of it all.
We are not just powerless over food, we are powerless over our weights, over the actions of others, etc. Does this mean we cannot act, or choose? No, it simply means that we cannot control, force or contrive the world into being what we want it to. We surrender control.
I have been overeating since at least the age of 3. I've eaten entire pizzas by myself washed down with 2-liter bottles of sugary soda. I've eaten hefty restaurant meals and come home afterward only to immediately begin snacking. I've stopped by multiple fast food restaurants on the way home. A recent favorite binge of mine before getting abstinent involved picking up a bag of chips, perhaps something sweet as well, 2 16 oz. bottles of soda, and a big bag from a fast food restaurant on the way home, melting Velveeta onto my chips, making a mayo/chopped onion/sriracha "dip" for my fast food items and then bite-by-bite eating it all. When it was gone I wanted more.
Like many people who overeat, I am obese. I topped the scales at 400 lbs. I was about 385 when I entered O.A. I've spent plenty of my life focusing on the outward problem of weight rather than the inner problem of addiction and have not had much even in the way of weight-loss to show for it. I lost 45 pounds once by eating a high-fiber diet combined with regular exercise. Then I moved to a different state, started graduate school, and gained every pound back in the course of two years.
I've gone on low-fat diets, low-carb diets, taken pills that were meant to prevent the fat from my food from entering my body (which made for some great oily poops, and zero weight loss), taken "herbal" weight-loss pills that left me feeling jittery. All in the name of some superficial change in my appearance.
I have struggled in my relationships, eventually coming to the point of isolating myself from others to the point of nearly being a hermit. I have had toxic relationships, have instigated unnecessary drama, have failed to see where others are coming from. I have been utterly selfish.
Taking the first step in O.A. seems to be about admitting that you have a problem. In my case, my problem is overeating: eating entirely too many calories, eating past the point of fullness, and binge-eating. My problem is not what I look like. My problem is that one of the ways I react to stress, happiness, sadness, fear, anxiety, etc. is to eat. Food is my go-to for everything, but overeating solves nothing. I guess I'm kinda powerless over this addiction, right? Sounds a bit "unmanageable" huh?
Hello, my name is G.K. and I am a compulsive overeater. :)
"We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable."
I had finally come to believe that I was powerless over food in July of 2012. My concern and heartbreak over the situation of one of my close family members triggered my food addiction in a major way, not that it really needed much triggering (I was letting my desire for food run rampant enough already), and I finally had to be honest with myself that this was an addiction, and it needed to be treated as such.
Even so, it took me 2 months to finally show up to my first meeting! After the first 3 meetings, I almost gave up. I had convinced myself that "those people" in O.A. were just in it for weight-loss. Well who was I kidding, it's not like I didn't also want weight loss. But what I wanted (and what everyone who comes to and sticks with O.A. wants really) is an end to the insanity of it all.
We are not just powerless over food, we are powerless over our weights, over the actions of others, etc. Does this mean we cannot act, or choose? No, it simply means that we cannot control, force or contrive the world into being what we want it to. We surrender control.
I have been overeating since at least the age of 3. I've eaten entire pizzas by myself washed down with 2-liter bottles of sugary soda. I've eaten hefty restaurant meals and come home afterward only to immediately begin snacking. I've stopped by multiple fast food restaurants on the way home. A recent favorite binge of mine before getting abstinent involved picking up a bag of chips, perhaps something sweet as well, 2 16 oz. bottles of soda, and a big bag from a fast food restaurant on the way home, melting Velveeta onto my chips, making a mayo/chopped onion/sriracha "dip" for my fast food items and then bite-by-bite eating it all. When it was gone I wanted more.
Like many people who overeat, I am obese. I topped the scales at 400 lbs. I was about 385 when I entered O.A. I've spent plenty of my life focusing on the outward problem of weight rather than the inner problem of addiction and have not had much even in the way of weight-loss to show for it. I lost 45 pounds once by eating a high-fiber diet combined with regular exercise. Then I moved to a different state, started graduate school, and gained every pound back in the course of two years.
I've gone on low-fat diets, low-carb diets, taken pills that were meant to prevent the fat from my food from entering my body (which made for some great oily poops, and zero weight loss), taken "herbal" weight-loss pills that left me feeling jittery. All in the name of some superficial change in my appearance.
I have struggled in my relationships, eventually coming to the point of isolating myself from others to the point of nearly being a hermit. I have had toxic relationships, have instigated unnecessary drama, have failed to see where others are coming from. I have been utterly selfish.
Taking the first step in O.A. seems to be about admitting that you have a problem. In my case, my problem is overeating: eating entirely too many calories, eating past the point of fullness, and binge-eating. My problem is not what I look like. My problem is that one of the ways I react to stress, happiness, sadness, fear, anxiety, etc. is to eat. Food is my go-to for everything, but overeating solves nothing. I guess I'm kinda powerless over this addiction, right? Sounds a bit "unmanageable" huh?
Hello, my name is G.K. and I am a compulsive overeater. :)
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