LOTS OF FOOD REFERENCES HERE!! – – but so garsh-darn FUN!!  And who CAN’T love the line, “…who wants a twig when you can have the whole tree?!”  LOL!

When I am feeling a little down about myself, I put this movie on and before I know it I’m singing along and feeling a whole-lot better.   Here are a few of my favorite clips.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNx84PDvOh8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDwNSR0QmBY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdcUxHh3tAc&feature=relmfu

Why?  Because for the vast majority of my life, I dreaded the return of summer clothing.  In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t really any “spring” or “fall” clothes.  They just jump from winter right to the bikini’s…in MARCH!  And that’s precisely when my self-beatings would begin in earnest.  They went something like this:

“You ran out of time AGAIN?!”

“I thought this was going to be a SKINNY summer?!”

“Why do you even TRY?!  You are so PATHETIC!”

Soon bathing suits would be the only article of clothing I’d see –  all of them seemingly there for the sole purpose of taunting me by “saying” things like, “Nah nah, you can’t wear me!”  In my panic and embarrassment, I’d look around desperately for a big hooded sweatshirt or a pair of baggy sweatpants to hide in, but alas, no such luck!  Just rows and rows of skimpy stringy things (much smaller than my underwear, I might add!), and then, way in the back corner, I’d spot the dreaded rack of the “plus size” versions that, for some odd reason, only came in various shades of “floral.”

Understandably, in the end, I stopped buying swimsuits altogether.

Even though I no longer consciously beat myself down when I am witness to the annual bikini migration, I must admit that I still get this free-floating feeling of “the springtime blues,” as I call them.  To me, it is very similar to that feeling I used to get as a child on Sunday nights in winter, when it was cold and damp and it got dark early and I would think about how great it would be if I had just one more day of weekend…

I guess all those years of negative conditioning have turned this feeling into an automatic response. Although I no longer hate myself and hardly ever think much about what I can and can’t wear, it sneaks-up on me anyway.  I feel like Pavlov’s dog responding to the bikini bell of summer.  But at least I know what it is.  In the past, non-specific feelings like these would make for the perfect excuse to eat.  Not anymore.  Now I can let myself feel it and be compassionate to myself about it.  I now understand that the damage caused by more than three decades of mental self-abuse is not going to disappear in two or three years of program.  It is going to be a slow process, and that’s OK!  Just knowing what all this is about and giving myself permission to feel the feelings is enough.

Besides…now that school is back in session and the bikinis have all flown south for the winter, it’s time to celebrate!  So, for today, I feel GOOD!   Now, check THIS out, and we can all “feel good” together!! :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVFj-_SDIHE

HAPPY FALL!

Drinking & Drugging?  To me they are similar to the above example of smoking in that both are constantly romanticized in movies, on TV, in books,…   While we’re at it, we might as well throw-in sex addiction here.  Somehow, over the years, all three of these have become intertwined with the stereotypical lifestyle of rock musicians and former child stars. Often tragic, yes, but still somehow appealing, in a media-tabloid sort of way.

Gambling?  Maybe not so romantic, but definitely exciting.  Ever see all the neat stuff you can do and buy at a casino?  It’s a money-spender’s paradise, the perfect destination for gamblers and shopaholics, alike!  And the allure of obtaining even MORE money is always just one pull away!  I can definitely see the appeal.

Then, of course, you have the “glamour” of anorexia/bulimia.  Can runway models be any thinner?!  With so many magazines berating stars whenever they gain a few pounds, it’s a wonder these eating disorders aren’t running rampant through the lives of the rich and famous.  (Personally, I think they are, but I believe that their “handlers” warn them against getting too thin.)  And in a society that defines beauty according to body size, who DOESN’T want to be labeled as “attractive?”  So you might have to destroy your insides in the process.  Small price to pay if you at least get the benefit of looking good on the OUTside, right?

So what do all these “cool” addictions have that compulsive overeating DOESN’T?

You can HIDE all the others.

You can’t hide a morbidly obese body.  (It’s impossible.  Believe me.  I’ve tried.)

Which is exactly the reason why it is the uncoolest addiction of them all.

In all the other cases, a person can “seem” normal much of the time, even to themselves.  If smokers aren’t smoking (and are not at the stage of hacking-up a lung), they would not stand-out as a nicotine fiend.  If drug addicts or alcoholics are sober, you might not know they have an addiction at all.  Nothing about gamblers or sex addicts (or even serial killers, for that matter) would make those people stand out in a crowd.  And controlled purging and exercise addiction may mask itself as a fitness addiction (which is actually seen as a positive in this country).  But when you’re carrying around 100, 200 or 300 pounds of extra “you” around, everyone sees it and knows exactly how you got that way.  You NEVER get a break from it!  Every time you look in a mirror or catch a glimpse of your reflection in a storefront window or go to the doctor or go clothes shopping…  There is just no way to escape the physical evidence of this disease.  Worse, you don’t even have the dignity of being able to hide it from others!  In this way, I think compulsive overeating and binge-eating cause their own peculiar type of psychological damage that none of the other addictions can come close to.

Sadly, Hollywood continues to use this unpleasant reality of the disease to perpetuate some of the worst stereotypes about people who are obese.  Even in this era of political correctness, you will still see cartoons, movies, music videos, and sitcoms portraying overweight people in the same old tired roles.  Here are a few of my least favorites:

The face-stuffing, gas-blowing, belching, offensive friend.

The lazy, desperate, ugly, reclusive sister/aunt (typically a single female).

The food-is-like-sex addict with an overly-confident view of her ability to attract men (which is supposed to be the funny part).

The painfully shy, bullied, depressed teen who is chronically suicidal.

Only in recent years have we started to see obese characters with real depth.  Overweight people with real sex appeal.  “People Of Size” as the main character, not just some negative supporting role who’s only purpose is make the other person look more attractive.  But it’s still so sad that, even now, an overweight person still has to feel like they are being smacked back to the reality of their low status in society, even in the midst of seeking the same escape that everyone else is looking for in the entertainment industry.

Not surprisingly, I remember spending years of my youth wishing I had a “better” addiction.  I figured that if I could just get over my fear of embarrassing myself that I could at least forget about my weight problem for a while by getting drunk!  At one point I even considered doing cocaine, thinking it would make me thin (until a worldly friend told me that it was possible to do coke AND be fat).  But who was I kidding?  I was even too scared to even smoke a joint!  Then I heard about bulimia.  Now THAT made sense to me.  For, isn’t it the dream of every true food addict to be able to pig-out AND be thin – – AT THE SAME TIME?!?!  I was thinking about it so much that I even told my counselor about my secret desire to become bulimic.  She quickly told me all the horrible medical side-effects, and that stopped me in my tracks.  My fear of doctors and hospitals actually came in handy in that particular situation.  (Isn’t it funny how God works in our lives, even when we don’t even know He’s there at all?)

Just in case all of this is not proof enough for you of the “uncoolness” of being a food addict, here is the one thing that annoys me above all the others…

Compulsive overeating and binge-eating are even considered to be “uncool” by other addicts in recovery! 

Not by ALL of them, of course,…  But still.

At first I couldn’t believe it.

Don’t believe me?  I personally know of at least two people in AA who are very open with friends and family about their involvement with the 12 Step program with respect to alcohol, but who won’t even tell their own spouses that they also attend OA meetings!

Need more evidence?   I have actually had people come up to me IN MEETINGS and tell me that overeating is “easy” to fix – – that it is just a matter of discipline and willpower.  Really.  Couldn’t I, who has never gotten drunk or high in my life, say the same about alcohol and drugs?  I’ve even had AA’s come up to me after I’ve shared about my food addiction to offer me diet tips and suggestions about local diet clubs!  As if I had somehow lost my way and wondered into a 12 Step meeting by accident!  They weren’t being mean, but they weren’t able to grasp that my addiction was every bit as serious as theirs.  They were genuinely oblivious to our common “soul sickness.”

Another example?  I shared a short food story at an AA meeting one night (I was actually asked to because everyone else had already shared), and when I was finished, the next person who spoke actually cross-talked at me and started laughing out loud about how I didn’t know what real addiction was compared to his “bad” drug problem that landed him in jail!  I was mortified!  Luckily, an old-timer came to my rescue and yelled out, “No cross-talk!”

And yet, it is through experiences such as these that I have been able to find my niche within the open AA meetings I attend: I am a self-appointed OA ambassador.  I no longer take offense when people with other addictions don’t get the connection or understand why I am there.  Instead, if they approach me, I see it as an opportunity to talk to them and explain the similarities between food and alcohol addiction, and eventually most of them get it.  In fact, I now have many AA friends who have told me that after they stopped drinking, their eating started getting out of control.  Still others I talk to have shared that, when they really thought about it, they realized that they had been food addicts long before they had ever even tasted alcohol.  Best part of all?  I have succeeded in convincing a few of these people to check out OA, and some of them are starting to “stick!”

Addiction is addiction.

Only a Higher Power can save us, ALL of us (cool & uncool addicts alike), from ourselves.

We never even made it through the doorway.

The moment I set foot in the tiny bar, a short, heavy, sweaty, drunk, bald guy with his back to the door turned around, looked me up and down, and rolled his eyes.  I was mortified but took another step inside.  I had learned over the years to at least pretend I didn’t notice.

But then he yelled-out, “J—- C—–!  It’s bad enough I have to work with a bunch of fat b—–s all day, now I come here and I have to look at THAT?!  Are you f—— KIDDING me?!”

I instinctively started back through the door I was still holding open.  I know I looked like a deer in the headlights.  All the guys in the place were roaring with laughter.  For a moment I had the dreadful thought that my boyfriend was going to get into a fight when he said something to defend me.

But he never said a word.

He backed out the door as fast as I did.  My eyes started to well-up and my heart was pounding.  I hated my boyfriend for not defending me.  Worse, I hated myself for not seeing this coming – – for not assuming that I would be ridiculed for how fat and ugly I believed that I was.  In a sick way, I actually felt like I had gotten what I deserved.   I wanted to scream and cry and run away forever.  Instead I settled for yelling at my boyfriend for not at least saying SOMEthing, to which he replied that it would have been useless anyway, since there were so many of them.

True, but not in any way consoling.

In all my years around program, I never knew until recently (and only after doing my own research on the Internet) that there are two different labels used by mental health professionals to describe abnormal eating behaviors.

Here they are:

Compulsive Overeating.  Those diagnosed as “compulsive overeaters” are people who spend unusual amounts of time obsessing about food, weight,…and grazing – eating many times throughout the days.  Although these people may consume many calories when they are totalled together at the end of the day, they usually do not eat a lot in one sitting.

Binge-Eating Disorder.  Those with this diagnosis regularly eat more than 1000 calories per sitting, do it in a frenzied way (usually reporting feelings of being “out of control”), and have intense guilt and shame around this behavior.

I loved finding these “real” labels because it reinforces in my mind the idea of food addiction being an illness.  But even more amazing to me was finding out that BOTH conditions can exist in the same person at the same time!  Which is the perfect description of MY experience with eating disorders!

I am a Compulsive Overeater with a Binge-Eating Disorder! 

There is a NAME for what I have!  There is a PATTERN to what I do!

To me, it is such a relief to know this!  It means that there are so many “others” out there with the same exact problem as I have that the mental health professionals had to give “us” a name!

Isn’t that comforting?!

It is to me!!

My first garbage-picking memory starts out nice enough.  Every Saturday night my family would gather downstairs to watch a show or movie and mom would make pigs-in-a-blanket.  That tradition is one of my happiest childhood memories.  Unfortunately, it is also intertwined with the early stages of my eating disorder.  That is the part I will be focusing on here…

I can remember lots of obsession related to this particular group of food memories.  It would start with being fixated on when the food would be ready to eat.  I would watch the clock…

tick…tick…tick…

…get the condiments out…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the plates…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the napkins…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the drinks…

tick…tick…tick…

Truth be told, I was being TOO helpful.  It was not in my nature to be that useful.  “Selfish motives” were the thing powering me at that time.  When “the dogs” were finally taken out of the oven, I would choose the largest one, never giving a single thought to the possibility that someone else might be as hungry as I supposedly was.  Then I risked burning the roof right out of my mouth by biting into one of the steaming “pigs” while everyone else had the sense to wait for theirs to cool.  Before I knew it I was on my second one and already mourning the fact that I wanted a third but couldn’t have it for fear of looking like the thing I was eating.  All the while I ate, I was silently plotting a way to get more.

I knew that the leftover dogs would be sitting in a the pan on the stove until we were finished watching tv.  If I pretended to go to the bathroom, I could make a pit-stop in the kitchen and eat another one before I rejoined the family.  Sometimes I would wimp-out, especially if there was only one or two left, thinking that would be too obvious.  But luckily for me, I come from an Italian family where food shortages are a rarity.  Most times there were as many as four or five left, so I was easily able to convince myself that no one would notice if one more was missing.  That usually held me for a while, and then I could focus on the show and enjoy the time with my family…

Until…

…after the show it would be time to clean-up.  I would watch helplessly as my mother dumped the rest of the uneaten dogs into the trash, then I would hold my breath and wait to see if anything got thrown on top of them.  If they remained “clean” on the top, as they usually did, I knew that I had all the makings of an early morning snack.  I swear that knowing this would wake me up the next morning hours earlier than usual.

At about 5 a.m., barely allowing myself time to pee, I would silently race to the kitchen trash container and grab the room-temp dogs.  I knew that by that time the dough would be rubbery on the outside and gummy on the inside, but I didn’t care.  I didn’t even put anything on them.  That would be too messy, since I wouldn’t be using a plate.  Besides, I didn’t have time for luxuries like that!  I was in a race against time!  What if my parents heard me?!   I would gobble the dogs, one in each fist, while standing in the hallway entry so that I could keep an eye on my parents’ bedroom door.  If one of them DID wake up (and it happened!), I would dash back to the trash can and throw them back in.  I’m sure they would know what was going on, but no one ever said anything to me about it.  But not to worry…I beat myself good and hard after every time I did it.

Years passed, my disease progressed, and my gorging was completely out-of-control.  I was buying bags and boxes of stuff I swore I wouldn’t finish, but I’d ALWAYS finish them!  Finally I got desperate enough to try a new way to stop myself.  I would get rid of whatever food I had started to eat (but didn’t want to finish) by burying it at the bottom of the trash – only to dig it out hours later.  I can’t tell you the humiliation of wiping coffee grinds off a bag of smashed chips or of eating out of a container of half-melted ice cream – –  because I “had to.”  Later-on I figured-out that unless I removed whatever type of food I was sick of bingeing-on from its packaging and mixed it with the trash that was already in the can, there was always going to be that possibility of me going back-in for more.  Of course, there were the times when I would try to fool myself by not disposing of “the goods” properly, knowing full well what I planned to do later on.  I’d play the whole horrible game with myself, only to end-up eating every last bit of what I didn’t want to be eating in the first place, no matter WHERE I put it!!

To live this way, day after day, week after week, year after year,…was pure torture.  I always felt helpless, like there was no way out, and ashamed that I couldn’t stop myself.  But today my life is completely different.  All the obsession and compulsion that I had surrounding food has been removed!

The same can happen for you!

I say,…

“O-A…

IS the way!”

That pretty-much summed-up the unrealistic idea I had of what my life would be like if I could just get to (and stay at) that “magical” number on the scale.

Of course, there are some real things that would be great about getting to my ideal weight.  First on the list would have to be the health benefits, of course (although these mattered to me very little when I was in the throws of my disease).  Being able to buy clothes in a “normal” store would also be nice!  (Although I must say I have experienced a little of that lately!  Yeah!)   And since I love the water and sunbathing, I would love, love, LOVE to experience what it is to walk around on the beach in a bathing suit without having one single self-conscious thought enter my mind (it doesn’t even have to be a bikini!  I’m not greedy!)  Now THAT would truly be a dream come true!

But all the rest of that crap about the fame and fortune?  It is just that…crap.  I don’t know where the idea that “thinness = the perfect life” originally came from, but once it had me, it wouldn’t let me go.

Reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song called “Backstreets” – –

“…trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be.

Well after all this time to find we’re just like all the rest…”  

In other words, it has taken me all this time (in program) just to figure out that no matter WHAT size I am (or what kind of “hero” I think I have to be), I am “just another bozo on the bus!”  There are ALWAYS going to be issues to resolve, people to confront, deadlines to be met, bills to be paid, legs to be shaved,…no matter WHAT I look like!  That’s called LIFE!!  No one said it was going to be easy, but having a program (and more importantly, a Higher Power) to help me (and YOU) through it all is the ONLY thing that can make WHATEVER is going on BETTER!

REALITY CHECK:

It’s not about the weight! 

It’s about finally growing-up and accepting “life on life’s terms!”

Today my life is completely different, and it is all thanks to this program.  Much of that change came-about even before I worked the steps.  Just being around fellow recovering addicts had a positive impact on me.  It made me more comfortable in my own skin and it gave me the confidence to tell myself that I am just as important and worthy of gas-pumping as the next person!  That was a big revelation to me (as crazy as it sounds).

So even if you have not yet mustered-up the motivation to get crackin’ on those 12 life-changing steps, just keep coming!  Little by little, a new outlook will begin to sink-in to your psyche, and before you know it, you are going to WANT to change…for the better!

I am standing in front of the open fridge, my right hand resting on the top shelf on the door, which is about the same height as I am.  The golden light illuminates all the shelves and I am scanning them, looking for something sweet.  The image of Maraschino cherries comes to mind.  The red ones.  Where are they?  I look around the containers of milk and juice, and finally think to check the shelves in the door.  GOT’em!  I silently unscrew the lid, pick out one, and pop it in my mouth.  A burst of overly-sweet juice shoots though my mouth and slides down my throat.  I eat another.  Then another.  Now it’s TOO sweet.  I quietly get the lid back on and the jar back in the door, then I start looking again.  Now I have to find something salty.  I spot a jar of mayonnaise.  THAT’S the taste I am looking for!  I am again silently unscrewing a jar lid.  Somehow there is a spoon in my hand (or maybe I used my fingers?) and I take a huge mouthful.  Smooth and salty.  I am just about to go for a second scoop when I feel someone tap me on the back.  I jump a mile and spin around at the same time.  It’s my father.  He gently tells me to put the mayonnaise jar away and go back to bed.  Nothing more.  I am mortified!  I feel completely humiliated and ashamed, even though he doesn’t say a word to me about what I am doing.  I suddenly “know” two things:  there is something wrong with me, and I have let my father down. 

I carried these negative feelings around with me continuously for the next 36 years.  It wasn’t until I worked the steps two years ago that I fully understood that there is nothing “wrong” with me (I have a disease) and that I have ALWAYS been the one judging me (not my father, not my family, and not anyone else).  For so many years I have been projecting the way I felt about myself onto others, and I think it may have all started with this one incident.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

The good news?  This was my bottom.  This is what gave me the courage to come back to program.  I was finally desperate enough to admit defeat and ready to start over.  Well,…almost ready.

For months I sat on that horrible fence between going back to OA and staying away.  I was so mortified by the way I looked that I could not even imagine stepping through the door of my first meeting at that size.  Honestly, there was nothing I wanted to do LESS than go back – – but I was dying…spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  So what choice did I really have?

Finally one night in November of 2009, I decided to look online for a meeting in my area.  I was surprised to see that all of the meetings I used to attend were gone (or at least they were no longer meeting at the same locations), and that frightened me a bit.  But at that moment I was more concerned about keeping away from people I knew in program.  I didn’t want to “be seen.”  I decided to take my chances on a meeting I’d never been to out in the sticks, thinking that I probably wouldn’t know anyone there.

I got to the meeting strategically early so I could watch everyone go in.  See if I recognized anyone.  Then I would decide if I should go in.  I waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  No one ever came.  I suddenly realized that the meeting was not going to happen at all.  I felt panicky.  I hadn’t thought of that!  No matter how badly I didn’t WANT to go to a meeting, the idea that I COULDN’T go to one was far worse!  What if there were NO meetings to go to?!  What would I do?!  I knew that the program would work if I could just get myself into the routine of attending regular meetings, but without those, I knew there was no hope for me!  I went home, discouraged and scared.  I spent the next few days doing some heavy-duty soul-searching.  I came to the conclusion that I really DID want to go to a meeting and that I was going to try again (but not until the same meeting came-up again, of course).

The following week I parked my car and went inside the building, determined to at least find out once and for all if this meeting actually existed.  Low and behold, two people showed-up.  Then another person.  And another.  I didn’t know any of them.  I breathed a silent sigh of relief and immediately felt at home.

For the next 2 months, I attended this weekly discussion meeting and would share on the topic of the day and on the miserable state I was in.  Every day I would binge, and every night I would wonder how I could have done it again!  Then I would show-up at the meeting and say that I REFUSED to stop overeating even though I KNEW that I HAD to!  It was such a torturous place to be.  And week after week, the caring people there just listened and then talked with me afterwards.  There was no judgement, except for the voices in my own mind that kept telling me what a loser I was for not even making an attempt at getting abstinent.  The only thing that I actually DID start to do was to get on my knees every morning and every night and ask my Higher Power for “the willingness to be willing” to stop overeating.  Over the years I had acquired enough program to know that this was my problem – – until I was willing to at least TRY to be abstinent, I was lost.  I was “beyond human aid,” as The Big Book says.  Only God could save me at that point, and I knew it.

One night, after returning home from one of these meetings, the thought came to me that I should try writing-out a food plan for myself.  I was not going to follow it, of course, but if I could pick any way to eat healthy – – any way at all – – what would that be?  I kept this rough draft out on the kitchen table all week and tweaked it between binges.  It was just there, and I worked on it as if it were a school homework assignment.  I felt like I was doing it more out of curiosity to see what I could come-up-with more than anything else.  Best of all, for some strange reason, I felt no emotional attachment to it at all.

By spending so much time looking objectively at my food behaviors over the past 20+ years, I was fianlly able to see that the my biggest problem I’d had with sticking to my food plans of the past always came down to the feeling of deprivation, whether in the amounts of foods or in the elimination of foods.  So my new food plan tried to solve that problem by increasing portion sizes, by giving myself a little leeway within the elimination categories, and by adding snacks.  I knew that, for myself, I needed something that would be easy to adapt to any situation.  If I had learned nothing else, I had at the very least learned that if I was going to lose weight and successfully KEEP it off (which I had never done before), I had to have a plan that I would be willing to follow FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!  Not just when I was losing weight, or when I was trying to impress people, or when things were going my way, or when the weather was nice,…but ALL the time!  I guess it was just my time to finally face this reality…for the first time in my life.

And yet,…

ANOTHER week went by and I did the same thing – made some notes, moved some things around, took out some stuff, added some stuff…but I STILL refused to even TRY to follow it!  I did mention at one meeting what I was doing, but I said it as if it were a joke and that I had no desire whatsoever to even consider trying it out.

Then, out of the blue, at the end of a meeting in the beginning of February 2010, I raised my hand and committed to my group that I was going to start following the food plan I had created, and guess what?  I have been abstinent ever since!  I can tell you that when that happened, it was NOT ME raising my arm!  The thought had not even crossed my mind until that moment.  In fact, I barely knew why my hand went up at all!  You know how sometimes at a meeting you will be wondering if you should raise your hand and say what you are thinking out loud, but you keep stalling?  Well this was NOTHING like that.  This was supernatural.  I wasn’t thinking about trying to follow my food plan AT ALL!  I really believe that it was God answering my prayers.

He knew that I wasn’t going to do it on my own, so He had to do it for me!