One of the toughest things for food addicts to give-up is our impulse to measure ourselves, whether by getting on a scale, using a measuring tape, counting calories, monitoring our time at the gym, graphing our progress, projecting how long it will take us to lose a certain amount of weight, or marking the number of days we stay on a diet on a calendar.  All of these behaviors are counter-productive and do nothing more than feed-into our obsession with perfectionism.  There is no better way to ensure that you are NOT living in the present day than getting involved with the numbers of your addiction.  All of them are associated with some far-off glorious day when all the numbers will magically align to form the “perfect” you, and…  And…  And…what?  Did you ever stop and think about what would happen next?  Do you really think that if you woke-up one morning, miraculously in the body of your dreams, that you would not have any more problems?  I really thought that was true.  That’s why I was so obsessed with “getting there.”  But that’s a huge LIE!  You would still be you, still have all the life-challenges that everyone else does, still have your same addict mind, and still be craving large quantities of food.  Why?  Because you still haven’t addressed the core issues that create those cravings for “more.”  I really believed that it was what I looked like that was the problem, when in reality, how I felt about myself as a person was the real problem.  Everything I thought and everything I did went contrary to the idea in my head of what I was “supposed” to be thinking and doing, and until I began to fix that problem, I was unable to resist my compulsion to overeat.  In my opinion, this is why so many of those weight-loss surgeries are unsuccessful.  The mind has to be fixed before the body can recover.

The other thing I’d like to just throw out there is the reason behind all this measuring.  I think it makes a lot of sense to look at all of it as a metaphor for us trying to “measure” our self-worth.  We desperately want those numbers to “prove” to us that we are “good enough.”  To tell us what we do not believe about ourselves on our own.  Why else would are moods be so closely tied-in to those numbers?  Ever notice how the amount on the scale or which pair of jeans you can squeeze into can determine the kind of day you’re going to have?  That is just the type of nonsense that has to be corrected.  Until we can get to that place where we just “know” we are fine the way we are, we will never be able to conquer our addiction.

The good news?  The 12 Steps are designed to help you do just that.