About 2 years ago I started going to AA as part of my food addiction recovery. A few months in, an obviously drunk man showed-up at one of my regular meetings. I was appalled. I mean, I could see if the person just smelled like booze and sat there quietly, but this guy was loud-mouthed, slurring …Continue reading →
When I first came into program, I considered myself to be an atheist. Through going to meetings and reading The Big Book, I discovered that I was really an agnostic. This meant that I believed that the existence of God could not be proven, but that I was at least open to the possibility that …Continue reading →
Coming back to OA after a 100-pound-plus weight-gain was not easy – I’m not going to lie. But once I was there, because I was a lot older and more worldly (I can’t honestly say “wiser”), I found it to be much easier this time to make friends. Due to the inherent stunting powers of this …Continue reading →
I can’t tell you how many times I have lost large amounts of weight (I am talking over 50 pounds, here), only to hear these fatal words. At first my hopes soar as someone says, “Hey! You look like you lost weight!” Then they crash and burn when I hear, “I can really see it …Continue reading →
This lie has lessened in me, but still lingers to this day. There is still a small part of me that thinks that I should be “allowed” to eat whatever I want – or maybe a better way of saying it would be that I think I should be “exempt” from having to eat healthy, …Continue reading →
After writing “Only ONE pound?!,” I realized that, if I said that same sentence with the emphasis on the first word rather than on the second (“ONLY one pound?!”), then I would have the opposite side of the same coin. If I got on that same scale and GAINED a pound rahter than LOST a pound, …Continue reading →
In 1990, I got my first teaching job at a wonderful local preschool. I was so excited. But on my first day, I was scared to death that the children wouldn’t like me. Luckily, my best friend (who just happened to be the person training me) told me exactly what I needed to hear – …Continue reading →
The very first time I became abstinent, I developed all kinds of other weird obsessions without even realizing it. The first one was eating sugar-free mints. I specifically remember asking my mom to get me a whole bunch at Christmas & Easter time so I would have something to pop in my mouth instead of …Continue reading →
My abstinent food plan calls for me to only weigh myself at my counselor’s office. Since I only see her roughly once every six-to-eight weeks, I have been forced to give-up the majority of the obsessive behaviors related to getting weighed, like getting on the scale daily (or more), using calories to try to calculate …Continue reading →
Before I could even begin to approach the subject of believing in a Higher Power that loved me, I had to break-through a much more basic philosophical argument: why would a Higher Power be interested in helping me with something as mundane as my battle with weight? Didn’t He/She/It have better things to deal with, …Continue reading →