My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.
::Hi, Charlie!::
Welcome to D.M., a new reader who's been catching up on my posts and reading some of the old ones. She commented on some, which drew my attention to them. Look at this one, from March 10, 2008:
"Feeling fat again. Ate off plan all week in Boston. Stress and anxiety are really giving me grief. Isolation and fear are cutting me off from reality and good choices for my body.
God, help me!"
And this one, from eight days later:
"Wow. I've completely fucking let myself go. I am so tired of this.
Last night I thought to myself, 'I am NOT hungry. Nothing sounds good. I don't WANT to eat!'
And then I continued to put food in my mouth. Four cookies. Milk. A cheeseburger. Diet Coke.
God help me. Compulsivity consumes me."
I had forgotten that Charlie, the one who was so afraid and isolated, so hopeless and helpless. I'm grateful to be reminded of what it really was like. Sometimes I forget.
Now that I'm nearly eight months into my OA-HOW abstinence, now that I look and feel "normal" as far as my weight goes, now that I'm doing (for me) amazing things like training for a 5K, sometimes I wonder if I'm "all better," if I could do it on my own.
These messages remind me that I can't. I need you, my recovery friends. I need the 12 Steps. I need OA-HOW. I need God. I've been out there, and it's ugly. If I don't work this program, I'll be right back where I was three years ago.
I have a life-threatening disease. Thank you, D.M., for the reminder. Thank you, God, for the solution.
Showing posts with label program. Show all posts
Showing posts with label program. Show all posts
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Living the Promises... Already
My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.
::Hi, Charlie!::
Funny. I thought things would slow down a bit after Christmas. And I haven't even blogged in three weeks. It's been pretty crazy in my life... I won't waste your time or mine detailing all the things I've got going on. Just believe me when I say my work, my graduate studies, my responsibilities as a dad and husband, and my OA-HOW program are taking a lot of my time.
You know the crazy thing? I'm happier and more at peace than I have been in a long, long time. I'm content. I'm abstinent... Over 5-1/2 months now! At my last weigh-in, I weighed 177 pounds. That means I've surrendered 55.2 pounds to God, and I'm only 15 pounds or so away from my maintenance weight.
The Big Book says: "If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them."
I honestly think that's exactly what I'm experiencing... I'm already beginning to experience these incredible promises! The more I do this, the more I work the steps, follow the plan, surrender my life and my will to God, make my calls, eat abstinently... the more purposeful I become, the more disciplined, the better able to deal with life on life's terms.
Tired tonight, but happy. Grateful.
I have a big conference in Chicago next week, so I'm working hard to get all my work done before I go. I'm trying to get a week ahead in my seminary class, too, so I don't have to work on it there. All that to say, I don't have a lot of time to blog this week, but I have two topics I really want to write about... 1) A great food idea I'm going to implement in Chicago, and 2) body image issues...Hope I get to them!
::Hi, Charlie!::
Funny. I thought things would slow down a bit after Christmas. And I haven't even blogged in three weeks. It's been pretty crazy in my life... I won't waste your time or mine detailing all the things I've got going on. Just believe me when I say my work, my graduate studies, my responsibilities as a dad and husband, and my OA-HOW program are taking a lot of my time.
You know the crazy thing? I'm happier and more at peace than I have been in a long, long time. I'm content. I'm abstinent... Over 5-1/2 months now! At my last weigh-in, I weighed 177 pounds. That means I've surrendered 55.2 pounds to God, and I'm only 15 pounds or so away from my maintenance weight.
The Big Book says: "If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them."
I honestly think that's exactly what I'm experiencing... I'm already beginning to experience these incredible promises! The more I do this, the more I work the steps, follow the plan, surrender my life and my will to God, make my calls, eat abstinently... the more purposeful I become, the more disciplined, the better able to deal with life on life's terms.
Tired tonight, but happy. Grateful.
I have a big conference in Chicago next week, so I'm working hard to get all my work done before I go. I'm trying to get a week ahead in my seminary class, too, so I don't have to work on it there. All that to say, I don't have a lot of time to blog this week, but I have two topics I really want to write about... 1) A great food idea I'm going to implement in Chicago, and 2) body image issues...Hope I get to them!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Freedom from the Insanity of the Scale
My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.
::Hi, Charlie!::
As I approach 60 days of H.O.W. abstinence, I have been reflecting a lot on where I'm at now, emotionally, spiritually and physically.Today I'm especially grateful that, as I surrender my life and my will to God's care, I am being freed from the insanity of compulsive weighing.
I have been using a website called Skinnyr for the past several years to track my weight. You can set it up to just click a button and record your weight for the day, and then it creates a graph for you. Now, believe me, I am well aware of the dangers of a site like this (especially a site with a name focusing on the word skinny), but I guess I'm looking at it as an instrument or a tool. In and of itself, it's a neutral thing that can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways, just like a scale.
As I look back on my graph over the past three years (I started keeping track on October 13, 2007), I am struck by how obvious the progression of my disease is! The ups and downs, the desperate attempts to control my food and my weight. I got on that crazy scale at least twice a day - morning and night. I let it control me. I would get on it sometimes 4-5 times in a single day, seeing how different things affected it. Was I lighter after I worked out? After I got out of the shower? After I went to the bathroom? After I fasted for half a day?
And no matter how I tried to control my eating, no matter how "successful" I was at losing weight for a period of time, I always found myself binging again. I always lost control. My addiction always kicked my ass. My "high" weights kept getting higher and higher. It's not hard to imagine where I might have ended up without intervention.
Yesterday I looked at the graph and realized that I'm not afraid. Today I'm not concerned about my weight or my body. I'm confident that my weight and the shape of my body will take care of itself as I surrender myself to God. A huge part of that is surrendering my compulsivity around weighing myself. I hide the scale so I'm not tempted. I weigh once a month, on the 19th. I like the graph for the last couple of months. Slow, steady, healthy weight loss. Not my frantic weighing, changing what I ate and how I lived from day to day in a ridiculous attempt to force the scale to reflect what my sick mind wanted so badly to see... No. Now it's a reflection of a transformation. A spiritual awakening. A surrendering to God's good plans for me.
I still feel anxious sometimes. I want to weigh myself. I want to see "how I'm doing," and then I remember that what I weigh is really none of my damn business. I give myself, body and soul, to my God today, to build with me and to do with me as God will. I surrender. And I'm finding peace and recovery, one day at a time.
One more thing: I don't want to come across like I'm all better. I'm still a sick man. I'm still a compulsive overeater, as I try to remind myself and all my readers with every introduction. I could slip this afternoon. I am always one choice away from relapse. But for today, I am so, so grateful for 59 days of abstinence and for peace, clarity and freedom.
::Hi, Charlie!::
As I approach 60 days of H.O.W. abstinence, I have been reflecting a lot on where I'm at now, emotionally, spiritually and physically.Today I'm especially grateful that, as I surrender my life and my will to God's care, I am being freed from the insanity of compulsive weighing.
I have been using a website called Skinnyr for the past several years to track my weight. You can set it up to just click a button and record your weight for the day, and then it creates a graph for you. Now, believe me, I am well aware of the dangers of a site like this (especially a site with a name focusing on the word skinny), but I guess I'm looking at it as an instrument or a tool. In and of itself, it's a neutral thing that can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways, just like a scale.
As I look back on my graph over the past three years (I started keeping track on October 13, 2007), I am struck by how obvious the progression of my disease is! The ups and downs, the desperate attempts to control my food and my weight. I got on that crazy scale at least twice a day - morning and night. I let it control me. I would get on it sometimes 4-5 times in a single day, seeing how different things affected it. Was I lighter after I worked out? After I got out of the shower? After I went to the bathroom? After I fasted for half a day?
And no matter how I tried to control my eating, no matter how "successful" I was at losing weight for a period of time, I always found myself binging again. I always lost control. My addiction always kicked my ass. My "high" weights kept getting higher and higher. It's not hard to imagine where I might have ended up without intervention.
Yesterday I looked at the graph and realized that I'm not afraid. Today I'm not concerned about my weight or my body. I'm confident that my weight and the shape of my body will take care of itself as I surrender myself to God. A huge part of that is surrendering my compulsivity around weighing myself. I hide the scale so I'm not tempted. I weigh once a month, on the 19th. I like the graph for the last couple of months. Slow, steady, healthy weight loss. Not my frantic weighing, changing what I ate and how I lived from day to day in a ridiculous attempt to force the scale to reflect what my sick mind wanted so badly to see... No. Now it's a reflection of a transformation. A spiritual awakening. A surrendering to God's good plans for me.
I still feel anxious sometimes. I want to weigh myself. I want to see "how I'm doing," and then I remember that what I weigh is really none of my damn business. I give myself, body and soul, to my God today, to build with me and to do with me as God will. I surrender. And I'm finding peace and recovery, one day at a time.
One more thing: I don't want to come across like I'm all better. I'm still a sick man. I'm still a compulsive overeater, as I try to remind myself and all my readers with every introduction. I could slip this afternoon. I am always one choice away from relapse. But for today, I am so, so grateful for 59 days of abstinence and for peace, clarity and freedom.
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