For Today: July 25

The fairest harmony springs from discord.
Aristotle

How we humans hate discord!  We have a talent for creating it, of course, but we don’t like it.  Compulsive overeaters eat over it, alcoholics drink over it, and others indulge their various weaknesses over it.

It took the twelve-step program to teach me to simply endure, to go straight through a difficult, discordant time without yielding to the urge to escape into the food or to yell for somebody to “fix” it.

My rewards are many: new strengths and capabilities, the peace that comes with acceptance of what is and the joy of knowing I am free.

For Today:  As I practice acceptance of life’s discords, life turns around and gives me harmony.

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When I tried to fix my discomfort, I ran to food for comfort. The OA program has taught me to STOP trying to fix things and people, and to just be accepting of what IS.  When I sit through my feelings, they do pass in time.  When I wring my hands together in worry, I am not letting go & letting God run my life.

Whether I worry myself to death or sit back in faith, the outcome of a situation will be the same. If I worried myself through it, I wasted precious days that I cannot retrieve. 

When I eat myself through a stressful situation, I make that situation even MORE stressful.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along”……You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt

For today, I will allow myself endure discord & fear without resorting to food to 'fix' me. I will do the thing I think I cannot do!

For Today: July 24th

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
Albert Einstein

I will probably never understand exactly what happened to me when I came to Overeaters Anonymous.  I have no frame of reference for surrender, or spiritual awakening.  These events, which happened simultaneously, constitute by far the most beautiful experience of my life.

The gifts placed before me in the wake of this experience are equally mysterious:  I am unshakably abstinent; I go through all the ups and downs of my life without having to eat over anything.  That in itself is miracle enough, but there is more.  Each one of the promises of the Big Book is coming true.  God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. It is all an incomparably beautiful mystery.

For Today:  I celebrate the miracle of my new life in OA.

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When I hit rock bottom is when I came to OA.  I think it's a Buddhist saying that goes: When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Before I was 'ready' to change my life entirely, I wasn't able to do it. I thought that excess food was making me happy, that I needed it as much as I needed my legs to stand on, etc.  The thought of life without excess food seemed too much to bear.

So I took a leap of faith.....that God could help me do what I could not do for myself.  I joined OA because I knew in my heart that I had to change an awful lot about my OCD behavior in order to find peace, happiness and relief from my food addiction.

While I DO have my moments of overeating from time to time, I am unshakably abstinent throughout the stressful times of my life.  And if you knew me, you'd know that 99.9% of my life IS stressful.  If I responded to all these stressful times by overeating, I'd be 400 lbs by now.  OA has taught me a better way; to maintain abstinence is to thumb my nose at the stress and say IT is not beating ME.

For today, I can honestly celebrate the miracle of my new life! Together with God & my support system of OAer, I can do ANYTHING, one day at a time.

For Today: July 23rd

If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth.

Abraham Lincoln

If Lincoln could achieve all that he did feeling such depression, can I not bear feeling down in the dumps occasionally without being driven to the insanity of compulsive overeating?

With the support of the OA program, it is possible to feel a full range of human emotions and remain abstinent.  Feelings have no power.  They cannot dictate my actions.  At times I have stood still and hurt, and at other times I applied for relief by contacting an OA friend or going to a meeting. Both ways work.

For Today:  Feeling bad is part of being human.   I don’t try to escape it any more than I try to escape feeling good.

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Why was I so so fearful of feeling bad?  I tried all sorts of things to escape the possibility of feeling bad!

"People who are happy don't use food to
sublimate. Food is supposed to be good for
you - not make you feel good!"
Gary Null 

I used food to sublimate.....to alter my reality.....and for a long while, it did just that. Of course, the price I paid for that escape was way too high. I was obese, unhealthy and unhappy.   Fat lot of good all that escaping did for me.

Only when I became willing to feel my emotions & deal with them could I get abstinent & stay abstinent.  I've recognized the fact that my emotions will not kill me, but obesity can & will.

For today, I will allow myself to feel my emotions without responding negatively to them. If I feel upset or sad, I know that too shall pass.  I don't expect to feel on top of the world every moment of every day and that's OK too! 

 

For Today: July 22nd

Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve.

George Santayana

When I tire of the sameness of the program, I wonder why there isn’t some more advanced way of doing it.  Now that I’m abstinent, thin and sane, why do I have to keep going to the same meetings, hearing and saying the same things?

Different people have different answers to such questions.  Some change meetings; others turn to more challenging forms of service.  What I know is this: I have a cunning, baffling and powerful disease that can and does throw every trick in the book at me.

Yes, I need to be at meetings.  Yes, I need to hear newcomers.  And yes, I need to keep on working the program over and over again.  I have read the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve a hundred times, and each time the same words give me a different meaning, a new insight.

For Today: Thank God I'm here; pray God to keep me here.

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Routine is key for me as a compulsive overeater. Only through repetition do I have a chance of staying abstinent & having it feel like second nature to me.  My food plan is what keeps me on track and sharing myself with others who suffer as I do.  The OA literature, meetings and service keep me centered and focused.

When I give back to others, I can step away from myself and recognize that I am not the center of the universe. It's easy enough to get caught up in that thinking pattern and to forget my true purpose in life: to love others, to show kindness & understanding, and to give service.  If I fall away from my OA program, I am easily back to my old habits in no time at all.

For today, I pray to keep my OA program intact, one day at a time, one meal at a time.

For Today: July 21st

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.

Hippocrates

Go to meetings, Read the Big Book. Get a sponsor.  Go to any lengths.

All that? When will I have time for my life?

Make time. Compulsive overeating is a killing disease.

But I’m not that bad.

No, not yet.  But this illness is progressive; it gets worse, never better.  Abstinence is a new life, not in theory but in practice.  It means following suggestions, listening to someone who knows more than I do about living abstinently.  It means reading: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.”

If I want abstinence, and a better life, I have come to the right place.

For Today:  I have taken the first step.  God help me to stay on this new path toward physical, mental and spiritual recovery.

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By the time I came to OA, I was plum OUT of excuses. Yes, it WAS that bad. Yes, I WAS that extreme. Yes, I was brought to my knees yet AGAIN from the killing disease that tormented me for 40 some years. 

I had to accept the fact that MY way was NOT working. My crazy diet schemes & attempts to control the disease were bringing me up empty handed time & time again.

OA was my port in the storm. Yes, I was just 'that bad' and ready to accept a whole new LIFE. I had to change from the inside out and the steps would help me do that.

I didn't ask myself "when will I have time for my life?" because the life I had wasn't the life I SHOULD have had. I was involved in all the wrong things...in essence, I was WASTING my life.  So I allowed OA to take OVER my life & recreate it. Make it better. OA helped me develop a REAL life; one with purpose & service & peace of mind.

I used to think I didn't have a life because I was fat.  Turned out, I was fat because I didn't have a life.

OA changed all that, thank God, and I will keep my program #1 on my list because without it, I am back to living a life controlled by a disease.