For Today: October 20th

Patience is a bitter plant, but it has sweet fruit.

German proverb

Waiting is one of the worst things to ask of a compulsive overeater.  If I don’t see results immediately, I get discouraged. In the days when I fought one obsession with another, I dieted compulsively and jumped on the scale compulsively.  I could put up with any discomfort, any deprivation----for varying lengths of time---as long as I did not have to suffer a ‘plateau’; to diet and lose no weight was intolerable.  Clearly, when something is intolerable, it is abandoned---and so went every reducing scheme I ever tried.

Thank God I am not here to diet and lose weight.

For Today: I am in OA to turn my life around----and I’m willing to wait.

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I cringe when I read this passage, every single time.  Why? Because I see myself in every word.  I have stayed committed to one hare-brained diet scheme or another, for a certain amount of time, until it became intolerable.  And then I quit.

I was only willing to deprive myself of my favorite foods for X amount of time……..before I went back to my old ways and naturally, regained everything I’d lost.

 

And so the yo-yo dieting cycle is born.

I am the queen of diets.  I am the queen of losing weight and regaining it.  If there was some new and promising diet out there on the market, I was IN….sign me up………..I CAN do this.

Until I couldn’t do it any longer.  And then the binges would return with a vengeance, after depriving myself and being ‘so good’ for ‘so long’

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When I took on my final diet program (Medifast), it was with the understanding that it was NOT a ‘diet’……but a way to find abstinence by eating 6 small meals every day.  I wanted to retrain myself, body and mind, to eat differently, and to view food as fuel instead of entertainment or comfort.

I think God led me there, truthfully, because since day one of the program, I was able to find abstinence, which I’ve maintained for 40 months. 

Finding a workable food plan is not an easy thing to do……..and some OAers would say I ‘sold out’ by taking on yet another formal diet program.  

Abstinence means different things to different people.  We all find our own way, eventually, if we are truly serious about changing our ways.

For today, I am grateful to have FOUND abstinence, and I am grateful to KEEP it intact, one day at a time.