Each Day a New Beginning: December 31st

In the process of growing to spiritual maturity, we all go through many adolescent stages.
—Miki L. Bowen

Progress, not perfection, is our goal in this recovery program. And many days we'll be haunted by the feeling that we've regressed. We will display old behavior. We will feel unable to change, to go on, to make gains once again. But these periods will pass, and soon progress will be evident again.

We must be wary of our need for perfection. It's this need that makes normal progress seem not good enough. And yet, that's all we're capable of - and all we'll ever need to be capable of. The program, its Steps and the promises offered, provide the tools we have lacked, yet need to use in order to accept ourselves wholly and imperfectly.

Daily attention to our spiritual side will foster the spiritual and emotional health we long for. Prayer and meditation, combined with honest inventory-taking, can show us the personal progress needed, the personal progress made. However, we will falter on occasion. We will neglect our program some days. But it won't ever be beyond our reach. And each day is a new beginning.

Today is before me, and I can make progress. I will begin with a quiet prayer and a moment of meditation.

From Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.

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Here we sit, on New Years Eve, getting ready to ring in a new year & possibly a new start to LIFE.  What is holding you back from enjoying your life to the fullest? If compulsive overeating is your answer, then make a promise to yourself today.  That you will commit yourself to abstinence and the 12 Steps of Recovery.

Take life in 24 hour chunks; the 'One Day At A Time" slogan is not just an empty old saw. It tells us that we have to STOP living in the past OR the future, and we need to live for the moment, for NOW.  Abstinence is doable on a 24 hour a day basis.  Find or choose a Food Plan, and then stick TO it like GLUE.  That constitutes 'abstinence.'  Put your abstinence FIRST in your life, as top priority, and get about the business of LIFE, unencumbered by excess weight & self-loathing.

Progress, not perfection, is the goal in this recovery program.  Not every day is going to be great.........there are many emotions to sort through along this journey.  Some days we will not want to get out of bed because of fear and anxiety, and the desire to chuck our Food Plans and binge.
But then we ask God/HP for help in staying the course.  He comes through EACH & EVERY time we ask for help.  The problem is, many days, we do not WANT help.  We want to shut down and stop feeling............we want to numb ourselves with food or booze or drugs, and we want to pretend those substances will erase our pain.

Instead, using addictive substances will INCREASE our pain, leaving us with feelings of self-loathing and hopelessness.

Only commitment to abstinence & working the Steps will relieve us of our misery.  Once we get out of our own HEADS, and into giving back to others, THEN we stop believing the world centers around US.  Food takes a back seat to Service, and we are well on our way to enjoying the amazing freedom & beauty of life instead of wallowing in self-pity.

The only way OUT is THROUGH.  Each day is a brand new beginning! If you faltered yesterday, make today an abstinent one.  Wake up tomorrow feeling EMPOWERED and capable of anything and everything! Step away from the off plan food & tell yourself it is NOT AN OPTION.  Once you utter those words, your brain relaxes & accepts the decision without argument.

It is only when we waver.........when we falter.............when we try to convince ourselves that 'just one bite' will be ok...........THEN we are off & running into COE behaviors and binges. 

For today, you will not take that first compulsive bite. 
For today, you will stick to your food plan of abstinence.
For today, you will believe that nothing tastes as good as abstinence feels.
For today, you will take YOUR life BACK, one hour at a time.

Happy New Year, dear ones.  May all your hopes & dreams become a reality in 2013.