Whatever it takes

Bed binges

Last night we read a story from the brown book, Overeaters Anonymous. I've read it before and it hit all the same notes for me again. I think it is titled Saying Yes to Life. What struck me hardest was her loose approach to abstinence. I get the not a diet mentality, but my abstinence is becoming more absolute with recovery, not less. Maybe this is setting me up for a major relapse down the road. I don't know. I'm new and have a lot to learn.

My food plan is a few simple rules with a lot of freedom within. I do not eat sweets, artificial sweeteners, or anything with sugar in the first six ingredients. I eat three meals a day with nothing in between. No extras (i.e., no extra rolls, biscuits, or extra sides). To be abstinent I follow this plan. I cannot be casual about this. One slip could be just that, or it could be the beginning of a relapse with no end. I cannot afford to risk it.

So when I hear people I've seen struggling to string together continuous abstinence for over a year agreeing that they can't be a perfectionist with their abstinence it makes me sad and confused.

This morning I stayed in bed hitting the snooze alarm for two extra hours. This is something I struggle with and hope to become as committed to getting up at the appropriate time as I am to abstinence. It feels bad and similar to a binge. It is self-destructive and miserable. It scares me, and yet I am powerless. I prayed about it and yet I hit the snooze alarm again and rolled over. Maybe it is like abstinence. I had to practice and fail many times before it stuck.

Pray for me.

Lame Turkey

I had a nice Thanksgiving. I hope you can say the same. I didn't go to my mother's family celebration because I had the bag for the new Thursday night meeting and I felt it was important to have a meeting. So I went with my sister's family to their neighbor's house. It was nice. Of course I was only there for two hours. I did not break my abstinence, but my portions were not small.

I did not eat anything until I sat down at the table. I didn't snack on the french fried onions while I made the green bean casserole either. Nor did I come home and eat all the left over green beans. This is new. Last year my abstinence was just about sugar, now I only eat three meals a day with no snacks.

I took a huge portion of turkey. This was a mistake. It was a pre-cooked turkey from honey baked ham. It was dense and tasted like lunch meat. It wasn't sweet, just bland. Disappointing, as home baked turkey is the star of thanksgiving dinner, but oh well. I had turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls with butter, and green bean casserole. Everything else was sweet or potentially sweet. I left before the grown-ups ate pie. I didn't feel crazy or deprived.

I was the only one at the meeting. I was disappointed, but I went through the meeting format by myself and read from the Big Book trying to think about each paragraph as I went. It was a litte creepy to be in the church alone, but not too bad. One person who wanted to come called me earlier and said she couldn't make it. We talked for about ten minutes. I feel good that I went through with it and made a meeting available. I knew there was another meeting happening at the same time about 30 minutes away, so I didn't feel totally alone. It was important to me, so I did it.

Now I'm going to shower, dress and go to my office. It is time for my monthly weigh-in. I'm trying to not be a freak. I think my jeans weigh more than my work pants, but I'm wearing jeans anyway. I had a lot of salt yesterday, but I eat salt all the time. I better just go get it over with. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend.

Jinxed

Every time I share at a meeting about how good my life is going I self-destruct the next day. I felt so good on Sunday evening. I had met with a sponsee for a few hours in the afternoon and spent all afternoon on Saturday working on a project with my nephew BugBoy.

So I shared how grateful I was to the program and that I had been getting up on time to go to work every day again and that the food obsession had been lifted again. I was happy and contented with my life as it is. This is good thing right?

Then why did I stay in bed until almost noon today? I hit the snooze alarm on two clock from 7:30 until 11:45. WTF? One of the alarms is across the room, so I was awake. I have to stop sleeping so late on the weekends. It is so easy for me to slip into damaging patterns and so hard to adjust to positive changes.

Soggy chills

I'm having a low energy day. The weather is cold, damp and cloudy again today. It is very November in Illinois.

I've added a few new blogs to my list, please check them out. I love to read other OA blogs so I'm excited to see some new faces.

My Tuesday night meeting was small again this week. Some regulars are just not showing up lately. I meant to make some phone calls today, but I haven't. It was nice though. We read from "Abstinence" and I got something out of everyone's share.

I hope the new Thursday meeting has a decent turnout. I know one of the three people there last week is on vacation. A couple people who expressed strong interest while I was planning the new group have other commitments on Thursdays. D'oh!

I announced last night that there will be a meeting on Thanksgiving. Even if I'm the only one there I feel it is what I have to do. I really need three meetings a week, so I hope Thursday nights will build into a strong meeting. The Big Books and other literature I ordered arrived. Yaa!

Grace of my heart

Saturday morning I went to my sponsor’s house and went over all of the character defects I identified in the sixth step. I’m so glad I did. On her suggestion I wrote my defects on rocks. They gathered dust on a bookshelf in my bedroom for a couple months. I did step six by myself, but it didn’t seem complete until Saturday.

I pulled each rock out of the bag read them aloud. Some rocks needed a little explanation. Some were not really defects, but as we talked about each rock I had a series of “ah-ha!” moments. For each defect she asked me what it would look like if HP removed it. A few of these defects are so embedded in my actions I could not conceive of their absence. It got easier as the bag grew lighter. Many of the rocks had the same defect but from different behaviors.

A couple times I got anxious until she reminded me that I cannot remove them, I can only be willing to let them go. I’ve been saying the seventh step prayer each morning since May, but without knowing what I was asking for. For example, I’ve been willing to be relieved of perfectionism, but didn’t know what that would look like. If I’m not attempting to achieve perfection in all I do, what do I shoot for?

The first thought that occurred to me was the 80/20 rule we have at work. It’s kind of a joke, because even though we’re told that 80% error free is good enough, in practice it rarely is. They budget for 80% but expect 100% perfection. Or if they don’t expect it, I do. My sponsor said that was great. 80% is mastery of a subject. I pointed out that it was only a B. She said Bs are good, better than average is a fine goal. This is foreign to me. I shook my head and argued a bit more. She asked me if I would praise my nephew if he got 80% right on a test of challenging material. My answer was yes, of course I would. So why would I not be proud of myself for the same thing.

This is a hard concept for me, but the current behavior, perfectionism, hasn’t worked for a long time. It leads me to procrastination and paralysis. Luckily I don’t have to remove it myself. I just have to pray to HP and be willing to have it removed. It helps to know what it could look like in my life.

Much of our conversation boiled down to grace. The opposite of my defects is grace. Road rage? Grace. Tantrums? Grace. Fear of change? Grace. It’s all about me? Grace. Now I have a better idea of what grace looks like in my life.

I am so grateful to my sponsor. I am now ready to make my eighth step list.

Shame of a slob

I feel unfocused today. I woke up at 3:30am this morning and I'm not sure if I ever got back to sleep. I know I was still awake at 4:30am. But I did get out of bed just 9 minutes after I needed to. I got to work in plenty of time to make my 9:30 meeting. Which was really pointless and we decided to postpone until I could review what I need to before discussing it.

I'm going to my sponsor's house on Saturday morning to talk. I'm going to bring my defect rocks and talk about each one with her. I wrote down all my character defects on rocks, but I didn't discuss each one with her, until I do I don't feel like I throughly covered step six. I think this is why I've stalled out on step eight.

My yogi is coming to my home tomorrow to practice. I've tidied up a bit from the October costume building mess, but not really. There are dishes on the counter and the whole place needs vacuuming. I meant to tidy last night, but I blew it off. It is her first time coming to my home so I would like it to be company clean, but that just isn't going to happen. Which leads me to guilt, shame, fear and recriminations. Here is the thing, she loves me for who I am. I've known her for years and she really won't care. So tonight, after a meeting, I'll pick up all the miscellaneous crap in the living room so there is room for us to practice (the library was my target room, but that just ain't happening) and I'll vacuum tomorrow before she comes over. Anything else is a bonus.

I've also been thinking about step two lately. Nothing solid has formed yet, I'm just pondering how my thinking has changed since I first walked into the rooms.

I spoke on Thursday and it was okay.

On the advice of my sponsor I did not prepare notes or think too much about what I would say. This made me very uncomfortable. I prayed right before I spoke to turn it over. My inner critic popped up about seven minutes in. So I paused again and prayed. I did this a few times before I finished.

I’m not happy with what I said, I’m more articulate when I can edit and tweak. I feel like I rambled too much into non-program areas and did not leave enough time to share the positives. There are so many things I wanted to say, but forgot. After the meeting everyone said it was good, but I didn’t really believe them. My sponsor said that is normal and that she’s sure I did fine. She said she has never heard an interesting speaker that used notes. She asked if I spoke from my heart. I did, or at least I tried.

I went into isolation mode right after the meeting. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I barely spoke with anyone. I even neglected to return a call from an OA friend. Again, my sponsor said this is normal. Luckily it rarely occurs to me to skip a meeting. The Sunday evening meeting got me out of my funk.

My sponsor asked who the speaking was for and reminded me that it is for me. Just like sponsoring, speaking is to help me. I wish I knew that before. I might not have worried so much about doing it right and helping others. Maybe.

I’m glad it is over.

Speaker anxiety

I am the speaker for the first time at a meeting in two hours. I’m trying not to think about it too much. My sponsor said not to. It should be a pretty small group again. We had six people last week and I know one of them is out of town today.

I’m putting pressure on myself to say the right things. I want to turn it over to my HP instead. This means that I have to let go of expectations, pride, ego and even the desire to help. I really would like something I say to help someone, this then, is a combination of all of the above. I’ve gotten so much from the speakers I’ve heard. I want to give that back. So I hope sharing my story resonates with at least one person there tonight, but I can’t focus on that.

There is so much to tell, I fear I’ll forget to tell important things. I know it is better to be specific and personal rather than general. Sometimes when I’ve shared or posted I think I’ve done nothing but spew slogans in random order. I think talking about before OA will be easy; I have a lot of material to pick from there. Walking through the steps should also go pretty smoothly. I worry mostly about sharing how things are different for me now.

This is where I feel like a newbie. Sure I’ve lost 67 pounds and been abstinent for over a year, but there is still so much of my life that is chaotic. There are subtleties that are hard to explain. My depression still fluctuates and my meds are still a work in progress, but I recognize and respond to the dips quickly. My recovery is a growing collection of tiny victories: body, mind and spirit. Writing this my head is filled with things, but will I remember them later? Is that even important? Should I make a list?

• I feel like a person, not a freak in public. A longtime friend recently told me that she and her husband noticed that I *almost* blended in with the normal weight crowd dropping off kids at my nephew’s school. (I’m also able to take the positive from this back-assward compliment and not focus on the tactless insult.)

• I am maintaining balance better in emotions, finances, work and family
• Not controlled by food. At social gatherings I don’t spend most of my time thinking about food, even when it is outside my control like at wedding receptions. Nor do I plot binges to secretly eat the world when I leave such events.
• Eating three meals a day and no snacks has freed up a lot of time and energy. I feel relief and gratitude at night when my dinner is done. I’m done eating for the day, no more choices and no food hangovers.
• I’m gentler to myself and others.
• I go to work on time. Still struggle sometimes with procrastination once I’m there, but at least I’m there.
• I’m becoming more trustworthy. Mostly at this point I’m learning to trust myself.
• I have a fantastic support network now. When I start slipping people notice right away, usually before I’ve done any real damage.
• I feel valuable and loved.
• I’m not so afraid of emotional pain. I’m learning it will pass.

I feel better. No one will be grading me there. I’ll be talking with people who share my disease and understand. This is service and I will turn it over. Thanks.

Doing what my sponsor tells me to

I've been unable to find a speaker for tomorrow's first speaker meeting. Everyone has a conflict or isn't ready to do it. When I called my sponsor to tell her she told me I should do it. I said I didn't want it to be the "Kelly Show." She told me it was sort of expected that I would be the first speaker since I set up the meeting. I guess I'm qualified. I've been abstinent for over a year and I've completed the fourth step. I'm not sure how I feel about it. She said I shouldn't think too much about it.

She said I should pray first, then walk through the steps. Tell what it was like (before, when I was crazy and into the food), what happened (talk through each step I took), and what it is like now (how is life different). She said if I talk through all the steps it should take at least 30 minutes.

My instinct it to make an outline with speaking points, but she said I shouldn't. Not to obsess about it tonight and that she would pray for me at 7 o'clock. She goes to another meeting on Thursdays and is driving someone so she can't be there. I am sort of obsessing already. I don't want to screw it up.

I'm going to try to let it go and trust my higher power. I guess I should tell my sponsees.