Gotta Have Faith

So, George Michael song references aside, I am seeking faith these days. Tonight's OA meeting - which I had to drag myself to, by the way - focused on the second step, which is all about believing that a power greater than ourselves being capable of restoring us to sanity.

I realized something important tonight. I haven't gotten past the first step yet. I am having a lot of trouble finding faith in anything - whether it's the oft-evoked "God" or even the OA groups or programs themselves - partly because I still believe I can kick this addiction on my own. It's kind of a disturbing revelation, because the twelve steps and everything that accompanies them are based on an admission by the food addict that s/he has no power over food. But when I have days like this past Saturday, when I tried to eat "sensibly" - reasonable portions of foods I shouldn't be eating because they trigger me - and succeed by some fluke, I get the idea that I can do that sort of thing in the long run. I mean, it's not as though I've eaten myself to death already, despite having had this problem for fifteen or so years. So maybe I can control it?

I have a feeling that someday, maybe not too far off in the future, I'll look back at this post and the feelings and thoughts that created it and I'll laugh. Or maybe I won't laugh, but I will definitely shake my head. Because it's so ludicrous. I'm desperately out of control with food. I spent all day today wishing I could be eating everything in the world because I was feeling down and wanted comfort. I do not know how to self-soothe! Food has been the only thing that's ever worked.

But that's just it - it hasn't ever worked. My favorite part of the chapter on the second step in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous - heretofore referred to as the "Twelve and Twelve" - is the following passage:

"The more we ate the more we suffered, yet we continued to overeat. Our true insanity could be seen in the fact that we kept right on trying to find comfort in excess food, long after it began to cause us misery."

I read that aloud to myself the other night before bed, chuckling at the sheer RECOGNITION I felt when reading it. I've often thought about how paradoxical and ridiculous it is that the very thing I look to for comfort is slowly killing me, not to mention making me miserable a lot of the time. Interestingly, the leader of tonight's meeting pointed out that exact excerpt from step two, and I feel like it gets at the crux of why a lot of us have come to OA. We've been trying really hard to get better anyway we know how, but what we've been doing has not been working. It's been backfiring, big time.

A very wise professor of mine in graduate school, a therapist in practice over 16 years, once told me, "People change because staying the way they are is too painful." Surely this principle is what brought me to walk into my first OA meeting, and every one I've been to since. My search for faith is treacherous thus far because it's so integral to believing the program can work. It's integral to believing anything at all, I suppose, or at least anything that hasn't already materialized before me. I've always been the type who only believes things when she sees them; can I learn to act as if there was a higher power that could take my character defects and flaws and remove them? What about self-reliance and taking responsibility for my actions?

My head is spinning a little with regard to OA and recovery-related stuff. I mentioned that during sharing tonight. Other members said all they could say - keep coming back, recovery will come. Have faith, or act as if you do.

So now I'm left to fake it 'til I make it, I suppose. Will it work? Stay tuned...

Doubt

I haven't posted anything in a week, and I'm sitting here wondering why. The obvious answer is that I have wanted to avoid the self-reflection and critical thinking that go along with writing about my deepest, darkest fears and secrets. Keeping up the lie I've been telling myself for a long time now - that everything is okay, that I am not, in fact, a food addict, that I will wake up one day and be able to control portions, etc. - takes far less effort than does a "searching and fearless moral inventory," which is what OA and other twelve-step programs recommend. The searching and fearless moral inventory doesn't come until a later step, and I am waterlogged at step 2 right now (more on that in a moment), but I guess I feel like until I begin that process, I will not understand my own recovery in concrete terms. Everything will be abstract.

According to The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, step 1 is as follows: "We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable." Now, you'd think that by entering an OA meeting, a person has tackled step 1. But the truth is, I have been attending meetings regularly for a little over a month now, and I'm just now coming to terms with the fact that I am powerless over food. It's so easy and so seductive to think and believe that I am not, in fact, powerless, which is an uncomfortable and strange state to be in, but that I simply haven't learned to control myself. I'm starting to get it now - I have no fucking control over food, certain foods especially. It is cunning, baffling, and powerful, just like the OA literature says. I don't know that I completely believe yet that I am powerless, but i'm working on it. I'm getting there.

So maybe I'm not yet to step 2, which is: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Yeah, no, I'm not there yet. Maybe I'm a special case, because I've grown up in a religiously lax household, never being made to believe in much of anything spiritual. I'm also a devotee of logic, rationality, practicality - even though I have a creative writing background and my career field is social work, I've always relied on science to tell me the "hard facts," the inalienable truths. I guess you could say that if I can't see it, I've rarely believed in it.

But I have come, in the past several years, to understand that life is not a big, random mess of chaotic atoms bumping against one another in the ether. In order to make sense of my life and the lives of those close to me, I have begun to imbue certain turns of events with meaning. I don't really believe in coincidence, for example. I believe that everything happens for a reason (or at least I want to believe this). Is it coincidental, for example, that my best friend and my mom both went searching for love online and both found partners who ended up living a block away from them or less? No, I don't think it is. I think that the universe works in mysterious ways. So in the few times that I've prayed in the last few weeks, following the advice of fellow OA-ers, I've addressed the universe, the Life Force Energy, the cosmos as God. That's where I see him/her/it/them.

So maybe I've acknowledged, in some situations, that there is probably a power greater than myself. I've even gone so far as to contact that power and ask to know its will for me. And I must say, the couple of times that I've gotten down on my knees and prayed to know God's will, it's occurred to me within mere hours of the prayer itself what God's will is. I don't hear divine voices speaking to me, but I do have realizations, or a-ha! moments, if you will. God does speak to me, somehow.

But can I acknowledge and truly believe that this higher power can restore me to sanity? I guess I'm dealing with a lot of doubt and shame and guilt and all manner of other [largely self-imposed] obstacles. Should I pray to God that I begin believing more strongly in God? Does that even make sense? Sheesh.

I recently purchased some OA literature, and among my purchases was a small white book called For Today. September 16's short "for today" thought is this: "Just as truth freed me of my obsession with food, so it can free me of other living problems. I am not afraid to seek the truth." If I repeat this enough out loud, will it be true?

All About Food

As promised, I'm going to list some of my biggest trigger foods. The impetus for doing this is not only the fact that I talked about it last night in my post, but I also had a showdown with a trigger food earlier today. (I lost - Food 1, Sarah 0). More on that after the list.

Sarah's Trigger Foods:
Donuts
Pizza
Candy (every kind, but candy bars in particular)
Bread-like items made with white flour
Cereal
Cake/cupcakes
Pie
Chocolate [chips, bars, you name it]
Cookies
Potato chips
Ice cream
Snack cakes
Pasta
Cheeseburgers
Sandwiches
Mexican food in general
Indian food in general
Bagels
Cream cheese
Sour cream
Whipped cream
Butter
Salad dressing
Cheese

That's not an exhaustive list, because I remember other ones from time to time while I'm doing other things. But that's a start. What I mean by "trigger food" is that I can't eat the foods listed above in moderation. I am addicted to them. I react to them differently than other people do. If you hand me a donut, something snaps in my head, and I eat it, but while I'm eating it, all I can think about is how to get more donuts. If there aren't any, eventually the feeling of searching urgency will wear off. But if there are more, I will probably eat some of them. If I am left to myself, I will eat them until I feel uncomfortably full. And then I will feel ashamed.

"Abstinence" in OA means, in part, abstaining from eating these trigger foods, which each individual must identify for him/herself. I probably could have listed off my trigger foods years ago, before the inkling to actually start a program of recovery from food addiction ever entered my mind. That's largely because these foods have triggered me for a really long time.

Today I drove to northern Indiana to spend some time with a new friend. I had eaten a Larabar for breakfast and was feeling confident that I could carry over some semblance of abstinence from last night. I guess I should interject here and say that last night, I ate my first consciously abstinent meal. Yippee!

Anyhow, I had eaten a Larabar this morning and was feeling good. I ate a chicken caesar salad from Panera for lunch, which I am aware does not fit very neatly into the "abstinence" category because it contains cheese, white bread items (a French baguette and croutons), and salad dressing. However, I was thinking on my feet and felt hungry, so I'm not going to beat myself up too much about that.

When I was driving home at about 6 pm, I felt hungry and reached into my purse for the Luna bar I had brought. I ate that and drank some water, and knew that I would probably be hungry when I got home. I figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it. I went on for 50+ miles, feeling fine, and then realized I needed to stop for gas. When I went inside the convenience store thingy to use the bathroom, the candy bar aisle caught my eye. All those brightly-colored wrappers and packages were so enticing, mostly because they signified the comfort nestled inside of them. I grabbed two Fast Break bars (king size) and before I knew it, I was back on the road, eating them.

How can I describe the feeling of overeating, as it happens? It's intoxicating, I suppose, and I don't really mean that in a good way. It feels like I'm stuffing down my feelings so I can't even access them anymore. They're untouchable and that's for the best, I figure. Of course, these thoughts aren't actually going through my mind while I'm compulsively overeating, but they're clear as day when I look back on the act. It's the most painful thing I've ever done, and I do it to myself, the person I should love and cherish and care for most. This addiction is, in the words of OA literature, cunning, baffling and powerful.

Salutations

My name is Sarah and I'm a compulsive overeater and food addict.

If this was a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous, the other group members would say, "Hi Sarah" in unison. It has a calming effect, and whether or not you believe me, these people know my struggle and they care about me. It's as simple as that: we share an affliction and we share the desire to recover.

Don't worry, I'm not as preachy as I sound right now. I have my doubts about Overeaters Anonymous (heretofore referred to as OA), even though I've been going to meetings for about a month now. Actually, I should rephrase. I have very few doubts about the program itself; I have multitudinous doubts about my ability to follow it and experience serenity, recovery, and a spiritual awakening. I feel daunted and overwhelmed, and I struggle against my own resistance every single day. It's the beginning of a long journey, one that I think will take my whole life. I will never be rid of this disease, but I hope to learn to cope with it. I want to stop letting food run my life.

Now for some background information. I'm 24 years old and I weigh 313 pounds. In July of 2008, shortly after I graduated college, I weighed 338 pounds. How did I lose 25 pounds and keep them off? Exercise, exercise, exercise. In June of 2009 (last summer), I began exercising 5 times per week. That turned out to be too much to sustain for very long, so after a couple of months, I dropped down to 3-4 workouts per week. When I say workout, I mean WORKOUT - these days, a normal gym visit includes 55 minutes of cardio and fat burn, 10+ minutes of weight training, and 5-15 minutes of core-strengthening exercises borrowed from Pilates and such. I sweat buckets. Some days I feel sore. But the truth is, I would lose my mind without exercise. It began as a self-care measure - I wanted my mind and body to be healthier - and some days it's just that. Other days, it's survival. I need those precious minutes of alone time. No one talks to me, I leave my phone at home, and I just withdraw into myself. It's great. Of course, there are days when I have to drag my ass to the gym and I hate every minute of it. Superwoman, I'm not.

I have so much I want to say by way of introduction, but I'll keep it short[-ish] for now. I've always, always been a big girl - I was a 10-pound baby! - so I've struggled with weight and size my entire life. Even when I wasn't heavy, per se, but rather just a broad-shouldered, muscular kid, doctors told me I had to lose weight. My parents told me I had to lose weight. A boy named Craig told me I was fat when I was in third or fourth grade and all I said was, "I know." Because that's the deepest truth I had about myself.

Eventually, these admonitions about fatness and weight loss created a self-fulfilling prophecy: toward the end of high school and the beginning of college, I really did become fat. I gained weight and just kept gaining it. I played basketball in grade school and even made the middle school team in seventh and eighth grades, but after that, I struggled to stay active. I had bouts of weight loss followed by periods of ballooning up to even higher weights. I felt hopeless, and I often still do.

When my weight broke 300, I was in college. I can remember calling my mom and crying, saying, "I can't believe I've let it get this bad." I blame(d) myself for the weight gain and felt like it was one of the worst things that could be happening to me. I continued to gain weight, though, and left college weighing in around 338 (as mentioned above).

I never thought I'd be a 300+ pound woman. I never wanted to be, and there are days when I wonder if I will ever escape the prison that is my body. I want to run, jump, and prance around like the young, vital woman that I am. Exercise and a 25-pound weight loss has helped me to become a lot more active, sure, but I have a long way to go. I don't see myself in my mind's eye as a seriously overweight person. I don't know who it is I'm seeing in the mirror sometimes.

Though I've spent the last several paragraphs talking about weight, this information is only meant to serve as an introduction to my life and my struggle. Weight is the tip of the iceberg for me. Food and my addiction to it are the main issues at stake here, and below those issues lie the deepest, darkest, ugliest things that dwell within me.

For those of you familiar with OA, the concept of living free of food addiction is called "abstinence." This can be likened to "sobriety" in Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, but because people can't live without food the way they can live without alcohol or drugs, the concept is altered slightly. "Abstinence" means eating reasonable portions - abstaining from overeating, basically - and abstaining from foods to which you are addicted. These are different for everyone, and I'll post a list of my "trigger foods" sometime. It's LONG. I had an appointment with a nutritionist last Friday and we discussed the appropriate amount of calories for someone who weighs what I do (and who is as active as I am) to eat in a day, as well as portion sizes and how to spread out the food so that my physical hunger is satisfied all day. I make the distinction here between physical hunger and emotional hunger because those of you who [over]eat emotionally or ever have know that you don't eat an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's in fifteen minutes because you're hungry. At least not usually.

So this visit to the nutritionist was the first step in determining what's called a "plan of eating," or a food plan. OA members generally commit their daily food plans to their sponsors every day; I'm not at that point yet, as I don't have a sponsor or a concrete plan, but I will get there.

That's all for now. There's so much to say; I'll need to keep up with blogging in order to say it all. Thanks for reading!