Tag Archives: abstinence

Day 4 of Abstinence (round 4)

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I got back working with my sponsor and finished going over my resentments, fears, and sexual regrets. I still hold onto a few resentments and fears after discussing them with her, but was told to just ask my higher power for help with those on a daily basis. I started doing that before I meditate. I have meditated 4 days out of 7 this week, which is a marked improvement. I also did strength training 2/3 times this week. I meant to do it three days a week to start with, so I am happy that I was able to do what I did. I am enjoying that I have more time, even though my husband is now working some evenings, requiring me to make dinner, do dishes, and hang out with our son. And I still feel more relaxed because I have that extra time with our son and extra time at home.

I broke my abstinence this week. I broke it over two cookies and returned to my abstinence right away. It was sort of intentional and sort of unintentional. I work at a school. I discovered that their baked goods usually have a small enough amount of sugar that I can eat them in my abstinence. Many of the other foods are like that there too. They have Italian ices and soda made with fruit juice. They had cookies for sale, so I thought it might have been the case. It wasn’t. They were full of sugar. I thought about asking my sponsor whether or not that meant I broke my abstinence. I thought about it and realized that if I had to ask, I probably did. So I re-set my count again. I am on day 4 (again).

My husband and I have a movie night once a week. We watched a movie based on an anorexic girl. She was in a facility with other people with eating disorders. Most of the other girls in the facility were bulimic or anorexic. There was one “token” fat girl who was a binge eater. I started thinking about it. Why are there so many movies about anorexic girls and none about binge eaters? I would hazard to guess that there are many more overeaters out there, considering the average BMI in this country. It’s because people would rather look at skinny girls, even the ones that are all bones and clearly unhealthy, than look at a fat girl.

When the movie was over, my husband and I got into a discussion about anorexia. He was surprised about how much knowledge I had on the subject. I told him I used to be interested in it as a disorder — probably because it was the exact opposite. I wished I was able to just not eat and lose all of my weight. I even spent some time looking up their “tips and tricks” to not eating. I even stopped eating for a whole three day stretch. But because of my issues, I couldn’t keep it up. I suppose it’s a good thing in hindsight, but I almost wished for it for a while.

I am back down to 226lbs (the weight I was at before I broke my abstinence). I only have 6 more lbs to go before I get to my pre-pregnancy weight! I have 27lbs to go before I get under 200lbs (my current weight-loss goal). I am hoping to try for another child soon and am hoping to at least be under 200lbs by then!

OA Recover – Day 1 of Abstinence (round three)

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Last week was probably one of the longest and most stressful weeks I have had in a very long time. I was working 14 hour days plus trying to find time for myself and my 1 1/2 year old. I hadn’t spoken to my sponsor in about three weeks because I felt like I just didn’t have the time for it, but partially because I really got sick of sending her the same meaningless phrase each day stating that I would follow specific eating rules. Needless to say, on the day before my presentation, I broke my abstinence of over 90 days. I went home and broke down and cried to my husband. I decided to just ride it out, eat what I wanted for the next day, then get back on the OA bandwagon on Sunday.

As much as I hate that I broke my abstinence, I learned some valuable lessons. I learned how much my body hurt after binging on sugar. I also learned how all sugar seemed to taste the same after so long. I have never really used this phrase before, but everything I ate — cookies, brownies, chocolate bars, seemed too sweet.

I posted that I broke my abstinence and that I would start again two days later on an OA support group on Facebook. They just told me that it wouldn’t happen and that the “tomorrow mindset” never worked for anybody. Everybody assumed that I wouldn’t actually be abstinent the next day like I said I would. Well, I did. To be honest, it really bothered me that people didn’t have faith that I would do what I said I would do. To be fair, they were probably just judging me how they themselves would act. The next day, I got back on the abstinence bandwagon and discovered that I had gained 4lbs in those two days. I kept it up until later in the week I wanted a cookie. So I had a cookie and went right back to being abstinent. I am now questioning whether or not I really do have a problem with overeating or not.

I am currently on day 3 on my third round of abstinence. I contacted my sponsor, apologized for the long absence, and we got back to step work. I really don’t like how her response to almost everything is “let it go and give it up to your higher power”, but I am still willing to give it a try. She also seems to have forgotten that I am Pagan in that time. She referred to “Him” and I asked who she was referring to. She meant my higher power, but assumed it was male and singular (sigh). I didn’t lay into her about it, but it bothered me. Then she sent me another meme about “God” and I told her my higher power wasn’t necessarily singular or male and let it go. My first sponsor was Pagan, but required a higher level of accountability than I actually needed. I am still not sure about this one, but am doing the best I can!

OA Recovery: Day 69 of Abstinence

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I have been very busy with work lately. Unfortunately, it means that I have had to abandon my work on step 5 for the time being. Some people have told me that I am just making excuses, but I would like to spend the short time I am at home with my son. He is more important than my recovery. Also, my struggles with being so busy only will last until the end of the month. Since there is an end in sight, I plan to put off my remaining step 5 work until then. I am very stressed and don’t need the additional emotional stress from working step 5 right now.

I have discovered that there is a big difference between an eating plan and abstinence. Abstinence is just not eating my trigger foods. Following an eating plan is a whole other animal. I thought once I knew what I should eat, that I would eat it. After all, I have over 60 days of abstinence. It can’t be harder than cutting out sugary foods. Haha! It sure was! I have yet to have one day this week when I have completely followed my eating plan.

My daily eating plan is as follows:
– 1.5-3 cups of fruit
– 2-3 cups of vegetables
– 6-7 oz grains (half should be whole grains)
– 6 oz protein
– 2 cups dairy

I decided to break it down as follows:
Breakfast – 1 c. Cheerios with 1 c. low-fat milk and 1 c. yogurt
Lunch – a big salad with chickpeas and lots of veggies
Dinner – 4 oz grains (weighed out 4oz), 4 oz protein (weighed out 4oz), 1 c. vegetables
Snacks – 1 apple, 1 banana

This food plan seemed like to much and not enough at the same time. I never wanted to eat my lunch, so I didn’t. I love vegetables, but not salads. It also felt like dinner was too much food. I left the dinner table every night with a stomachache having eaten so much. Today I took a second look at the eating plan and realized I had been doing a few things wrong. One ounce of grains doesn’t necessarily mean literally an ounce. It often means a slice of bread or 1/2 cup cooked rice, pasta, or cereal. It was the same for protein. One ounce of protein meant 1 oz of lean meat, 1 egg, 1 tbsp peanut butter, 1/4 c. cooked beans, or 1/2 oz of nuts. Ack! That means I STILL haven’t been eating enough! So I need to figure out how I’m going to do all of that. I was also surprised that I had lost 3 lbs when I weighed myself for my weekly weighing. Maybe I wasn’t eating enough food before!

I spoke with a well-meaning woman who was telling me that eating plans like this aren’t sustainable because you will eventually miss eating certain foods and will end up eating what tastes good. She had a bit of a point about the low-fat dairy and the salad. However, I did okay with the rest of my eating plan. When I asked her what she eats, she just eats what tastes good and in reasonable amounts. While that’s great for her, I don’t feel like it would work for me right now at this point in my recovery. She also explained that OA is more about abstaining from trigger foods rather than following specific eating plans. I feel like I’m more confused than every about what I’m “supposed” to eat.

I also realized that one tool I really don’t utilize much is the phone calls/messaging/texting. I am used to being so independent and not trusting anyone. That’s something that has become worse for me in recent years. I am afraid to make new friends at this point. I am afraid of losing them like all of the ones that believed my ex-husband’s lies. I am also afraid of them finding out that I’m Pagan and me losing my job because of it. There is so much to fear.

OA Recovery: 40 Days of Abstinence

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I have decided not to return to that face to face meeting. I believe that it’s a really low-level meeting since only one person seems to have abstinence for any length of time and she was the one who told my husband to leave — at an open meeting. Some people argued that I should go and help raise up the level of the meeting. Some people thought I was not far enough along in my recovery to do something beneficial for that meeting. I thought that I didn’t have the time or energy to waste on a meeting with toxic people.

I am no longer really concerned about losing weight. Yes, I want to lose it, but focusing on the steps has kind of shifted my focus away from losing weight. I have lost 8.5lbs since January 1st, only by cutting out sugar. It’s kind of funny, this past week, my meals have kind of sorted themselves out. I have been finding regular foods to eat, I have mostly been packing my lunch, and I mostly know what foods I will be eating each day. I think it’s kind of ironic because I couldn’t really do it before. I guess I have just reached the right part of my recovery where it’s become easier for me!

I have now reached step 4 in my journey of overeating recovery. It requires that we make a moral inventory. I read through the chapter on step 4, which just gave a lot of reasons why this moral inventory was necessary. My sponsor also said that this is the point where people tend to disappear from OA. When I asked her why, she said it was because it’s too tough and too emotional and people tend to overeat as a result. It was a good reminder for me.

They call it a “fearless” moral inventory and stated that a lot of people are dishonest with themselves. I knew that the only real way I tend to be dishonest with myself was about food, so I assumed that this step would be easier for me. The OA book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions has a laundry list of questions that seemed quite daunting. My sponsor said she preferred the AA forms for that and e-mailed me three forms — one about resentment, one about sexual conduct, and one about fears.

My resentments took up two whole pages. I had a lot of people and institutions I held resentment towards. My gaslighting, emotional-abusing ex-husband took up almost half a page on his own. Other fall-out from that divorce, the friends I have lost over it, and things I stopped doing because he “ruined” the experience took up another half page. The rest were other times where I had mostly believed that I was wronged by other people. After writing in why I was angry, I had to “own” the resentment and figure out why it was my fault. I had some issues with this. I complained to my sponsor: how can I take responsibility for a gaslighting, emotional-abusing ex-husband and the friends that believed the lies he told them about our breakup!? I didn’t even realize that I was emotionally abused or gaslighted until over a year after our split. She said I should just write that I am at fault for holding onto it for too long. I did that for a while. Then I realized that I trusted people too blindly and expected too much of these people who were clearly not my friends. Then I re-read the chapter saying that this step is supposed to help me trust people again. Wait, what!? I had just come to the conclusion that I had trusted people too much.

The rest of my resentments were a mish-mash of issues — everything from being upset that my sister wants to live across the country (because I love her and I miss her), someone who denied me a scholarship even though I was the only one who met the requirements for it, a friend who was a pathological liar, a friend who broke off the friendship claiming that I was using her, all of the schools that fired me for being Pagan, etc. Anyway, I was hurting inside to relive all of these episodes where people and institutions made me angry. I didn’t overeat or eat any sugary foods, but once my husband knew I was upset and he was very helpful about trying to make me feel better.

The remaining two lists were comparatively easier. One great thing about being Pagan is that sex is part of the religion (“all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals”), so we don’t get shamed for having sex. I feel no shame for it. However, there were a few times where I didn’t say “no” with enough conviction when I was still healing from the emotional abuse. There were sometimes when I used my sex appeal to help me feel better about myself significantly earlier in my life, sometimes giving guys the wrong idea. Honestly, the sex section really only had 6 entries.

I was glad that I saved the fear section until last. Thinking about my resentments, I have a lot of fears due to them. A fear of not being good enough. A fear of rejection. A fear that no community would ever accept me being Pagan. I pushed to get these all done in one day so I didn’t have to feel bad for two days in a row. I asked what was next and my sponsor said I had to read step 5 and discuss my answers with her. I read chapter 5, which seemed to outline why it was important to share my lists with another human being. Both my sponsor and I agreed that we would save that for next weekend.

Recovery – 33 Days of Abstinence

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I got started with a new sponsor. She seemed to be very thorough and to-the-point (which I like). She gave me a list of eating behaviors and asked which ones I did. She then gave me a bunch of rules that I needed to follow in addition to abstaining from sugar. I don’t remember all of them because many were non-issues for me. The ones I do remember are: don’t eat standing up, eat slowly, do not do anything else while eating (like play on your phone or watch tv), do not take seconds, do not hide your eating, do not eat in the car, and only weigh yourself once a week. I argued for weighing daily and for our movie night once a week where we share a big bowl of popcorn. She was willing to allow movie night, but not weighing more often than once a week. She did not ask that I provide her with my food ahead of time and seemed to trust that I was following the guidelines, which I was. There was one exception, but I figured it wouldn’t count. I wanted a banana for a snack. However, my son loves bananas and would want one if he saw me eat it. We only allow him one banana a day because they make him constipated and he already had one that day. So I ate a banana while standing and hiding so my son wouldn’t put up a fuss (he’s only one and a half).

With this new sponsor, I was flying through the steps. She had me read each step in the book and then discuss the step with her. There seemed to be some pivotal questions to answer and then I was onto the next step. Today I reached step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”  I knew I would have to deal with this eventually. I prayed and meditated for weeks hoping to find a deity willing to take on me and my recovery. Instead, I was met with silence. I finally decided to use “my-best-and-highest-self” or “Goddess-within-me” as my higher power. I’m glad I did, because when I thought about turning my will and life into the care of an outside deity, I think I would have had a more difficult time doing it. Instead, I could definitely turn my will and life over the best version of myself. Gods know, I am certainly not the best version of myself right now, but she is in there somewhere.

I attended my fourth meeting today. I had even convinced my husband to attend (albeit in the back). He has eating issues but is still convinced he can handle them on his own. Even so, he was curious about what happened at these meetings. He was called out at the beginning of the meeting for not being part of it. The woman who did this was the only sponsor in the room (what a great example). She claimed she was concerned about anonymity (even though this was an open meeting) and told him to go sit in another room. I was annoyed but stayed because I am abstinent for 33 days today and was looking forward to getting my coin for 30 days of abstinence.

The meeting continued with their usual announcements at the beginning, including “children are welcome so long as they are supervised”. My 1.5 year old son was there, giggling, running around and smiling at everyone. He was never an issue before. In fact, I was told to bring him back because he was a sweet boy. Now I am not one of those parents who is deluded in thinking that my terror of a son is a sweet boy. My son did not scream or cry. He didn’t even babble much and when he did it wasn’t that loud. They asked if my husband could look after my son. I said he could for today, but that there were days when I would have to bring him. I brought my son to my husband in the other room who suggested we leave. I agreed with him and started crying because I really felt unwelcome. One woman came out and apologized for the others and begged me not to give up OA because of it. I told her I didn’t intend to, but that I wasn’t going to drive an hour to go to that meeting again either. I was livid. There were no other meetings within an hour drive of me (except for the ones that met when I was at work). I never did get my coin.

I received a phone call from one of the members of the meeting about an hour later. Apparently after I left, they were all discussing how they could have handled it better. They decided to add language at the beginning of the meeting to mention that all who were interested in OA were welcome at the meeting. Unfortunately, they also changed the language at the beginning of the meeting from “all children are welcome if they are supervised” to “all children are welcome, but they must be in a different room from the meeting.” There is no way in hell I’m putting my one and a half year old in another room by himself (or with another child). So basically I can only go when I had child care, meaning my husband would stay at home with him when he could. That also meant that he could not come to meetings with me. I am very angry that this happened. I resent them for the way they treated my family today. I also resent them for changing the rules so I could no longer attend regularly. I am told that the next step is all about resentments, so this next step should be fun.

I Think I’m A Compulsive Overeater

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I have been thinking a lot lately about my eating behaviors and how I have struggled time and again to follow an eating plan — any eating plan. It wasn’t that big a deal before. I blamed hypothyroidism and having a baby. To be fair, both contributed greatly to my current weight. Even so, I thought about how finding sweets, especially chocolate, to snack on almost seemed like a need. With my cholesterol how it is, following a diet may literally be the difference between life and death and I couldn’t even stick with it for two weeks. That’s when I realized that I had a problem.

My specific abnormal food behaviors are as follows:
– I eat when I’m not hungry
– There are times when I eat so much that I feel sick
– I have feelings of guilt, shame, and embarrassment over the way I eat and the way I look
– I eat sensibly in front of others and make up for it when I’m alone
– My eating is affecting my health
– My eating behaviors are making me unhappy
– I have tried fasting or severely restricting my food to try and lose weight
– I have eaten food that was very stale
– There are certain foods that I can’t stop eating after I have the first bite
– I have lost weight by following a diet, only to gain it all back by binge eating
– I spend too much time thinking about food and planning my next diet

After some internet searches, I found the Overeaters Anonymous website. I took their quiz and found that I had about half of the abnormal food behaviors on the list. I looked for some meetings in my area. The closest ones were 40 minutes away and happened at 10am on two weekdays a week. Wtf, do they expect only housewives to have this problem!? I found an online meeting group and an online support group. I posted there, explained that I was new, told them about my problem, and asked for advice. The advice was to get some of the literature, attend a meeting, and find a temporary sponsor.

The book and workbook came in and I found a Pagan sponsor! I was excited about this because it’s tough to trust in a higher power when I believe in so many. I was hoping since she understood the nature of Paganism, she would be able to help me with this when the time was right. I read the first two chapters of the book and really related with a lot of it. My sponsor asked me a lot of questions. I was surprised at the answers to some of them. One of them was that I was scared to start. After a lot of thinking and soul-searching on the topic, I discovered that I was afraid to give up sugar. i was afraid of never tasting it again. And that never tasting some of the foods that I really loved saddened me. I realized then that must be how an alcoholic feels about taking a drink. I understood in that moment that I truly am an addict — to sugar.

Over the holidays, we visited a number of people and I watched myself closely. My son is starting to notice these patterns and behaviors in me. My mom had a bowl of mini-m&ms set out. I kept going back for handful after handful. Every time I did, my son would hear my hand in the bowl and ran over asking for “more”. He’s learning my eating behaviors from me by watching me. I tried to control myself for his sake and failed. I kept going back for more and more m&ms. She must have kept refilling them because the bowl was never empty. I had a similar issue at my mother-in-law’s house with my favorite cookies.

Because of this, my sponsor and I decided that I should start by abstaining from sugary foods. Out of the four days I tried, I succeeded one. I suppose that was a huge success, but I felt like a failure. I am feeling a little lost in the process at the moment.