Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenniffer
This reminds me of a post I stumbled on at another club here...
"Eating addictions are one of the worst addictions as we need food to survive. You can avoid the drug dealers, bars, casinos, ect, but we all need food to survive. So what happens when you get tempted every day? You are told that one little piece of cake will not kill you. You have been doing well, so you decide to reward your self with something that is not o "your plan". And 1 meal turns into 1 day, a week, a month, a few years? Should drug addicts reward them selves with just one fix? If we set diet rewards with food that we should stay away from, we set the stage for failure. Food should not be used as an reward to an addict."
I wanted to comment on the idea that "we" have to eat to survive, but drug addicts/alcoholics can just turn their backs.
My friend is working her way through OA, and she showed me a little blurb she had been reading (this is a famous story, not a local one)(and this version is paraphrased, I don't have a copy of it with me):
A new member was listening at a meeting, and heard a woman say that she had been successful both in AA and OA. The new member thought that it must have been much easier to be successful in AA, because one doesn't need to drink to stay alive. At the end of the meeting, the new member expressed this opinion to the woman who had been speaking. That woman chuckled and said, "they were both very difficult. In some ways OA was harder."
The new member expressed disbelief, repeating the idea that you don't have to drink to live but you do have to eat. The woman who had been speaking smiled.
"I drink every day," she said, to the astonishment of the new member. "The difference is what I chose to drink. I also eat every day. I eat those foods that will help me, not those foods that will feed my disease."
The idea being, of course, that everything is a choice. Yes, we have to eat to survive. But do we have to eat sugar, desserts, fatty foods, white carbs, foods that trip our Binge Buttons? Are those the only foods available to us? Or can we chose those foods that help our bodies grow and stay healthy? An interesting thing to think about.