Can it be possible that OA is changing my relationship with food?
Hi everybody. I continue to get so much help from this forum, and am so grateful to all the members.
I’m 35 days abstinent again, thank God. I truly have the strong sense of being carried by the programme and the Higher Power, because I’m also caffeine free for 28 days and it’s having a big impact on my abstinence. This is just for me, because I have good friends in OA who can happily drink coffee with no ill effects. But coffee for me seems to feed my triggers. After the initial horrible withdrawal, about 10 days – savage headache, nausea, disorientation and feeling cold all the time - I came out the other end feeling that I was unclawing myself from something I did not even know I was hanging onto so tight. I feel free and clean and my cravings for sugar have diminished so much.
Today I’m struggling. I’m tired – did more exercise yesterday than I had done in a while and busy at work, school etc. I’ve an essay to write before lunchtime today. The nasty demon in my head keeps telling me to go get a large black coffee down the street for INSTANT alertness. But I won’t. And my HP is on call a lot so that I stay safe.
OA is a wonderful fellowship. The 12 steps give me so much hope. I’m only 35 days binge free, but this time something feels different. My food choices are so strongly based on health and energy and how I will feel after eating such-n-such a food. It seems I am simply not willing to pay the price for COE anymore. I am getting through difficult situations without turning to my old lifelong quick-fix. The fix that didn’t fix, but I was fixated on believing it did fix – essence of insanity for me.
I’m also deeply aware that I am not ‘doing’ this. I practise step 3 every morning, hand my day over to my Higher Power. Why do I do that? Because it has been proven to me, again and again and again, through every miserable overeating episode, that I cannot heal from this on my own.
But when I reach out, I stay abstinent. Last week I had a nasty winter cold, and that could have sent me flying to food (normal people don’t eat much when feeling poorly, I do the opposite). Anyway, I used the tools, wrote, called members, napped, moaned about how sorry for myself I felt, but I did not pick up the food.
My food is just so clean and simple right now, and that seems to be how I like it right now. I’m not complacent, food could start twinkling at me at any moment. But abstinence feels more natural, which is why I ask is OA changing my relationship with food.
Wishing you all well, one day at a time.
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