FOOD FOR THOUGHT - OA OCTOBER
 

Just for today, I ask that I have self-honesty, without the justification and rationalization of my addiction that allows me to cover up my habits with denial.

When my faith waivers, it is because I forget to ask and do my part.

The program doesn't work without commitment. As it says in AA's Big Book, half measures avails you nothing. What good is one foot in the door and the other one outside.

What good is eating a healthy meal and dinner and raiding the refrigerator at night? Commitment is honesty!!!

It sure makes a difference when you have a support group to help you when you are going through rough times. It is especially helpful to have a friend and/or a sponsor, or a sponsor and a friend, to go through things with. You don't have a person to get one opinion and another person to have another opinion, and then you chose the person, who tells you what you want to hear. It is good to get input, but the decision has to be yours. Friendships can be spoiled by comparing instead of identifying. Take the person for who she/he is, not who you would have them be.

Love this! In order to give, we have to become a giver. In order to be honest, we have to become honest. In order to eat healthy, I have to be willing to want to be healthy and willing to make healthy choices. I believe there is a saying that you can't put something healthy and good into something that is not 'healthy' because it gets absorbed by the rot! Not a very pretty picture, but unfortunately vry true.

As my sponsor said, "You need to clean up your body, mind, and spirit, not that kind of spirit."

http://angelwinks.net/images/animated/animated211.gif

God doesn't go away, we do. What came to mind was the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4a_1UhwgFU

There are healthy fears, they are manageable with God at our sides when we walk in faith and stay clean and sober. Sobriety is clean and sober and I look at my food addiction the same way as I did my alcohol abuse. I didn't have soundness of mind when I used food to deal with my feelings and issues at hand. The thoughts of more were applicable to food, pills, alcohol, attention, etc. always feeling like I never had enough.

Fear is a normal feel, it is how we handle it that makes the difference. Eating a carton of ice cream or a bag of chips is not the solution. God answers knee-mail.

Had a wee smile when I saw this, I thought, "You don't have my memory."

One thing I found that with recovery, when I go to a meeting, everything is repeated, and if I listen, the words are there, and I am reminded and I don't have to rely on my own shortcomings.

When I turn my day over to my Higher Power, the words and thoughts are given to me, and if I am in tune with my God and living in the moment and not using things to escape reality, then I will learn and not have to repeat the old, and the new will be a natural part of my being.

So much of recovery is about changing our attitude. When we look at not eating our favourite foods as a healthy choice instead of punishment and a way of getting back at us or an act of revenge, we can heal.

This morning is a good example. I was hurting and I realized I was back playing the martyr, I had to do these darn readings, so I did all the greetings to everyone, instead of going right to what is important. The reading are a backbone of many people's daily recovery, and I was being a smuck! For that I am sorry, yet what goes around comes around. I got a head ache, I realized I hadn't had breakfast, I hadn't taken morning medication which has my Metformin for my Diabetis and my Ramipril which I think is for my blood pressure. So I had to take a time out and eat and now I have to wait for my head to clear, and hopefully what comes off my fingers is God's Will not mine. I am going on faith because I said the Serenity Prayer.

Something I must never forget. My God is only a prayer away. A thought is a prayer.

Just love that feeling deprived feeling, sure to take you to that next morsel every time. Doesn't matter whether it is wet, dry, powdered, and for me, I use to say, the flesh and blood variety, because I would look to a man and his attention to make me feel better, along with some chocolate. If he caused the deprived feeling, then it was more chocolate or some wine to go with it. I am so hard done by don't you know. Look at what HE DID TO ME! Nothing about me putting myself in the position to be deprived, looking for him to fix me, when it was my job in the first place.

This reminds me of what a friend said yesterday about repetition and same old, same old. It was his old grouse and I didn't say anything. Yet it is up to us, to take that risk and broaden our horizons, step out of that same old same old, strengthen our boundaries, and take a step forward and allow ourselves to become vulnerable. Forget what was and what had been, and remember that our God is with us, and we are armed with faith and the tools of recovery, and where ever our God takes us, He will guide and direct us through it. I didn't need bars, I was a prisoner of my own mind for years. I didn't like so it wasn't any good. I was fearful of tasting and of trying, I tried it once and didn't like it. I tried it once and got sick, never going to touch it again, and fear shackled us. So many scenarios, that with a little bit of imagination, a little bit of hope and investigation into new things and alternatives, we can get out of an old rut and try new things that are healthy.

The meaning of rigorous honesty: If it didn't hurt, you need to dig deeper and peel back a few more layers of the onion. I was told that recovery was peeling back the layers of the onion to find the real you. I am thinking now I was a dunderhead, but knowing I had Fibromyalgia, I probably did think of it back then and forgot it, bit had the thought NOW, why the onion? Because it stinks and represents all the stinking thinking and all the crap buried under the skin and all the lies, half truths, the lies by omission, and the ones that got pained up to look pretty you have trouble recognizing them. Self truth, not the ones you told to others but the ones you told yourself.

We wonder why we keep failing and we say the program doesn't work, when in fact we don't work the program. We try to God's Work for Him/Her, if we even given it to the God of our understanding in the first place. We may go through the motions, but in truth we truly don't let go and surrender.

This is something that we need to keep remembering, that cord has many roots to many things. We use it to justify and rationalize a lot of things, especially the one about "that is how my mother did it." It applies to many things and stretches to many things and is applicable to many body memories.

Hopefully, some of that has come across in my previous postings. They may have been labelled as JoAnne's things. ;)

Food became our god. The God of our understanding is all powerful and able to abstain us. The Bible says, "Thou shall not put any other 'gods' before me." Many times we places ourselves in that position, only to fail, and wonder why, not realizing that that it could all be put under the label of 'control' and the unwillingness to let go and let God. Seek God, and leave it with Him instead of taking it home with us. :(

Amen!

When I use other things to obtain from eating, other than going to my God and asking for His Strength and Courage, I am often depending on other things like our favourite TV show, a new book, and old book that once gave us that feel good feeling, a new movie, our significant other, our children, our job, and the list can go on and on. There is nothing wrong with having these things in our life, but it our mental attitude toward them, and are we using them to escape our reality and is our disease and are we acting out in our disease.

This is what I have had to do. I tend to be gung ho about something, and I am off like a dirty shirt, often with out a plan, and fly by the seat of my pants, and figure, "God will lead, when in fact, my God is sitting back shaking His head and saying, "Tsk, tsk! there she goes again, didn't she learn her lesson the last time."

Sometimes we forget we have body memories too!

I can't, God can!

Use to use this phrase to procrastinate. I can also use the statement to help not beat myself up and overdue and remember to not over due and remember the slogan, "Easy does it, but do it!"

I will to will Thy Will, not mine be done! Trying to make things happen doesn't make it happen any faster, in fact it is often a sure way to have everything collapse all around you because you haven't built on a firm foundation.

Again, I need to pray for the willingness to be willing.

When I came into recovery, I realized I didn't know what love was. All I knew was what love was not. So much of my life had been comprised of old tapes and abuse. I was told, "Let us love you until you can learn to love yourself." The only relationship you should be in, especially in your first year is with your Higher Power, your sponsor and yourself.

This reminds me that recovery is about a change in attitude. I need to change how I look at things and my attitude toward them. Not what is in it for me, but look at it and say, "Is this good for me."

When I see the words "abstinent meals" I get a picture of a fancy gourmet meal that you see on the cooking channel." It looks "Ladeeda" but always figured there wasn't much there, all fancy, and almost too pretty to eat and thought more before I even took a bite.

They say attraction rather than promotion, but it didn't work for me, I was a meat and potatoes kind of gal having been raised on a farm, and I wanted my meat, lots of potatoes swimming in gravy and/or butter. The veggies were there too because we grew them, but the farther I got from the farm, the more difficult it was for them to find their way to my plate.

I have trouble eating bread that is full of bird seed and veggies that look like grass that I use to feed the cows.

What I found it was the portion size and making healthy choices. Most things don't come out of a box or a can and if they do, reading labels as to the content. Eating fresh foods and as they say on the Food Network, support your local farmer. An ex-boyfriend gave me heck because I use to go to produce sections to see what was marked down at the back of the store.

Check those food that are white that turn to sugar like corn, that can raise your blood sugar. A treat is good, but don't spoil yourself rotten.

Remember that our disease is four-fold. What kind of food are we food are we feeding that part of our body?

Like that last line. How often we came home to the refrigerator. It wasn't about home and our loved ones, it was the refrigerator and the cupboards and what was in it that occupied our minds. What was there, what wasn't there, and and left very little space for anything else.

Food no longer has to rent space in our heads.

As the saying goes, "The truth with set you free."

Like this, keep telling myself, you had dinner, you had a busy day, you should be tired, it doesn't matter you are in pain and you overworked your feet, you should be sleeping.

This is now. I can't sleep, so why not do the readings if I can't sleep. If I don't sleep until later, I will miss out on breakfast, so best I have a muffin. I had dinner at 4 p.m. so it is normal to be hungry now at almost 4 a.m. and quit trying to fit life in and force things to go where they should be and just put them where they are happening in today. Duh!

Those spiritual gifts are priceless.