FOOD FOR THOUGHT - OA OCTOBER

[MajestyJo]

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

You are reading from the book Food for Thought

Food Is Not Home

Breaking abstinence may be an attempt to go home emotionally. Since we associate food, and especially certain foods, with early experience, we may turn to food when we crave the emotional support of home.

Perhaps our early home life did not provide the emotional support and security we needed, causing us to attach a false significance to the food, which we were given. The habit of turning to food and eating as a substitute for love, acceptance, and security may be deeply ingrained in our psyche. We may have come to depend on food instead of people to satisfy our emotional needs.

The problem is, of course, that food is not a satisfactory substitute for love and acceptance. However much we eat, the emotional satisfaction will be only temporary and soon disintegrate into despair and self-hatred. The home we crave can best be built here and now by working the OA program and loving the people our Higher Power gives us to love today.

May I realize that food is not home.

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.