Eating Disorders - OA March 2014

[MajestyJo]

Saturday, March 8, 2014

You are reading from the book Food for Thought

"Normal" Eating

The idea that we will one day be able to eat spontaneously, like normal people, is a delusion. We compulsive overeaters tend to think that once we lose our excess pounds, we can go back to "normal" eating. Not so.

It is our experience that once a compulsive overeater, always a compulsive overeater. There is no way we will ever be able to eat spontaneously without eventually getting into trouble. When we reach our desired weight, we continue to eat three measured meals a day with nothing in between, and we continue to avoid entirely our personal binge foods.

When we accept our permanent need to abstain, when we accept the fact that we can never return to what we thought was normal eating, then we can stop making irrational attempts at experimentation which always fail. By accepting our disease and learning to live with it, we become sane and free. We see that our new eating plan is really very normal. It was the old compulsive overeating habit which was abnormal in the extreme.

Thank you, Lord, for sanity.

As they say, what is normal? A cycle on the washing machine. My attitude often says, "It all comes out in the wash!"

With my Fibromyalgia, sleeping disorder and chronic pain, my meals are not always regular. They have been better lately, but can still end up having breakfast at dinner time.

I have found a lot of it boils down to healthy choices and portion control. Always hesitate to use the word control, because of the saying, which is very true, "If you have to control it, it is already out of control."

Sanity isn't always a word that is applicable in some of my days.