"it is about the food, until it is no longer about the food."

OK....just got back from my therapist & I need to write this down before I forget and get all confused. I need to determine an end weight for myself. I have been too restrictive with my food and I am also afraid of gaining weight. I was going to let my therapist decide for me, or a nutrionist. But my therapist suggested *I* need to make the decision for myself. I made it but didn't like it in her office so I have decided to revise it and commit to this.

I am at 180lbs now. I am committing to not gaining more than 5lbs or less than 20 lbs from that weight for the next 6 months. I am also not actively going to TRY and lose weight. I am going to keep my binge & trigger foods the same. But I will eat when I am hungry, within reason. I know that I will make mistakes and that is OK. If I see the scale start to slide up I need to work my program harder. I need to not starve myself. I need to not try and lose weight. I need to not gain weight. I should maintain....but weight loss is OK.

This is Amy again and I wanted to share the reaction of a boundary I set with my mother. It helps to talk about this.
TV used to be my second best friend, with food being my BFF (best friend forever!) My two best friends and I spent a lot of time together. We spent time with another good friend of mine, my mother.
My mother and I would often watch junk t.v. & eat junk food. "WE" had special t.v. shows which would call for a binge. One of these shows was a television show called Big Brother. It's a reality show where they stick a whole bunch of strangers in a house with no entertainment and with challenges. They get bored, scheme & obsess, stab each other in the back, binge eat & exercise, have sex, and cause trouble for one another. I thoughourly enjoyed the show pre-recovery.
As my recovery progresses I watch very little television. What I do watch is more high brow programming or learning channel stuff. I stay away from sexually explicit material, news & depression causing material, I try to stay enlightened. Well the new Big Brother season was getting ready to start. My mother (whom I live with) was so excited she went out and bought an HDTV and got Showtime so she could see the new show Big Brother after dark which is on 3 hours a night!! It shows stuff they can't show on t.v. like cursing & nudity. I began to think about it. 3-4 hours of televsion I would feel required to watch a day. Hanging out with my mother who is definately a trigger personality. Being exposed to less than healthy behavior....this stuff is no longer for me.
The night the show was to begin I was actually agonizing over it. My mother called me a minute before it began...."come over, it's getting ready to start!". I said (actually, my HP said...because I am not that strong) "Actually, television isn't a healthy behavior for me. This show in paticular isn't. I'm not going to watch this season."
She was taken aback. It has probably been a month and I have not watched one episode, and believe it or not, my life is just fine!!!! Hmmmmm, I survived.
Well yesterday my mother let me know how she feels about it. It's a long boring story but she did something to the television so that I cannot control what tapes on my t.v. (I do like to tape & watch some healthy television shows....particularly about obesity). She let me know that she will be controlling the taping of all television shows, including what tapes on my t.v., as I no longer watch liking television. (See the addict black & white thinking there?) She was literally spitting as she said this, seething with anger. There was such visiousness and hate in her voice it really took me aback.
I realize that as a co-dependent and addict herself she has a lot to deal with. I am her only friend, besides food and television. It must be very scary for her right now. I am growing up (finally) and seperating from her. She must feel the umbilical cord being ripped from her.
I cannot control her. If she feels it neccessary to exert such control over me I can only let go and let God. Thankfully I can live without television now. And every single incident like this reminds me why it is so vitally important for me to keep my recovery, grow up, and seperate from her. Unbeknowst to her everytime she acts out like this I move farther and farther from her. Usually this means she will act out more, and violently. This is the way of children...even when they are sixty years old. But eventually (with time and patience) they do learn not to cross boundaries.
Yesterday I left the house. I had a bag with a present I bought for my father on my desk. When I got home it had been moved and obviously opened. My mother came to my room to ask how my day was. I asked her if she had opened the bag. I did not care if she saw what was in the bag...I cared that she had once again invaded my privacy. She said she had and that she knew it was OK for her to look because it was for my father, and gee it was cute. (My father, whom she hates, have been divorced for 25 years). I just looked at her, you know....a LOOK! Then I sat down to my computer, and began to ignore her. I do not need to react to this violation. I will not act like a child and yell or lash out. I need to remember this incident as one of the many, many reasons I will not be staying with her until the day she dies. If she wants to have a relationship with me, she will behave like an adult and respect my boundaries, or she will not have me in her life. Until I can leave I will pray for her as I would pray for any sick friend, as the BB says.

Definition of obsess from The American Heritage Dictionary of The English Language New College Edition.

Obsess - To harass or beset like an evil spirit; haunt as a fixed idea, besiege
Obsession - The state of being beset or actuated by the devil or an evil spirit
Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or unwanted feeling or emotion, often with symptoms of anxiety
A Compulsive, often unreasonable, idea or emotion causing such preoccupation

Has there ever been a better definition of food obsession?

My Last Binge

I had been dieting on my own for about six months and doing pretty well. When I say I had been on my own I mean sans OA and the fellowship. I was not desperate enough yet to go back there! How humiliating that would be. I was too proud. I didn’t need anyone. I could do this on my own. I had proven it….I was losing weight and “abstinent” for six whole months!

The bingeing actually began several weeks before it started. If that is hard to understand…let me explain. The binge started in my mind as I stood in front of the frozen food section of the natural foods department of my local grocery store. There in front of me was an entire freezer full of soy and tofu ice creams. Ice cream is my number one, all time, major binge food. I had not partaken of it in six months. I was clean. But in that moment something in my brain snapped. Perhaps my fellow shoppers heard the pop. In that moment I reasoned that soy ice cream was a health food – and therefore OK to eat occasionally. After all, here was the proof; these sugar filled treats were in the healthy foods section. Would a supermarket lie to me??? Looking back I can see this was the beginning of my last binge.

At first I tried to measure out the servings. But quickly 1 pint (the whole package) became 1 serving for me. I was counting calories so 1 pint was an entire meal (very healthy huh?) I began the daily trip to this particular supermarket to pick up my daily pint. It was a half hour trip to the market from work, and a half hour back. A one hour round trip to obtain the object of my desire, my love, my new higher power. Soon I was getting two pints a day, one pint to eat while I worked, one pint for my supper at home. Then it was three pints a day. I needed a pint to eat on the way back from the market (while driving!) Then it was four pints a day that I NEEDED. After all, I needed a pint to tide me over on the drive home from work.

While on my daily trip to the market, supposedly for my lunch….I needed to pick up something healthy to eat in front of my co-workers. After all, I didn’t want them thinking I had some kind of problem. I would also purchase a large salad from the salad bar. It would be big enough for a family of four. I poured a quarter of a bottle of olive oil on I and loaded up with desserts from the bar for my “healthy” lunch. It was a necessary purchase as I couldn’t come back from the market everyday with only four pints of sugary treats – that would be insane! No, the fat filled salad proved I was perfectly normal.

Within weeks my addiction spiraled out of control. I was buying several pints of tofutti and soy ice creams everyday along with my thousand calorie salad, potato chips, 2-4 supersize McDonalds shakes with two supersize fries & the two-for-one apple pies, two twelve inch subs from subway, and a pizza pie from the local joint. All of this was eaten in my car as I could not allow anyone to see the volume of food I was eating.




The piece de resistance of my daily binge however, was the ice cream cake. It served eight, unless of course, you were me, in which case it was a daily serving. I was a compulsive overeating genius….managing to hide it in my closet until I could be alone at night to eat it. Only a compulsive overeater could manage to keep an ice cream cake in the closet without melting.

I was spending $50-$100 a day on my binges. All of this started because I thought I could handle a healthy treat. All because I forgot I am a compulsive overeater and food addict – and that I am powerless over my binge foods. Well, I guess there is nothing wrong with a little healthy food experimentation, right? This round of bingeing cost me a lot of money, self-esteem, and a 75lb weight gain. But in the end it is that last binge cycle that sent me into a spiral of desperation. That desperation sent me back to OA, back home. When I came back to OA I weighed 333lbs exactly. I was distraught to find all the OA meetings in my area had closed. Thankfully I found online meetings at the OA website www.oa.org. That first online meeting I attended I found a sponsor and got abstinent. I have been abstinent ever since. It has not always been easy. Getting clean and sober was hard. Detoxing was tough! I have easy days, not so easy days, and days I want to say to hell with abstinence and program. I keep coming back though….and I have maintained abstinence. I started meetings in my local area and attend new meetings that start. Now I have online friends and a local fellowship. Everyday I attend a meeting, make or take a call, read OA literature, call my sponsor, speak with a sponsee, do service or write on my recovery, I am saving my life. It is like putting money in the bank…adding time to my lifespan, storing the serenity. I need to remember that last binge, lest I forget and think once again, I need a sugary treat. I still have the markings on my closet wall from that last birthday ice cream cake (boy, I had a birthday every day!). I need to see it to keep my memory green. I cannot tell you how glad I am to remember that last binge. As long as I can remember it, it will be the last one. Over a year later and down to 180lbs life is worth living again.

Amy

My Declaration of Independence


When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the ties which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and the Laws of the Goddess and God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women and men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Rules and Boundaries are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from their Creator, -- That whenever any Tyrant becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right and Duty of the oppressed to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Rules and Boundaries, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Rules and Boundaries long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly and all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the insanity and death of an individual under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty , to throw off such Tyranny, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of Armena Amy Marie; and such is now the necessity which constrains her to alter the relationship between Her and Ed. The history of the tyrant Ed is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over Armena Amy Marie. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Ed has caused me oceans of tears and pain unmentionable.

Ed has caused me to abuse my body. Ed destroyed my metabolism with yo-yo dieting. Ed ruined my bowels by causing me to abuse laxatives. Ed did cause me to become a drug addict while pursuing ways to maintain my weight. Ed did cause me to gorge until I developed pancreatitis and destroyed my organs irreparably. Ed did cause me to gain hundreds of pounds which left me permanently scarred with stretch marks and excess skin. This will necessitate expensive and dangerous surgery to repair leaving me further scarred. Ed did cause me to ruin my teeth by purging.

Ed caused me to gain hundreds of pounds of fat. This fat caused me misery, heartache, and decimated my self-esteem. I became an asexual blob mired in self-hatred because of Ed.

Ed did cause me to suffer decades of clinical depression requiring treatment and medication.

Ed did hereby cause me to attempt suicide both slowly and torturously and the immediate solution..

Ed did cause me to go bankrupt and to be indebted because of the pursuit of food.

Ed did cause me to violate my own morals and belief systems via stealing, lying, and the giving of my body to pursue love and affection.

Ed caused me to feel unloved and unworthy of love.

Ed caused me to feel damaged.

Ed caused me to pursue food, an inanimate object, over and above all things including relationships, love, happiness, security, and friendship.

Ed has caused me to forsake friends, fiancées, and lovers.

In every stage of these Oppressions I have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. My repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. This man Ed, is not fit to be friend or ally to my person. I have attempted time and time again to negotiate circumstances to our relationship and provide protection for myself. Ed has been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. I must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, and denounce my Separation, and hold Ed, an Enemy in War.

I, therefore, appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of my intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of myself & my Maker, solemnly publish and declare, that my Person is and of Right ought to be Free and Independent, that I am Absolved from all Allegiance to ED, and that all political, social, emotional, physical, and metal connections between them be Severed. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, I pledge to my Higher Power my Life, my Fortune, and my sacred Honor.