A Way to Freedom

I used food as a drug when I used food:

to relax me
to put me to sleep
(Ironically) to keep me going, when I feel tired
to calm me, when I feel angry
to fill me, when I feel needy
to be with, when I feel lonely
to defend, when I feel hurt
to sate me when I feel sad
to lessen my frustration

I use it to celebrate all major holidays and occasions:

Fourth of July
Christmas
Thanksgiving
Memorial Day
Veteran’s Day
Labor Day
Easter
Martin Luther King’s birthday
Mothers’ Day
Father’s Day
Juneteenth
My fiancee and I’s Month-aversary
My daughter’s birthday
My daughter’s graduation
Granddaughter-in-laws birthday and graduation

Res ipsa loquitur

Politically correct, self-nurturing, non-shaming, non-blaming, non-controlling, non-self-hurtful consequences of using “Food as a drug” Inventory:

acne
big belly
heavy hips
droopy breasts
eye bags
rough skin
heavy pumping of breath when I walk upstairs
flesh ‘burning’ at the top of my inner thighs when I walk
night sweats
sleep apnea
restless leg syndrome
can’t see my genitals when I look down cause I am so fat (guys only)
rolls of fat
spare tire (set of radials)
fear of being naked
Oprah wings
dropped butt
heart hurts when exerting effort
buttons bursting on shirt
shame when I have to weigh in at the doctors office
shame when I get my driver’s license renewed
shame when I have to sit in a middle seat on an airline flight
body stink when I sweat
muscles ache
arthritis flairs in knees and lower back
respiratory congestion (nasal passages, bronchia, lungs)
headaches
stomach protrudes
eyes bag
skin splotches
nausea
breathing is taxed
numbness
mind is thick and muddled
head, cheeks, arms, hands, thighs, calves, feet and groin all feel stretched out and achey…like I have had an allergic reaction

Politically correct, self-nurturing, non-shaming, non-blaming, non-controlling, non-self-hurtful consequences of from eating too fast:

Choking
Coughing
Gagging
Burping
Expelling gas
Making my stomach rumble
Biting the inside of my mouth
Biting my tongue
Guzzlin’ water

Kooky ways to manage food:

Bite off tops with my teeth
Dropping my food on the floor (even if I don’t pick it up)
Not using utensils
Not using plates
Standing up eating
Eating while walking
Eating while on the phone or internet
Eating food that is too cold or too hot, frozen or burnt

One of the differences between a food addiction and an eating disorder is the potential for choking.

Here are some folks who didn’t know what an Eating Disorder was…and they choked to death:

Attila the Hun – Fierce 5th century nomadic warrior
Tennessee Williams – Wrote A Streetcar Named Desire
Tommy Dorsey -Jazz band leader
Jimmie Foxx -The second man to hit 500 home runs in professional baseball, after Babe Ruth

A Beginning

My philosophy of life is based on the second oldest joke in the world:
A man walks into a doctor’s office, holds up his arm, and says “It hurts when I do this “.
The doctor says “Then…don’t do that“.

According to Wikipedia, in 1927, a physicist named Werner Heisenberg was attributed with discovering that if you begin to observe an experiment, you actually change the results of the experiment.

More simply, if you start observing your food…your food starts to change.
So, the very first thing to do is to start journaling your food…Just write down what you eat.
When I weighed 60 pounds more, I lied to myself about how much I was eating. How I could I weigh so much while eating so little?

Now, if you are now saying “I’m not going to do any such thing”…then don’t
On the other hand, if you are willing to try something different:

Weigh yourself now and write the number down
Write down everything you eat for one week
Weigh yourself after the one week
See if Werner Heisenberg was right.
If he is wrong…just stop doing this

There are many other things you can do to be thin and healthy, but this is a pretty good litmus test to see whether the effort is really worth it.

Fasting

Warning:

Fasting equates to “restricting” which leads to “binging” for some people.
If that is honestly true for you, then don’t use the following ideas.
Take responsibility for yourself and find professional help or a 12 step program that shares your vision for yourself around food, body image and exercise.

The two best spiritual sources that I know of, around fasting, are Gandhi and the ancient Jewish texts.

From Gandhi I took “Fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet.”

“Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake their all on them.”

From the ancient Jews I took:

“Declare a holy fast” Joel 1:14

 “I humbled myself with fasting”  Psalm 35:10

“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.  Daniel 1:8-17

 “The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals.  Ezekiel 4:10

From the Twelve-Steppers I took:

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we really had an eating disorder.
No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
Therefore, it is not surprising that our eating careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people.
The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his eating is the great obsession of every abnormal eater.
The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.
Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we had an eating disorder.
This is the first step in recovery.
The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We eating disordered are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating.
We know that no real overeater ever recovers control.
All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals – usually brief – were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
We are convinced to a man that eating disordered people of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

And finally I threw in a grouchy old saint:
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts” Saint Jerome (347-420AD)

Prayers

Food Prayer 1
As I get older my food/exercise is crucial to me.

Food Prayer 2
 I competed against two people and it really helped me do a better job biking. As exercise is part of my spirituality, that competition helped my spiritual life.

Food Prayer 3
I am willing to start all my recovery over for this recovery. I leave 38 years of work behind and, just for today, I will do whatever I have to do, feel whatever I have to feel, to stay on my food plan.

Food Prayer 4
AA is talk therapy. I need something different. I need my body to do my talking. “Just look at your body and look at my body…who should we be listening to?”

Food Prayer 5
I have utterly hit bottom with coffee (I relapsed for two months on my 30th AA birthday).

 I am weak, petty, small-minded, nauseous, dry-skinned and…soulless. I absolutely cannot reach my soul while using coffee.

I absolutely cannot reach my soul while using coffee. my soul while using coffee.

It utterly stops my Enlightenment…even with chastity and a strict raw organic vegan living food plan.

Food Prayer 6
I am obscured from my soul, if I am off my food plan. To be content I must reach my soul. I count my breaths and focus within.

Food Prayer 7
Help me to realize that if my food is not tasty, sexy, cool, fun or celebratory
…that I will look for those things in life.
Help me to look for sexy, cool, fun and celebratory…in life!

Food Prayer 8
HP,

Help me not be stupid.
Help me, specifically, not to be stupid around food.

If I am eating foods that:

Hurt me
Make me look bad
Cause me to lose sleep
Prevent me from exercising
Lower my self-esteem
Impact my love life
…is that stupid?

Food Prayer 9
Complete withdrawal from the caffeine in green tea and adjustment to the new food plan took about ten days. Now maintenance…through meditation on my soul.

Nothing so completely insures separation from my soul…as masturbation or overeating.

Food Prayer 10
HP, The most important thing to me today, just for today, is my new spirituality which is defined as following a food plan and exercising.

Food Prayer 11
A Food Plan that includes caffeine, in any form, is unmanageable by day three.

Food Prayer 12
How do I know if I am acting out with food if my weight is fluctuating only three to five pounds?

After I eat:

Do I feel high?
Do I feel numb?
Do I feel guilty?
Do I feel ashamed?
Do I feel depressed?
Do I feel torpid?
Do I feel like I have ‘gotten away’ with something?
Do I feel like “I have finally gotten my own way” around my food plan?
Do I feel like I need to “Go exercise it off”
The next day, do I feel pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized?

Food Prayers 13
What constitutes food abstinence for me today?

Not gaining more than three pounds, and if I do immediately losing it.
Never eating flour and sugar, ever.
Weighing and measuring my food.
Always making a food record.
There are also finite periods when I do not eat out…I am definitely in one of those right now.
There are finite periods where I make a food plan and follow it…I am definitely in one of those right now.
Being grateful always…

Food Prayer 14
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts”
It also separates me from my soul.
In that sense it moves toward a form of death.
Spiritual death…

Food Prayers 15
In the state of California 16% of our 2-4 year olds are obese…Really? Those are our babies!!

Martin Luther King use to say “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Gandhi would say “Be the change you want to see in the world”.

Just do it…One meal,one day at a time.

Food Prayer 16
If it is boring…just do it.
Weigh my food
Stick with Food Plan
Eat at set times.
Fast 18 hours per day

Food Prayer 17
Help me to be merciful and forgiving as I re-write my food plan:
Wheatgrass
Sprouts
Greens
Nut butters
Nuts
Bananas
No flour or sugar
No meat, dairy or eggs
Organic foods only
No cooked foods
No salt
No carbonated drinks
No aspirin (that had become a food group)

Food Prayer 18
If you live a life of prayer and fasting…you never have to go to a meeting again, if you don’t want to.  You can retire as an apostolic.  You can live a humble simple life as a guitar teacher and marry Alona. You have devoted 30 years of your life to this and you have invented a cure for sex addiction. You have healed yourself.  Now you can just teach guitar, read books and workout.

Food Prayer 19
Not more meetings, just PrayerCall. Thin, athletic, well-dressed, reading…That is the new me, in my new life.

Food Prayer 20
When I am abstinent my:

face looks better
torso looks better
heart pain diminishes 85%.
dizziness disappears
arthritis diminishes 80%
desire to be sexual improves
tailored shirts fit
pants are looser
belt is looser
When I am abstinent I:

can get up in the morning much more easily
want to work
want to save money
want to invest
read more books
think about playing the guitar again
want to be in public with my partner…looking’ thin

Food Prayer 21
When I am not abstinent my:

face looks old, sickly and pallid
breath is taxed because of the pressure on my lungs
feet and calves feel and look big and bulgey
eyes lose their steadfastness
mind is dense, thick, blurry and wandering
new shirts bulge

When I am not abstinent I:

just want to sleep
feel emotionally hopeless
lose interest in any activities
don’t want to work out
lose the cut and curve of my abs
fear being naked
have dreams of being chased…(that’s weird)
And finally….looking in the mirror in the morning is quite painful

Food addiction is a thought disorder.
The proof that it is healed would be peace of mind…combined with thinness.

Food Prayer 22
Getting old is cool, if you do it right
Things that make you age faster:
Caffeine
Tobacco
Alcohol
Drugs
Meat
Dairy
Flour
Sugar

Foods that are neutral: Nuts and fruits

Foods that make you youthful: Wheatgrass
Sunflower sprouts

Food Prayer 23
Spiritual Inventory:

AA’s express belief is that we drink because we can’t live life on life’s terms.

It is also their belief that, once recovered, demarcated by the Step Nine Promises, I must do three things to recover:

1.brief daily inventory
2.daily prayer/meditation
3.serve others

Or in AA shorthand I have to live the Maintenance Steps 10 through 12. It is AA belief that living this way prevents the return of craving.

Food Prayer 24
Sobriety without food abstinence does not feel sober, to me.

Here’s how food abstinence feels:

“Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.

Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed.”

Food Prayer 25
Small numbers:

In Debtors Anonymous there is an expression “ God is in the numbers “.

When I am at at 132.8 I find that there are three pounds, headed down to 129.8, where my mental acuity radically improves, I need less sleep, my memory improves, my interest in art awakens, my writing output dramatically increases and my virility is off the charts.

If it is to be…it’s up to me.

Food Prayer 26
“What if God’s will to be beautiful?”

I don’t mean Tom Cruise or Helen of Troy type beauty. That is genetic celebrity.

I mean the beauty that exudes from someone who treasures their body through food and exercise.

There is a beauty that appears from that type of self-love that appears in no other way.

And if “Taking care of myself through enlightened self-interest” is God’s will, then it is the beauty of God that is shining through me.

Don’t tell L’Oréal that…before you short the stock

Food Prayer 27
Spirituality is defined from within. Spirituality, for me, without sacrifice…means nothing.

I define my spirituality as the appropriate relationship between food and exercise

Nothing is more important than my food…nothing.

Food Prayer 28
The four most spiritually gifted people I have ever known were lost to food…

Food Prayer 29
If I have a thought disorder that keeps me from being thin,
I can help solve that today through being positive, prayer and reading books.

Food Prayer 30
My basic food abstinence definition came not from some abstruse book, but rather from my first mother-in-law:
“When I gain three pounds…I just stop eating so much”.

Food Prayer 31
Bill W. claimed that coffee and cigarettes were not bad for him (p. 135 Big Book). But…he died from Emphysema.

Food Prayer 32
“Nothing so completely insures severance from my connection with my Higher Self…as an energy drink”

Food Prayer 33
”Enlightened self-interest” : A perfect Food Plan is simply not enough to be healthy…I must work out.