Food Prayers
Food Prayer 1
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 2
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 3
The four most spiritually gifted people I have ever known were lost to food…
There but for the Grace of God go I
Food Prayer 4
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 5
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 stay recovered:
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 6
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
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 Prayer 7
Food addiction is a thought disorder.
The proof that the thought disorder was healed would be the presence of peace of mind…combined with thinness.
Food Prayer 8
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, Sprouts
Food Prayer 9
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
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 10
“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 Prayer 11
“What if it were 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 12
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 Prayers 13
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 14
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 15
As I get older my food/exercise is crucial to me.
Food Prayer 16
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 17
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 18
How do I know if I am acting out with food if my weight is fluctuating only three 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 Prayer 19
Just PrayerCall.
Thin, athletic, well-dressed, reading.
That is the new me…in my new life.
Food Prayer 20
If it is boring…just do it.
Weigh the food
Stick with the Food Plan
Food Prayer 21
If you live a life of prayer and fasting…you never have to go to other meetings again..
You can retire as an apostolic, live a humble simple life, and raise Stevie D..
You have devoted 35 years of your life to this and you have invented a cure for sex addiction..
You have healed yourself.
Now you can just teach, read books and workout.
Food Prayer 22
I am willing to start all my recovery over for this food/exercise recovery.
I leave 42 years of work behind and I will do whatever I have to do, feel whatever I have to feel, to succeed with this food /exercise plan.
Food Prayer 23
AA is talk therapy.
I need something a little different now.
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 24
Help me to realize that if my food is not sexy, cool, fun or celebratory
…that I will look for those things in life.
Food Prayer 25
I am obscured from my soul, if I am off my food plan.
To be content I must reach my soul.
Food Prayer 26
”Enlightened self-interest” : A perfect Food Plan is simply not enough to be healthy…I must work out.
Food Prayer 27
HP,
Help me to fast 12 hours a day between my dinner meal and breakfast meal…
That is why they call it breakfast…I break my fast
Food Prayer 28
Bill W. claimed that coffee and cigarettes were not bad for him (p. 135 Big Book). But…he died from Emphysema.
Food Prayer 29
A Food Plan that includes caffeine, in any form, is unmanageable by day three.
Food Prayer 30
“Nothing so completely insures severance from my connection with my Higher Self…as an energy drink”
Food Prayer 31
I feel fevered, heart-burned, raw-dry skin, bloated, acrid smelling, extreme, reddened, tender, victimy, overwhelmed and dread…while on coffee…and it is a binge food.
Food Prayer 32
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.
It utterly stops my Enlightenment…even with chastity and a strict raw organic vegan living food plan.
Food Prayer 33
“It is the nothingness which defines the something-ness”
John Cage
I am grateful for my hunger today.
Food Prayer 34
I strive to know my Higher-Self.
I strive to know the Power Within Me.
I will fast as an act of humility.
Food Prayer 35
Giselle the (February 2000) founder of Eating Disorders Anonymous states, on page 61 of the “EDA Big Book”, that she seeks a “special kind of energy “ (her definition of God) to get “ complete recovery from her eating disorder”.
This sane, simple conception helped her to achieve her stated goal of “ Balance…without rigidity”
With “humility, courage and humor”
I am willing to let go of anything that blocks me from knowing, having, or possessing….that special energy.
Food Prayer 36
If we can let go of our insistence on absolutely no “ plans and designs” around food, we can choose a faith where problems can be solved…and we can do so with gratitude and laughter.
Food Prayer 37
“ Eat when hungry, stop when moderately full“ sounds like a good idea.
But, I eat…until I am satiate.
“Moderately full” means… I still have some hunger left in my belly.
Food Prayer 38
I am not addicted to food.
I am not addicted to overeating.
I am addicted to the chemicals in my brain when I eat certain foods in certain quantities.
Surprise!…I am the problem
Food Prayer 39
To my Higher Self:
I can improve my character, awaken my spirit and clear my mind with more purity around food and more mindfulness around sedentariness.
Food Prayer 40
Higher Self,
I am grateful for the willingness to go to Caffeine Anonymous.
Humbly grateful for what I have learned…
On this day, Monday, March, 11, 2024 it has been four months of no:
Coffee
Teas
Colas
or Chocolate
The two most noticeable things, for me, are:
Serenity around food
And surprisingly, I can, often, see without my reading glasses.
Who knew?
Thanks Higher Self…for your willingness
Food Prayer #41
Higher Self,
After four months of daily attendance, I am gratefully taking what I have learned at Eating Disorders Anonymous and applying it to the fellowship where it is safe to aspire to Sex only to Create Children.
Humbly grateful for what I have learned…
Food Prayer #42
Page 58 of the Big Book states three times, in the first paragraph, that we must be honest.
Around food that is very simple:
Go to the internet and search for a BMI (Body Mass Index).
Put in your height. Put in your weight, push the calculate button and see what your body mass index is.
Then look at the chart and see whether you’re normal weight, overweight or obese.
This may be “ego-puncturing”, but it may be an opportunity for humility…and that may relieve the discomfort of anxiety.
Food Prayer #43
Higher Self,
If women have sex only to create children, then developing sexual beauty is an act of holiness, and is clearly of your will.
Does that seem reasonable to extend to men as well? That to attract the opposite sex, for the specific purpose of creating children is holy, and thereby your will?
If that is sound and reasonable, then what are some actions I can take to make myself more sexually attractive, or holy( in this specific instance)?
After an off putting age difference, which is not within any man’s control, the thing that makes a man least sexually attractive…is being overweight.
So any time I am self-restrained around food (as long as I am not anorexic) could be construed as a tiny act of holiness.
What do you think, God?
Food Prayer #44
In the doldrums of the afternoon, around 2 pm, the vague feeling of hunger approaches.
It’s not the genuine need for sustenance.
It’s more neediness, fatigue, weariness and, attitudinally…a touch of self-pity.
“Be the first to laugh at yourself…before others do”
Benjamim Franklin
Food Prayer #45
God,
When, in my codependency around my children, women or friends:
I lose my boundaries,
when I forget that I am “bodily and mentally different from my fellows”,
When I try to “ eat like a gentleman”
Help me to be honestly angry, with myself, first
…and to stay with that anger (so that it doesn’t turn into depression, or passive aggression against the innocent) as long as necessary.
…And then help me to forgive myself.
Amen
Food Prayer 46
As with Miles and Trane kicking
Help me to kick my disordered eating,
….so that I may be all that I can be.
Food Prayer #47
Until I get a good solid reason to indicate otherwise, please help me to eat health foods.
I mean, is it your will:
Thou shall eat unhealthy foods?
Until I am ready to eat health food… Let me eat nothing at all.
If I’m not hungry enough to eat health foods… I’m not real hungry
Food Prayer #48
God,
We, in 12 Step, all believe that you will help us to kick our addictions if we are honest and humble enough to ask for help and become willing to serve others freely.
Many of us, after many years of inventory, see that, early in our lives, we were affected in ways that contributed to us becoming addicts.
Understanding this, it seems reasonable that you would help innocent children from being harmed, instead of waiting until, as adult supplicants, we rationally approach you.
While this is logical, it does not appear to be true.
For me, I must have you to stay abstinent, but I must not allow my children to be harmed by my logical belief, which is delusion.
I surrender this delusion and will only focus on the simple, practical things that traditional 12 step offers as gifts to my personal freedom.
Food Prayer #49
HP,
I am so grateful that you have saved me through your power around drinking and drugs.
Also caffeine and nicotine.
I am so grateful that through your Grace and my willingness you have freed me from the obsession for sex other than to create children.
I have repented and now you are giving me the chance to live…at 69.
I am grateful that I’m able to spend so much time on music.
Life is delightful…thank you for setting me free.
I will watch my food all day as multiple times per day acknowledgment of your important.
Food Prayer 50
The two best spiritual sources that I know of, around food, are Gandhi and the ancient Jewish texts.
From Gandhi I took:
“The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting.”
“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 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 disordered 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 disordered eater 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)
From these men’s ideas I created a Food Plan that completely eradicates lust.
Food Prayer 51
Food addiction is a thought disorder.
The proof that the thought disorder was healed would be the presence of peace of mind…combined with thinness.
Food Prayer 52
HP,
Help me to see that “ De-Nile…is not a river in Egypt”
Help me see that Denial is “Don’t Even kNow I Am Lying”
Help me see that “Denial is God’s shock absorber”.
Help me see that denial is the one tool that children have to endure trauma.
Help me to see that of all the 400 addictions, that currently have 12 step programs for them, that Food Addiction is the one with the most denial around it.
Help me to see myself, to simply be honest around food: Do I decide to stop doing something and then go back to it?…Just be honest!
Help me see that if my life is unmanageable around a health issue that there may be some powerlessness in my life.
Specifically, help me see if is there a specific health issue that is making my life unmanageable, like:
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,
rolls of fat,
spare tire,
set of radials,
fear of being naked,
Oprah wings,
dropped butt,
heart hurts when exerting effort,
buttons bursting,
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…
If any of these are true, help me to simply be honest that I may truly be powerless over these things.
Food Prayer 53
HP,
I have been abstinent nearly 35 years.
My abstinence came, not from OA or FA, but rather from my first mother in law,
“When I gain five pounds I just stop eating so much”.
For me, it’s three pounds…
I surrendered flour and sugar ten years ago when I joined FA because they said
“Flour makes me stupid, and sugar makes me crazy” made sense to me.
I didn’t want be stupid or crazy.
That was relatively easy for me, after the initial withdrawal.
Quantities of food…that was a different story!
Beginning to use a digital scale to weigh and measure my food, changed my life like nothing else has, except stopping drinking and stopping masturbating.
Today, as a physical act of humility, I will weigh and measure everything I eat, except when I eat out.
Food Prayer 54
Consequences 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
Food Prayer 55
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
Food Prayer 56
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
Food Prayer 57
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
Food Prayer 58
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 daughter’s birthday
My daughter’s graduation