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Thoughts On Recovery from Compulsive Overeating

  • Food is just fuel for my body. It's important to enjoy the taste and celebrate the pleasures of eating.

  • I am not my dis-ease (an internal imbalance) of compulsive overeating, but I do have it. I can recover (change my deep patterns and conditioning).

  • I also have a way out--a release from the symptoms, a release to a fuller life through practicing the 12 Steps--a day at a time.

  • I need my abstinence (freedom from out-of-control eating) in order to really live my life! The practice of healthy eating is like making an amends to my body.

  • Have compassion for myself--ask Higher Power to do for me "what I can't do for myself."

    • In the morning: "Please take away my desire to overeat or eat compulsively. Higher Power, please keep me abstinent (in recovery) and away from the first compulsive bite today. I can't do it along. I need help!

    • At night: Give thanks! If I lay my head on my pillow at night and I have abstained that day, then all else will work out.

    • But remember...compulsive overeating is cunning, baffling, and powerful.

  • Be willing to go to any lengths: Call O.A. members, call your sponsor (find one), go to meetings, read literature, take time for "Step 11", be willing to work other 12-Step programs as needed, be willing to perform service (practice Step 12).

  • Abstinence from compulsive eating is unconditional: Our recovery, it cannot be negotiated with emotions, environment, relationships, or stress. I must learn to see my inappropriate relationship with food as something really harmful to me...it will damage my life and all of my potential unless I address it...one day at a time.

  • Whatever I put ahead of my recovery (think is really important and take lots of time to make it happen), I will lose along with my recovery.

  • Consider discarding anything in your life that comes between you and other people in your life, and between you and your deepest spiritual connection with life.

  • Abstinence from compulsive eating is the discovery of the good things of life...freedom of and in a different way to life your life!

Practice gentle acceptance of yourself and others.

Live & let live.

Where you're at is okay.

You don't have to have all the answers.

Easy does it...but, do it!

There is hope for complete recovery

Take it a day a a time, a pound at a time.

If you continue to think and do,

what you've always thought and done,

you'll continue to get

what you've always got!

             Copyright © 2001-2022 Bob Wilson BS, DTR  All Right Reserved. Articles are for personal use only. Please request permission for other uses. Thanks!