“Just as being an alcoholic is not related to the amount one drinks,
– Overeaters Anonymous, 2nd Edition, p. 230
being a compulsive overeater is not related to the amount one weighs.”
I was stuck in the mindset that I needed to control my food, that I had to look a certain way. I needed to be in control of everything… and well, everyone around me! I never considered that there could be another way, much less a recovery program that could help me the way AA has helped so many alcoholics! I thought I was in charge! It never dawned on me that how much I weighed was as irrelevant as how much an alcoholic drank! It was the obsession, in the first place, that led me to this compulsive disorder.
I realize now, since coming to the program, that my preoccupation with my food intake and my body image, and the need to govern everything around me, controlled my life! What I needed more than anything else, was to turn all of this over to a power greater than myself. I needed to work a program, just like an alcoholic, that would help me deal with all the factors that led me to eat compulsively: the fears and self-doubt that had riddled me for so long.
Today my Higher Power is in charge! With a heart full of gratitude, I have been able to place my trust in the one thing that can set things right. Trusting in a loving God, I am being guided to a better way of being every single day and learning to love myself no matter what.
– Inspired by Overeaters Anonymous, 2nd Edition, p. 230
Submitted by: Anonymous
©2024 Experience Strength & Hope Newsletter,
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All Rights Reserved. Overeaters Anonymous excerpt pg.230 ©2001 Second Edition c.1980; property of Overeaters Anonymous, Inc.
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