By admitting my powerlessness over food and my life in Step One and by continuing to come back for twenty-nine years, I have maintained an 80-pound (36-kg) weight loss.
As part of my daily program routine, I have been reading the Big Book and then writing on certain passages. On page 325 of Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, it states, “You hit bottom when you stop digging.”
I can thankfully say that I’m not still digging in the way that I used to. I had many years of digging and doing research, trying to find the answers to my living problems, yet I thought I was doing fine in life. Similar to what it says on page 5 of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition, I had a good job, a house and car, and money in the bank, so by outward appearances, I was doing just fine. No one except my Higher Power knew that my insides presented a totally different story.
When I looked for the next diet or weight loss scheme, I continued to dig, hoping that it would bring me a thin body and a perfect life. Gradually, as I continued to fail by trying to find the answer myself, I turned to a Higher Power. I had really been backed into a corner. It was with some unwillingness and reluctance that I turned to this Higher Power, but I had nowhere else to turn.
I had always been taught to rely on myself, so why would my compulsive eating not submit to my will? I felt it would mean I lack character if I admitted I could not do it myself. But when I admitted I could not do it and that my way was not working, then I came to the end of me. Only when I came to the end of me could my Higher Power take over. He said, “walk this way,” and when I walked that way, I dug less and less into the old ways because, when I stopped digging, I started finding the answers that I sought.
Today, I find I’m drawn closer to this Higher Power, and that nurtures my spiritual program. By continuing to work the Steps and use the Tools of the Overeaters Anonymous program, the emotional side of me is more stable, and I am able to be in a more balanced state. By admitting my powerlessness over food and my life in Step One and by continuing to come back for twenty-nine years, I have maintained an 80-pound (36-kg) weight loss. Now, after all these years, I do my digging in a different way: by working the Steps and maintaining conscious contact with my Higher Power. That is how I find the answers that I always sought through using food.
—Kristin
