“It’s your birthday. How can you not have a piece of your own cake?”
I shake my head.
“I baked it just for you. Just take one bite.”
Again, I decline and just to make myself clear, I say, “One bite and I won’t be able to stop until the cake is gone.”
“Boy, I wish I had your willpower.”
That’s when I chuckle silently and think, “It’s not willpower that stops me.” But I know I will get an eye roll if I say that it’s God and not my willpower that keeps me from the sugar. So, I just smile and step away from the cake.
It wasn’t always like that. When I first started in OA, I couldn’t stay abstinent. I would follow a food plan and then binge if I broke the diet. I had twenty years of bingeing and dieting in OA. Then I left the rooms for ten years out of frustration. Even so, there was a piece of OA that never left me. That still, small voice in my heart said, “This disease is progressive.” In my heart, I knew I was a compulsive overeater, but I was also a compulsive overeater without the willingness to surrender.
In 2005, when I returned to OA meetings, I met a woman who had joy spilling out of her. I wanted that. She agreed to sponsor me if I put down the sugar and flour. My defiant streak was absent that day, and I did everything she asked. It took four years of surrendering and working the Steps until I finally understood food neutrality. Now when I see a cake, I can walk on by. It doesn’t call my name.
With fifteen years of abstinence behind me, I am better able to experience the spiritual aspects of the Twelve Steps. Now that I have surrendered the food, I can concentrate on surrendering the people, institutions, and situations over which I have no control. I have been given the gifts of food neutrality and equanimity for which I am profoundly grateful.
—Susan, New York USA
