Tina, recovering compulsive overeater, and Ronnie, a compulsive overeater, host this workshop on OA’s First Step: “We admitted we were powerless over food; that our lives had become unmanageable.”
For Discussion and Journaling:
- What is the purpose of studying and working the Twelve Steps?
- Are there particular foods or eating behaviors which give me trouble? What can I do to eliminate them?
- What am I willing to do just for today to change and enhance my program? Am I willing to share this with someone I trust?
OA-approved literature used in this episode:
- The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous (link to the Second Edition)
- The Twelve Step Workbook of Overeaters Anonymous (link to the Second Edition)
- Abstinence (link to the Second Edition)
- Voices of Recovery (link to the new Second Edition)
- Just for Today wallet card
Transcript:
Last week we discussed “Step Zero,” which doesn’t appear in any of the literature that we have. We talked about the prep before recovery, about the misery, the weight, the self hate, the self loathing, the thinking that “I’m stupid. Why can’t I stop eating?” And that was “Step Zero,” as a preparation for Step One.
Today we’re going to be talking about Step One: We admitted we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable. Tina will be working with the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of OA and the Twelve Step Workbook. And I will be working from the Abstinence book, first edition and Voices of Recovery. Tina and I will briefly tell our stories, and then discuss step one as it relates to us.
My name is Ronnie, and I am a compulsive overeater. I came to OA October 2, 1999. I lived in California at the time, and I weighed over 200 pounds. I hated myself, I hated everybody else. And I rejected you before you rejected me to be safe and not get hurt. I had extremely low self-esteem. And I just did not understand why I couldn’t stop eating. I tried diets. I tried doctors, I tried pretty much everything. I was fairly young—I was 27. And I had two ankle surgeries, and I had back problems. None of those went away. I did not believe in God, I had no Higher Power except for the food and the expression on your face. I loved to be the victim, to criticize and stab people in the back, all in the spirit of protecting myself.
Since I came into OA, I’ve lost about 85 pounds. I give service now. I serve as Region Three chair. It’s seven states in the southwest United States. I currently live in Tucson, Arizona with a very strong intergroup. And I’m extremely grateful for that. And that is my brief story.
Before starting to talk about Step One, I wanted to read part of the “Introduction to the Twelve Steps” that we have in our OA Twelve and Twelve (editor’s note: this wording is from the first edition): “We of Overeaters Anonymous have found in this Fellowship a way to recover from the disease of compulsive overeating. After years of guilt over repeated failures to control our eating and our weight, we now have a solution that works. Our solution is a program of recovery, a program of twelve simple steps. By following these steps, thousands of compulsive overeaters have stopped eating compulsively. In OA, we have no program of diets and exercise, no scales, no magic pills. What we do have to offer is far greater than any of these things—a Fellowship in which we find and share the healing power of love. Our common bonds are two: the disease of compulsive overeating, from which we all have suffered and the solution that we all are finding as we live by the principles embodied in these steps . . . . We would like to offer here a study of those steps, sharing how we follow them to recover from compulsive eating. We hope in this way to provide help to those who still suffer from our disease.” And now we’re going to go back to Tina, who will tell us about her OA story.
This is Tina, a recovering compulsive overeater. Briefly, my story is that I came in 1989. I knew I was home. I heard hope. I heard recovery, and I have been coming ever since, thank you, God. I did not get abstinent that day, June 15, 1989. But I did start my recovery that day. And I probably went out and binged afterwards. But I knew I was home. I have never left program. Thank you, God. It is God who brought me the program. I’m maintaining a 65 pound weight loss. And more importantly, thanks to my first sponsor, who encouraged me right from the start to study the Steps and the Traditions. That’s why I’m thrilled with this workshop that we’re doing about “Working all Twelve Steps.” I’ve been studying them since I came in. And when I get to Step Twelve, I go on to Step One again, hopefully at a higher level. As I said, I’ve never left. Part of that is also because of the Fellowship, people who called me and encouraged me to come. My first meeting I went to because I did not want to eat that day. I needed to be with other people. Right from the start, I knew I was home. It was wonderful hearing people share about things I thought I was the only one who had ever done.
I keep coming because of the Twelve Steps. I keep coming because of the Twelve Traditions. I keep coming because of my improving relationship with my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God. I keep coming because my Higher Power keeps helping me with the food. I am a recovering compulsive overeater. That will never go away. But I have solutions today. And those solutions are the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions, the Tools and workshops such as this.
Service is a very big part of my story. It’s above the group level and abstinence is required. It helps me on a personal basis. “Just for today, I can do what I can’t do for the rest of my life.” That is from the Just For Today wallet card, which is one of my favorite pieces of literature. And because of that, hopefully, I’ll be coming one day at a time for the rest of my life.
“We admitted we were powerless over food—that our lives had become unmanageable.” I came in at Step One, and my weight was on the way up again. And I was powerless over food, and looking back, it got progressive. At ten months old, we have a a picture of me where I’m two little chubby cheeks Tina. I came in at 39, and it was just getting worse and worse. In terms of the food, if a bag was open, it was gone. I was powerless over food. It owned me. And life was unmanageable. I was in a profession I love but [unintelligible] that I absolutely hated, and it was killing me. I was full of despair, depression, defiance, hopeless, helpless. And as I mentioned, when I came to my first meeting, I heard hope. And I was at peace. And that was the only time I was at peace. That first week I went to three meetings. Not because anyone told me to, but because that was the only time I felt peace. I reread Step One today and it’s interesting every time I reread it. The Big Book says we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. So it’s important to do the Steps and remember what it was like: the increasing helplessness with food, with my work situation. I got my sponsor because I needed someone who would work with me. And I encourage people to find a sponsor who will work with you. My sponsor, instead of saying, Okay, for the rest of your life you can’t do A, B or C, said, “What are you willing to do today?” And that made it manageable. And that’s what I do with my sponsees. What are you willing to do today? And I did it. And then the next day she said, that’s wonderful. Are you willing to do it again? She helped me work out a plan of eating that was appropriate for me, so that I was not powerless over food; I had a plan that was worked out between a nutritionist, my sponsor, and myself. It was not Tina’s will; Tina’s will got her up to 213 pounds. As I said, I’ve been maintaining about a 65-pound weight loss for over 20 years. My sponsor encouraged me in terms of a plan of eating, going to meetings, using the Tools, but most importantly, studying the Steps. We now have our own OA Twelve and Twelve, which to me is my Bible.
Without this program, I know I would be dead. Because I was powerless over the food, I knew I would ultimately have diabetes, I figured I would probably drive off the road somewhere. I know I would not be alive today. At the end of Step One, it talks about intellectually becoming teachable. And that’s what I had to do initially. Because of my profession, I was in nutrition, I was in sports. I was in athletics, I was in physical fitness. I “knew” nutrition: bag open, bag gone, and happy, glad, sad, mad. Again, I was powerless. This program has helped me to not only maintain a physical weight loss, but an emotional and spiritual recovery that just keeps coming. Through the help of everyone in this program, I became teachable. My way got me to 213 pounds. I could go on forever and ever, but Ronnie also would like to share. I thank you; I’m so very grateful to be here.
Hi, I’m Ronnie, a compulsive overeater. I read the January 1 reading in Voices of Recovery. The last line says, “For today, I will be honest about my binge foods.” That really struck me because that’s all I need. It sounds so little, but it’s so much. Like I said, I came into OA in October of ‘99 weighing over 200 pounds. And I was just ready. I was not playing games. I was pretty much willing to do whatever you asked me to do, because I was in so much pain. And I’m very grateful for that. However, Step One was a little bit tricky for me, because there are two parts: I admit that I’m powerless over food. That’s not a problem for me, because I can’t choose when to start. And once I start, I can’t choose when to stop. For me that’s powerlessness. But the second part of step one was tricky for me, because it says our lives had become unmanageable. And I didn’t see that my life was unmanageable. Because I went to school, I went to university, I had a degree, I was married. How is it that my life is unmanageable? And then my sponsor told me that when you take away the crutch of food and cannot replace it with anything else, then my life is unmanageable. And it’s not unmanageable in the sense that I’m insane or I’m going crazy. It’s unmanageable in the sense that let’s say I walk in the street, and people are looking at me funny. Or I see two people talk and obviously they’re criticizing me. That’s not how I’ve become insane, because it’s all about me. And when I have the crutch of food, I can do anything. I can accomplish anything. I am very competitive, I’m not a very nice person, but I can get things done. But when you take away the thing that makes me feel so safe, and you don’t give me something else, it’s like you put some kind of thing winding inside my stomach, and I just pop it, I can’t take it anymore. And then I have to eat. So I go on a diet until I have to stop eating, and then I eat until I have to go on a diet. So it’s a black-and-white cycle. We talked last week about the obsessive mind and the allergy of the body, that allergies are an abnormal reaction. That’s all it is. And when I eat certain foods, my abnormal reaction is that I can’t stop eating. My obsessive mind is the mind that got me through university, got me driving, got me doing a lot of things. And that mind, besides the fact that it tells me I don’t have a disease, it tells me, you can try that. It’s not going to be as bad as last time, you can stop one of these times. And I believe my mind, I believe a lie. It’s a disease that makes me believe a lie. And my willpower is absolutely irrelevant. And so Step One, for me was a lot of self-hate, a lot of loneliness. But I had to really understand again, like I said, powerless over food that was so easy. For me that was so clear. When you finish two trays of 12 donuts for breakfast, and then you finish two liters of coke, you know that you’re pretty much powerless over food. That is really, really easy. But my life… I started to look at the very end of the diets, because that was when my life really became unmanageable; I couldn’t take life without the food. And I didn’t have the spiritual Steps to replace it. So I need to find something that does for me what food used to do for me, without doing to me what food used to do to me: and that is the Steps. They are a slow solution to a very deep rooted problem. And that from my experience, and I’m speaking only for me, that is the only thing that has ever worked.
I have been in program continuously since ‘99. I had two pregnancies in this program. I go to school full time now and I work; all the credit goes to OA, mostly to my sponsor who has to endure my calls almost every day.
But I did want to share from the Abstinence book, the first edition. The story is on page 12. It’s called Freedom of Choice. On page 14 and 15, the writer talks about the difference between being hungry and compulsively overeating. She says that OA’s definition of abstinence means to refrain from compulsive eating. This was not new to me. This was the concept I had first heard in OA. And now it says, compulsive eating or overeating. And I would like to add over-exercising, undereating, throwing up, anything compulsive that I do, is doing it to feed my disease, not my body’s nutritional needs. Emotionally, I found that my reaction to my feelings, not the feelings themselves are important components of my disease. Our responsibility pledge says, “Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion; for this I am responsible.” It doesn’t say to all who share my food plan or Higher Power or any other aspect of life. And that to me is the beauty of the program, because I’m the “terminally unique” person: I did not grow up in the US, I have Crohn’s disease. I don’t know many people in OA who have twins. I’m unique. I’m so special. But that does not matter. Because when I walk into the rooms and when I sit down, I dug through the trash, I stole money to buy food, I stole food, and everybody else did the same, and so I feel safe. I have seen that there is only one law, the law of love and there are only two sins: the first is to interfere with the growth of another human being, and the second is to interfere with one’s own growth. And that is a quote from the Big Book, the third edition. The story is called “He who Loses his Life.”
Tina and I came up with questions specific to Step One. The first question is “What is the purpose of studying and working the 12 steps?” The second question is “Are there particular foods or eating behaviors which give me trouble? What can I do to eliminate them?” The third question is, “What am I willing to do just for today to change and enhance my program? Am I willing to share this with someone I trust?”
This is Ronnie again. I hear a lot of people say that AA is different because alcoholics need to put the plug in the jug and not drink anymore. But I don’t see it that way because they still drink coffee and tea and soda and water. They just don’t drink their alcoholic drinks. And so if I can look at my food, the way they look at their drinks, I don’t eat my “alcoholic foods.” I will not eat sugar. I will not eat pizza. I will not eat whatever triggers me. I will eat what nourishes me. And so I think that we can see our recovery in terms of black and white. It’s just the fear of letting it go that makes it blurry for me. But in my heart of hearts, I know exactly what I’m supposed to do. I know what I need to eat. I know what I cannot eat. The only thing that can help me is a Power greater than myself—there is no way that I can do this by myself. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. I promise you, I would not be here today. But I need OA because I can’t do it by myself.
