I admitted that I was powerless over food…I was raised to be self-supporting and self-sufficient. It was bad to lean on other people. At the same time, I was not encouraged to be an independent thinker. What Dad said was the way things were.
I don’t like Step One because I have to admit that I am no longer in charge; that I can’t handle something as simple as food. But I have proven repeatedly that there are some foods that literally make me insane. Once I start eating them, I can’t stop. The whole package becomes a serving size. Worse yet, when I eat certain foods, it triggers a cycle of mental obsession and physical allergy. I start to crave more and more of these foods. I find myself thinking that I can’t get through the evening without my special friends.
When I was a kid my family didn’t have ready access to the plethora of junk food that is out there today. This probably delayed the early progression of my compulsive eating. My spiritual and emotional condition opened the door to compulsive eating in my early adult years. I wasn’t given the tools to deal with my emotions and process them in a healthy way when I was growing up. As I got older, all this gunk built up inside me. Whenever it tried to come out, it was just a vague sense of being uncomfortable. So, I would soothe myself, mainly with chocolate. Before I came to OA, I never understood this connection. I would sit on the couch and read and eat Hershey’s Kisses while my (ex) husband would watch endless hours of ESPN. I would keep chocolate in my desk at work and eat it throughout the day. This lack of emotional processing and the large amount of junk food in my diet led to a major depressive episode. Bad enough that I was on long term disability from work.
…that my life had become unmanageable. Unmanageability can be subtle or obvious. When I experienced my first rapid weight gain, I had to buy new clothes every six months because I was a size larger. I went from a super fit size 4 to a very stout size 18. It’s a bit ironic that I did not yo-yo until I came to OA.
Unmanageability is more than the crazy things I’ve done with food. It spills over to many areas of my life. There was a time when I seldom paid my credit card bill on time because the due date kept changing. Not to mention that I once owed $60,000 on that credit card! I have lost two career level jobs because I was not performing well. I alienated coworkers because I told them they were stupid in many ways, just not with words. One coworker dared to call me caustic, but she was just an uptight witch, right?
Relationships, mainly romantic, were another big area of unmanageability for me. Some guy would pay attention to me and I thought it was the greatest thing. I stayed in unhealthy relationships because I so desperately sought validation outside myself. I didn’t know how to have a healthy relationship because I didn’t know how to accept and love myself. I’m still working on that. Progress, not perfection.
Step One is about getting honest with myself about myself. Painfully, uncomfortably honest. Like the Big Book says, “who wants to admit complete defeat?”
