Dec 23

I went to a meeting this morning. I went on a sugar binge. People had brought in lots of wonderful Christmas treats. I started with a oiece of very good fudge. I snuck a piece of commercial candy. Then I ate sweet potato pie,[wonderful]. Then a chocolate chip cookie, then more sweet potato pie. Next another piece of fudge.

That did not feel very comfortable. I am not used to eating sugar anymore. Everything tasted super sweet, really too sweet. I experienced the same old panic eating, like maybe this chance won’t come again. There was also the healthier element of wanting to celebrate with very close friends.

Now the most important thing. I must learn from this experience. In order to learn, I have to avoid shame filled thinking. Humans make mistakes. My humanness is always there. My humanness is in my contract with my higher power.

Dec 24

One of my most basic struggles in life is the premise I grew up with that I can only depend on myself. I am wired to feel that people are unreliable. There are down times when I think that I am only safe when I am by myself.

Of course, being by myself is a control mechanism. Like all my other control mechanism, being by myself was a reasonable stress management strategy growing up, but that kind of isolation no longer works for me.

Much of my unhealthily excess eating happens when I solve the loneliness of my isolation by several hours of eating.

Dec 25

This has been a very good Christmas for me. I had wonderful contact with family and friends. I played lots of music and enjoyed both the gifts I gave and the gifts I received.

However, there was a lonely quality to my Christmas. It seems like loneliness is apart of the holidays for most of us.

I ate more than usual, and ate way more sweets than is normally good for me. However, eating tasty, self indulgent food with wonderful friends is an important part of celebration for me.

I do not think I will have trouble going back to healthier eating patterns tomorrow, because I am refusing the eating shame that I have felt on Christmas evening most years. I see ever more clearly, that eating shame drives my unhealthy eating.

Dec 26

Here is a comment posted below by Ron.

“Sounds like you need to stop making excuses and join OA.”

Thanks Ron for your comment. You may be right. I am beginning to go to OA with some friends.

As you doubtless know, the basic document of OA is the Big Book of AA. The big book of AA only says that AA is the best solution for most people, not that AA is the only solution. I feel the same is true of OA.

If I choose to procrastinate about OA, it is my choice. I don’t think anyone else has the right to tell me I am doing it wrong. I insist on doing my recovery my own way, in my own time, right or wrong.

I am satisfied with my progress. I am hoping you can accept that and, if you choose, pray for me.

At any rate I sincerely thank you for your concern.

Dec 27

I have been afraid to hope that what I was seeing was really true. However, for 10 days now, my weight has been dropping. I have never dieted in this process. I have only tried to improve my eating health. I have resisted shame and guilt.

For a long time I only noticed I was no longer gaining weight. Then I saw a tiny drop one day, then back up the next day. Then I very slowly saw a small decline. Now I am seeing a most satisfying, gradual, steady decline. I am so encourage

Dec 28

I had a dream of some dark debris filled clouds that were moving through the sky. As they moved, they divided and split up so that they multiplied and filled the entire sky.

Then it began to rain. However, it was not a sweet rain but a poisonous rain. There was destruction in it not refreshment.

To me, that unhealthy storm system is the deeply pervasive anxiety I am feeling on some days. I am trying to deal head on with these fears [namely isolation fears] so I can live more freely and eat more healthily. I am making good progress.

April was an older woman who attended a Bible study at one of Union Rescue Mission’s off-site houses. This particular house was used for a program for young men ages 18 -25. The Bible study was held weekly and a few people from the community attended including April.

April was totally blind. She had been accidentally blinded many years before. Yet she was not bitter at all. She had worked hard to forgive all involved in her blinding and had made a very good life for herself. Everyone, including me, found in her the Grandma we wished we had had.

April’s Granddaughter was a pre-teen named Kelly who had developed a bad habit of using very foul language. Kelly’s mother had tried everything to help her daughter to talk more genteelly. Finally, in desperation, the mom sent Kelly to her live with April for a few weeks, hoping that would help.

April and Kelly were very close. Kelly would not use the unacceptable language in front of her Grandma.

One night, after dinner, April asked Kelly to sit with her. She took a pencil and a piece of paper out of her apron. She asked Kelly to write down all the bad words she liked to use. Nervously, Kelly wrote the words down.

Of course, April could not read the list since she was blind, so she asked Kelly to read it to her. Kelly was dumbstruck. She said, “Grandma, I just can’t say these words in front of you.”

April said, “Would you read the first letter of each word?” Kelly agreed to read the letters, but even that was hard for her to do.

As Kelly read the letters, she began to cry. When she finished, she sat there a moment waiting to see what April would do. A minute passed.

My guess is that April was taking a minute to pray and center herself. Then she took a twenty dollar bill out of her apron. She said, “Kelly, would you sell me those words?” and handed her the twenty dollars.

Kelly took the money. Then April said, “Darling, now those words are mine. I own them. I will not let you use my words.” Kelly fell into her Grandma’s arms crying.

I never heard the end of the story. I don’t know if Kelly cleaned up her language once she got home. I do know this: April behaved with God-like grace. In so doing, she taught me as poignant a lesson in grace as I have ever learned.

Dec 16

Here is a quote from a letter wrote to a friend.

“Jesus said to Mary or Martha, ‘One thing is necessary.’ That one thing is the thing God is asking me to do at this moment. God never asks me to to two things at once. If I feel like I have 100 things to do at once, 99 of them are not my responsibility. Those 99 belong to God and He will take good care of them. At this moment, my only responsibility is writing you. I do that with pleasure. I can concentrate on writing you, which allows me to get maximum enjoyment from this minute.”

The same idea is expressed in my entry on this site entitled “Human Need” in the Recovery Talks category.

If I can trust God with my eating future, I can focus on the food I am eating at this moment. I find that it helps me to focus on the enjoyment of a meal. I often focus on other things like the following:

1. Will I be hungry later in the day?
2. Am I helping myself lose weight in this meal?
3. Eating too fast as a leftover from boyhood food desperation.
4. Trying to talk myself out of eating a second helping.
5. A food mistake from earlier in the day.

If I bring back my focus to this moment, I can savor flavors, tastes, the bouquet of the food and food textures. Focusing on what I am eating increases my food enjoyment and satisfaction. When I do not focus on what I am eating, I frequently don’t even notice I am eating. I just notice that all of a sudden, my food is gone.

Dec 17

Here is something else I wrote to a friend.

“Condemnation is a part of my sick thinking. It is always an accusation against my personhood. It says I am not enough. Condemnation says, ‘You did not do the right thing because that is the kind of person you are. You are a flawed.’”

Conviction is healthy and from God. It is space/time specific. For example, conviction might say, “Yesterday, you should have talked to Robert and you didn’t do it.” Conviction says, “When you didn’t do the right thing, you acted against the person you are, you betrayed your true self. Your true self is wonderful, a creation of God.”

The emotion we call guilt is like the brake on a car. Its job is to get us to stop going the wrong direction. Once we correct our direction, we use the accelerator. The accelerator is love. Guilt stops good behavior, it does not promote it because it inhibits our relationship with God…”

I can restate the same thing in other terms. Unhealthy shame is like condemnation in that it is an attack on my personhood. It makes accusations like “you are too heavy”, or “you will never lose weight.” Those attacks lock me up and guarantee failure.

Instead, I can look at what I just ate and ask myself questions that are like conviction in that they have to do with a specific space time event. “Did I really enjoy that fried food? Would it help not to have that food around my home? What food can I bring home that helps me achieve my goal that I love to eat?”

Dec 18

I have started working out on resistance machines. I want to do a light resistance workout most days. The trick for me is not to turn the weight lifting into a hard driving, demanding ordeal.

The same goes for learning to eat in a healthy way. The second I make it a big, heavy deal I lose. If I can keep things in a easy going, light hearted frame of reference, I do better.

Questions like that help me achieve my own goals, provided I do not ask myself the questions in a condemning way.

Dec 19

A friend of mine named Stu sees a therapist regularly. At one of his sessions, the therapist asked Stu what activity he most enjoyed. Stu replied, “I love to ride my bike.”

The therapist said, “Do you ride regularly?”

Stu responded, “Not as regularly as I would like.”

“What do you say to yourself when you are trying to get yourself to ride?”

“I say, ‘Get your butt out there and ride. Quit playing your mind games.’”

The therapist responded, “Don’t you think that is the voice of the harsh parent? Can you think of kinder to ways to talk to yourself?”

One of the most counter productive attitudes I take toward myself in regard to my eating is the harsh parent voice.

Let me explain. Spirituality , in my case, is always a matter of inside out changes. If my deepest heart presuppositions are positive, my behavior is positive. If I think of myself as a hopelessly fat slob, there is a powerful drive to eat like a fat slob. If, on the other hand, I see myself as a person who is worthy of good health, I tend to eat in a healthy way.

When I talk to myself in a harsh, condemning voice I persuade myself I am going to fail. Then I do fail to eat healthily. If I treat myself gently with respect, I build my own self esteem and increase the chances I will succeed in eating in a healthy way.

Dec 20

I just had a great a wonderful visit with my nephew. It felt like a gift from God in that he was only going to be with me for one night. However, he was with me a couple of days, since his flight destination was snowed in. I jokingly said, “I got snowed into Long Beach.”

David is in a position physically that he cannot afford to gain even one pound. Therefore, he has studied nutrition very carefully.

I followed his lead as an experiment. I limited my eating pretty well to what we ate together. I found that I could do comfortably on much less food than I imagined.

When he left, I tried to still eat the same way. I did pretty well. The less I need to eat for inappropriate emotional support, the healthier I eat. If the issue is just food, not emotions, it is much easier for me to eat appropriate amounts.

Dec 9

I scratched my ankle on my bike pedal a few months ago. The scratch got infected. I was keeping it clean and leaving it uncovered hoping it would dry out and heal. The scratch grew into a dime sized circular sore.

When my daughter Gina saw the sore she got into action in a hurry. She gave me bandages and ointment and told me I needed to see a Doctor.

I made an appointment for three weeks later. I could have gotten an earlier appointment, but I wanted to wait to see my own Doctor.

I saw the Doctor a few days ago. I had a fairly serious infection in my lower leg. I was given antibiotics. It is already getting better.

This experience made it obvious to me that I have a cavalier attitude attitude toward my body and my health. I am wondering if that is a part of my unhealthy eating habits.

Maybe I learned to eat haphazardly because I undervalue myself. That would mean that poor eating habits are just a part of a larger problem of a lack of appreciation of my own value.

That is a dangerous attitude at my age and foolishness at any age. I am going to make it a point to be thankful for my body every day. I have a good body that serves me well.

Dec 10

I have decided to attend Overeaters Anonymous once a week.12 step programing has served me well in other areas, so why not in the area of eating? I am satisfied with the progress I am making in terms of what I eat and I have reduced calorie intake. However I want to find some way to make faster progress in terms of eating a healthy amount.

I am not willing to make a commitment to OA right now, but I am going to attend a few meetings over the holidays with some friends. I have tried to attend OA several times in the past and it has not worked out. OA seemed lacking in joy to me. That might have been my problem and not the program’s problem.

The fact that I am going with good friends will probably help. Both of the woman going with me are people that generate joy in me. One of them is going to give me a ride in an effort to reinforce her commitment to going. Having her come by will motivate me too.

Dec 11

My impatience, in terms of the time it takes me to prepare food, does not serve me well. I hesitate to prepare food that makes me wait. I enjoy food I have to cook when eating time comes, but I hate to wait. Sometimes I eat something to kill time while my main food is cooking. Then my appetite is dulled for the better quality food.

One of my therapists gave me a bunch of tests. After the results of the taste were in, he told me I had a borderline attention deficit disorder. Right now, I feel an impatient anxiety about how long it is taking me to write this. That anxiety is there despite the contrasting reality that I enjoy this writing.

Maybe I should plan a phone call as a part of my cooking process. I could start the food and then talk to someone while it is cooking. That would be worth a try.

Dec 12

Truth has to be told. I just ate 4 pieces of Christmas candy. Holidays are hard. I want to eat healthy, but I want to avoid the “Bah Humbug” syndrome. I continue to talk to people about my eating. I am seeking out people who for some reason[athletically built, pretty women, family, doctors, etc] who previously I might have been afraid to talk to. I am not talking about my weight with shaming people. I talk with people because it helps remove my food shame.

One thing I have learned is that severe food shame is not limited to overweight people. Some people don’t overeat because they were so ashamed of a parent that did overeat. Maybe that is a reverse shame. Some people feel intense shame over relatively small amounts of excess weight. I wonder if our culture could be characterized as a food shamed culture.

I know that some of my food shame comes from my shame at my Mother’s overweight condition. My Mom was a deeply loved person among many San Diego Christians. They did not seem to be bothered by her appearance. Why did it bother me so much? I think it was because my insides were so full of shame that my ashamed hung itself on any hook available.

Dec 13

I have been thinking about my Mothers lifelong battle with overeating. She was a heavy woman. I am asking myself if I am somehow linked to her in a way that keeps me eating in a unhealthy way?

I want to write about my brother David and how he set me free. It will be an example of an unhealthy link from which I have been set me free.

David spent the last years of his life living as a victim of an aneurysm. He was very strokey and had a hard time walking and talking. He was extremely successful in making that bad situation work. My sister Ruth and her husband Ed deserve lots of credit too. David lived with them for a number of years after he after his disability hit.

I was talking with him about a very famous and great man I had met. After I finished my story, he kept saying, “You, you, you, you. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Finally I understood that he wanted me to know he thought of me as a great man and he did not want me to limit myself in an effort not to experience survivors guilt. He wanted me to be free and if I made something of myself, the only emotion he would feel would be pride. He set me free.

From her place in Heaven I feel very sure that my Mom would like to set me free from the overeating pattern she gave me. She wants to see me free just like David did before he died.

Please God, listen to the heart of my Mom and my brother and show me how I can be free from over eating. Thank You, George

Dec 14

Yesterday’s entry was so releasing, that I want to try something else.

As I approached my 53rd birthday, I had terrible suicidal fears. My Dad killed himself when he was 53. I was afraid I was doomed to duplicate his misdeed at the same age. My 54th birthday was a great relief to me. Now I am wondering if some sort of Freudian style death wish is lurking in my personality.

I am also wondering if there is any connection between my weight and a buried desire to die. I am not in the least suicidal. I am doing whatever I need to do to live a warm and satisfying life and succeeding. But is there a deep fear of death or death desire that feeds my need to eat in a health damaging way?

I know my Dad, who now resides in Heaven, wants me to be completely free of any death fear twistedness engendered by his suicide.

Dear God, hear the wish of my Dad’s heart and of my heart that I be free from any death wish that is buried within me. Free me from any survivors guilt that twists me.

Thank You, George

The man that hired me at the first rescue mission at which I worked 32 years ago, took me to lunch last weekend. His name is Ernie. I had not seen him for 15 years.

Ernie is 11 years older than me which means that both of us have earned the title of elderly. However, I am using the term old friend more in the sense of long term relationship.

Ernie was the best boss I ever had. He was not afraid of new ideas. In fact, virtually every time I heard Ernie pray, I heard him ask God for new ideas for the mission programs.

For example. after I had been at the mission for a few years, the Executive Director and Ernie asked me to start an alcohol recovery program for men. I had no idea how to begin. I decided that I would start by attending AA meetings as a means of learning from the people who seemed to know what they were doing.

I went to an AA meeting at an Alano Club in nearby Glendale, California. That was where I read the 12 Steps for the first time. I immediately recognized the recovery potential of the steps.

I began to build a alcohol recovery program around the steps. It took a while to get it functioning, but in time, it became a good program.

When I first started developing the program the other chaplains were outraged. They felt that I was abandoning the Gospel. The weekly Chaplain’s Meeting became hard for me to endure.

Ernie took it for awhile. After a few weeks he laid down the law to the other chaplains. He said with total firmness,” You men stop this negative talk. We are going to let George experiment with the 12 Steps. I won’t allow you to continue this criticism. Leave him alone.” I was never bothered by the other chaplains about the steps again.

Ernie also recognized that the white maleness of the then mission staff was a serious limitation to the effectiveness of the ministry. I would not describe Ernie as liberal. It was more that he was very practical. It seemed logical to him that the gender, race and ethnicity of the clientele should be reflected in the staff.

Ernie is a true servant leader. One time I was the speaker at an off site halfway house the mission operated for women and their families. Ernie and his wife lived in an apartment in back of the larger house used by the women.

My evening began with dinner in the big house with the families. Ernie and his wife Lois, were not in attendance. After dinner, I realized that I had left my Bible in my car. I needed it to lead my Bible Study.

When I got to my car, I found Ernie under the hood. He was very surprised and a little embarrassed. He was cleaning my battery posts.

I had an old car and four little kids. Ernie knew me well enough to know I would not think to do appropriate maintenance on my car. He wanted to take care of it for me.

If I had not caught him doing it, I would not have ever known he had worked on my car. I was deeply touched. Having people help me was not a part of my normal expectations.

There were many more examples of good experiences with Ernie. With all that wonderful history between us, I could not wait to see him again after we had scheduled our lunch. When the day finally came, our time together was an exercise in mutual concern and respect. The love was palpable. We exchanged small gifts and small talk. We also retold our mission stories.

The lunch with Ernie was healing for me. I feel I was unjustly treated by the mission board at the time I left. That bad feeling diluted my memories of the good times I enjoyed at the mission. The good memories are near me again. Having my good memories back is one more thing I owe Ernie.

Dec 5

If you have been paying attention, you have noticed that I have not been journaling consistently for a few days. My head reverted back to trying to lose weight, instead of learning to eat healthily. Maybe that happened because I am weighing every day.

I am not sure that weighing everyday is a healthy approach for me.The act of stepping on a scale is less terrifying now. That has to be good. However if weighing everyday keeps me negatively focused, I don’t think it is worth it. I plan to keep on experimenting.

I know that for a few days, I felt this was a hopeless endeavor.I feel better now. At least the scale news has not gotten worse in the last few months. There is no question that I am less tense about my eating.

A very good friend that I had not seen in a fifteen years bought me lunch on Sunday. He asked me about my health. I told him that my worse medical problem was my weight. It felt very good to be able to talk openly with him about a previously forbidden topic.

Dec 6

I am winning the battle of learning to enjoy eating vegetables. The secret for me is vegetable juices, [Trader Joe's is the best] and buying prepackaged raw vegetables.

I don’t need to dip them in anything. I am just eating them. They taste good and are satisfying.

I am not losing weight or else I have lost 2 or 3 pounds. For sure, I am not gaining weight. Sometimes I get very discouraged. I am certainly in the habit of believing normal eating is impossible for me. Maybe that food negativity is my real obsession.

Dec 7

I signed up for my medical centers weight control program today. I like the progress I am making despite some discouragement I feel from time to time. However, I welcome the chance to receive some medical supervision.

Today I feel close to a turning point in my eating. I need to keep going. In my 12 Step program, there is a slogan, “Don’t quit before the miracle.”

Gradually my picture of my food struggle is shifting away from “Bad Boy” conceptions toward “Manageable Problem” conceptions. I am sure that is helping and it certainly makes me more comfortable.

Dec 8

I am expanding the number of people I feel free to call. It seems clear to me that when I feel lonely or sad I want to eat. I am hoping I can learn to do a better job of reaching out to people. People feel freer to call me than I feel free to call people. That is an imbalance that is correctable.
In my program, they talk about a 500 pound telephone. That is a reference to the difficulty people like me have in asking for help. I have had a 500 pound telephone. My little joke is, “I am putting my phone on an exercise program to help it lose weight.”
A well used telephone has become a sign to me of me having a strong program.