Battling Monsters

Hi All,

My name is Dave and to the best of my abilities today and with the help of my higher and helping powers, I'm recovering from Binge Eating Disorder. A disorder that is not only cunning, baffling, and powerful, but also patient.

Yesterday, my eating disorder grabbed me by the throat and tried to shake all hope out of me. Since last summer, I've been losing 12 to 15 pounds each month just like clockwork. For most of that time, the insanity of my eating disorder seemed to be lifted. However, yesterday morning when I weighed myself and jotted it down in my journal, I looked back at past entries and realized that this month, I'd only lost 8 pounds.

Instantly, the insanity of my eating disorder kicked in with hurricane force. I felt like a failure. I felt worthless. I felt like my whole recovery was just one big fraud and that I was really a dope for fooling myself into thinking I could actually do this thing and stick to it. I envisioned myself regaining all my weight plus some, one more time again and almost desiring that sad result. Maybe not desiring, but feeling it was inevitable.

For the next several hours, the monsters in my head did battle between the idea of giving up and having the mother of all binges, or starving myself to compensate and losing at least 20 pounds next month so I could average it all out to still be able to say I've lost 15 a month. Both ideas are totally insane. But that's the nature of my eating disorder. Neither starving or binging is part of my eating plan and both are just as damaging to my health. Starving is guaranteed to lead me to a binge and binging does pretty much the same thing but without a detour.

It wasn't till I sat down at the computer around dinner time and wrote Cathie that I started to turn my crazy and irrational thinking around. I had to put words to my feelings and I had to share them to begin to deal with them constructively. Afterward, I got out my trusty Big Book and re-read the second and third chapters. Reading recovery literature is a great recovery tool for me, even things that I've read a thousand times before. When I was done reading I knew I was probably ok in terms of my food choices for the rest of the day, and I was. But I was and still am feeling some disappointment over only losing eight pounds.

You would think that an overweight person would be thrilled to lose 8 pounds. Eight pounds a month is a very respectable and healthy rate, but compulsive overeating is very a powerful disorder — even when I'm not binging. It occurs to me this morning that if I am feeling disappointment about my slower weight loss, perhaps my spiritual fitness is wanting in some area. There's a phrase in the Big Book that may be about the most profound couple sentences in there. It says:

Lately, I've been taking my recovery pretty much for granted. It occurs to me this morning that it's been a few weeks since I felt really grateful for my recovery or much of anything really. I've turned on my cruise control and autopilot and my life again has been little more than marking time. Not that I haven't been busy, I have, but I've been out of touch with the process of living, much like I was before my recovery took hold. More going through the motions than anything else and oblivious to the small daily miracles that surround me all the time. I need to turn this around before my eating disorder can get its foot any further back in the door.

I am very grateful for my recovery. Not only from compulsive overeating, but all the growth and change I've experienced and the various substances and compulsive behaviors I've given up since first coming to 12 Step recovery nearly 20 years ago. Honestly, not one day out of those years was ever improved even a tiny bit, by compulsive or addictive behavior of any sort. I seem to have been chasing my issues from one compulsion to the next since my first AA meeting and I'd like to think I no longer need to do that. Being in recovery from binge eating disorder has allowed me to experience a new level of feeling life authentically and I can't afford to become complacent now.

Love, Dave 4/10/2004