There is a saying, "Nothing succeeds like success"! And to succeed at anything, from being a great basketball player to learning chess to Having finally stumbled upon an already known doorway to success with other compulsions, I began to consider what principles of recovery I'd been ignoring.
1. Quitting FOR GOOD AND FOR ALL.
This is a key AA principle, perhaps the most key to my long term recovery. It means that once embarked upon abstinence from alcohol, there are no "off" days where one can drink. Complete abstinence. This is probably the first thing everyone learns about the AA way of life, that there are no occasions -- none whatsoever -- where it's OK to have even a single sip of alcohol. The idea of "well, just one won't hurt me" is one of the old ideas that AA says must be smashed if any kind of recovery is desired.
I readily saw I'd been blind to following this principle concerning overeating. I would begin a diet of calorie restriction, and then with some meager days of success, tell myself I deserved a "holiday" of going off that diet (of course, with the notion that I could jump right back into the diet the next day).
I'd done this countless times, and of course on that next day, I had no will to begin again on the diet.
But there was a problem here. I'd been on a 2000 calorie a day diet, like Gene. But Gene was quite a bit older than me, and of slighter build. The 2000 calorie limit surely made me lost weight, but
Problem of the mind.
2) SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE See Page 190 BB: "Don't you believe you are going to have all you can do to get rid of that"? "Let's forget about all those other things, that is, trying to eliminate them all at once, and concentrate on the drink."
We forget about trying to fix every aspect of our diet, making it perfect, adding on rules for exercise, etc. Singleness of purpose is a principle that, for our purposes, means we only pay attention to ONE thing: keeping just below the # of calories daily.
3) FEAR This is the main problem behind all problems with overeating. That is, the problem isn't choosing the perfect diet with just the right correct foods, but the fears that "I won't get enough to eat to make me happy." I don't know how else to explain that feeling of alarm, loss of hope, when the seeming need to overeat is something we are strangely powerless over.
4) EFFECTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE. This is an AA principle that isn't quite spelled out in the AA literature, but nevertheless, it's the very foundation of the program. That is, if AA wasn't truly effective for stopping drinking, then what is the point of the program? And, if that program isn't sustainable -- meaning, its only something a person can do for so long before, for whatever reason, they can't stand it anymore and need to take a drink -- then again, what is the point of even trying AA? But as most everyone in AA knows, the program is both effective and sustainable. How do they know this? Because of the number of low bottom drunks who have gotten sober, are comfortable in their sobriety (don't hanker after having a drink and are otherwise relatively content human beings) and go on like this for decades.
In the same way, this program of GA, by focusing on the daily amount one eats with at LIBERAL daily calorie allowance, is both effective and sustainable.
5) TIME TAKES TIME As in any successful recovery program, "time" (recovery) must be a process of one day at a time, plus one day at a time, plus one day at a time....without any breaks. That is "time," meaning, everything to do with satisfaction and progress and results and happiness is directly linked to that series of days without a break. It can't be stressed enough: For the true compulsive overeater or glutton, there is no way to take a break, a vacation, a reward, a binge for even one day. All success comes from "time" -- the consistent, unbroken abstinence from going beyond your calorie ceiling.
Also, "time takes time" is about avoiding the greed for fast weight loss. This is a frequent impulse for many people who are frustrated with overeating and being overweight, and therefore their methods border on the extreme. So they go on diets of very low calories or inconvenient and complex plans to avoid certain foods, thinking that this deprivation and suffering will pay off in fast results. Of course, 99 times out of 100, their plans will fail and all their suffering will have been for nothing.
Extreme measures are not necessary! That is a golden truth of applying this program. Instead of extreme measures, I found that all that was necessary was to AVOID OVEREATING ONE DAY AT A TIME. Please read that carefully -- it doesn't say GO ON A VERY RESTRICTIVE DIET THAT WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER...no, just avoid over-eating. That is really all that is necessary to quickly overcome all the problems, both mental and physical, that come with overeating.
6) KEEP IT SIMPLE Simple works. Complex plans for food, whether they involved special kinds of food and lots of rules, or plans that change depending on certain circumstances, or (worst of all) plans that involve depriving your self for days or weeks and then stopping the plan once your ideal weight has been hit....all such plans are bound to fail.
But keeping it simple really works. It worked for me. All I need was one skill -- keeping track of my daily calories. All I needed was one plan - keeping my daily calorie below my Calorie Ceiling of 2500, and doing this every day. I had tried all kinds of complicated formulas, and they all failed. But this simple formula produced success. 100% success!
7) EASY DOES IT The test of whether you're doing it right is that it's easy. If it's hard -- you're doing it wrong! You probably have chosen a Calorie Ceiling that's too low. That's OK. In fact, it's good news! That will serve as a great learning experience that you were eating too little, and -- good news -- you can now up your Calorie Ceiling, say by 500 calories. This was exactly my experience. I had a Calorie Ceiling of 2000 calories, and while I "could" do it, doing it was a challenge. It required me constantly thinking about food and using willpower to make it through every day. But when I upped my CC to 2500 from 2000, I found that willpower was no longer necessary to get through any day. I could RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY, as the AA Big Book says.
I discovered an amazing truth: To win at this game, all I had to do was NOT OVEREAT! That was an incredibly profound revelation to me. Before, I'd thought that my problems with food required adjusting myself to complex and difficult diets. But now, I'd found out that if I just took care to avoid overeating,
a) I now longer had the fear of deprivation of not eating what I wanted, or as much as I wanted.
b) I never had to deal with hunger or craving (hard to believe, but true!)
c) My weight became stable. I was no longer gaining weight, and (more on this later), I found a base for a truly sane way to lose weight, if I wanted to. And I could lose weight EASILY as well!
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