Food Prayer 1
Six months ago, I created a new Food Plan for myself as a man recovering from PMO. It has revolutionized my program and my life.
The two best spiritual sources that I know of, around food, are Gandhi and the ancient Jewish texts.
From Gandhi I took:
“The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting.”
"Fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet."
“Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake their all on them."
“Six years of experiment showed me that the celibate's ideal food is fresh fruit and nuts.”
From the ancient Jews I took:
“Declare a holy fast”
Joel 1:14
“I humbled myself with fasting”
Psalm 35:10
“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way." “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see." At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
Daniel 1:8-17
“The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals.
Ezekiel 4:10
From the Twelve-Steppers I took:
1. Most of us have been unwilling to admit we really had an eating disorder.
2. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
3. Therefore, it is not surprising that our eating careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people.
4. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his eating is the great obsession of every abnormal eater.
5. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.
6. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
7. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we had an eating disorder.
8. This is the first step in recovery.
9. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
10. We eating disordered are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating.
11. We know that no real overeater ever recovers control.
12. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals - usually brief - were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
13. We are convinced to a man that eating disordered people of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
And finally I threw in a grouchy old saint:
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts”
Saint Jerome (347-420AD)
From these men's ideas I created a Food Plan that eradicates lust.
Food Prayer 2
Once when I was 17, on a mountain, staring at the moon like a lunatic, I saw that I wanted to be perfectly free from anything that would make me spiritually unclear...My new food plan provides that
Food Prayer 3
Stick with the Food Plan, just stick with the Food Plan.
Food Prayer 4
HP,
Help me remember “Why shouldn’t we laugh?…we have recovered”
Food Prayer 5
HP,
Help me to see that “ De-Nile…is not a river in Egypt”
Help me see that Denial is “Don’t Even kNow I Am Lying”
Help me see that “Denial is God’s shock absorber”.
Help me see that denial is the one tool that children have to endure trauma.
Help me to see that of all the 400 addictions, that currently have 12 step programs for them, that Food Addiction is the one with the most denial around it.
Help me to see myself, to simply be honest around food: Do I decide to stop doing something and then go back to it?…Just be honest!
Help me see that if my life is unmanageable around a health issue that there may be some powerlessness in my life.
Specifically, help me see if is there a specific health issue that is making my life unmanageable, like:
acne,
big belly,
heavy hips,
droopy breasts,
eye bags,
rough skin,
heavy pumping of breath when I walk upstairs,
flesh ‘burning’ at the top of my inner thighs when I walk,
night sweats,
sleep apnea,
restless leg syndrome,
can’t see my genitals when I look down cause I am so fat,
rolls of fat,
spare tire,
set of radials,
fear of being naked,
Oprah wings,
dropped butt,
heart hurts when exerting effort,
buttons bursting,
shame when I have to weigh in at the doctors office,
shame when I get my driver’s license renewed,
shame when I have to sit in a middle seat on an airline flight,
body stink when I sweat…
If any of these are true, help me to simply be honest that I may truly be powerless over these things.
Food Prayer 6
Food addiction is a thought disorder that has nothing do with being thin.
I will solve that today through being positive, prayer and reading books.
Food Prayer 7
...We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.
Food Prayer 8
I never want to forget for a month, for a week, for a day or for a second, the misery of being in-between the old food plan and the new food plan...suffering, suffering, suffering.
Food Prayer 9
HP,
I have been abstinent going on 30 years.
My abstinence came, not from OA or FA, but rather from my first mother in law,
“When I gain five pounds I just stop eating so much”.
For me, it’s three pounds…
I surrendered flour and sugar ten years ago when I joined FA.
“Flour makes me stupid, and sugar makes me crazy” made sense to me.
I didn’t want be stupid or crazy.
That was relatively easy for me, after the initial withdrawal.
Quantities of food…that was a different story!
Beginning to use a digital scale to weigh and measure my food, changed my life like nothing else has, except stopping drinking and stopping masturbating.
Today, as a physical act of humility, I will weigh and measure everything I eat, except when I eat out.
Food Prayer 10
The most spiritually gifted man I have ever known was lost to food...
Lesson learned...Opportunity taken.
Food Prayer 11
Help me to stay “On the right track” just for today...Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance.
Food Prayer 12
HP,
Please help me to keep my perspective that working on my money comes second to my new spirituality around food.
Food Prayer 13
I use food as a drug
- to relax me
- to put me to sleep
- ironically, to keep me going when I am tired
- to calm me when I am angry
- to fill me when I am feeling needy
- to be with me when I am feeling lonely
- to defend me when I feel hurt
- to sate my sadness
- to lessen my frustration
I use it to celebrate all holidays and occasions:
- Fourth of July
- Christmas
- Thanksgiving
- Memorial Day
- Veteran’s Day
- Labor Day
- Easter
- Martin Luther King’s birthday
- Mothers’ Day
- Father’s Day
- My AA birthday
- My SLAA birthday
- My natal birthday
- My fiancee and I’s Month-aversary
- My daughter’s birthday
- My daughter’s AA birthday
- My daughter’s graduation
- Granddaughter-in-laws birthday and graduation
- My sponcee’s AA or SAA birthdays
I use it to relax me as fun, and for recreation...
Food Prayer 14
Nothing is more important than my food…nothing
Food Prayer 15
Have mercy on me Lord, a sinner
It may not true that coffee is a sin for Bill W. (from page 135 Big Book)
…but it is true for me.
Food Prayer 16
HP,
Help me to surrender all food thoughts to you, to surrender to weighing and measuring only and following my food plan, one day at a time, just for today.
Food Prayers 17
Overeating Consequences:
Heart hurts
muscles ache
arthritis flairs in knees and lower back
respiratory congestion (nasal passages, bronchia, lungs)
headaches
stomach protrudes
eyes bag
skin splotches
nausea
breathing is taxed
numbness
mind is thick and muddled
head, cheeks, arms, hands, thighs, calves, feet and groin all feel stretched out and achey...like I have had an allergic reaction
Food Prayer 18
“Declare a holy fast”_Joel
“I humbled my self with fasting”_Psalm 35:10
“Belly Sabbath”_Larry, Moe and Curly
Food Prayer 19
When I am hungry, an hour before my set eating time, help me to feel my feelings, surrender them to you and change my mind to something else.
Food Prayer 20
Help me to simply maintain...and be grateful that I am not fat
Food Prayer 21
Have mercy on me HP, Forgive me for all the years I slaughtered myself with food
Forgive me for the cowardice I practiced by not feeling my feelings
Forgive me for hating myself so much of my life
Help me to have mercy on myself for acting out with food.
I have a disease…and I didn’t know it.
Help me, just for today, to weigh and measure my food, as act of humility.
For through the act of weighing and measuring, I admit that I cannot manage my food life, that I need your help…and that is worth the pain.
Food Prayer 22
My body speaks for itself.
Food Prayer 23
Contrary to traditional 12 Step Food Addiction principles: for my spiritual path, I will use food...and exercise.
Food Prayers 24
“Nothing so completely insures separation from my Higher Power...as an energy drink/coffee”
Food Prayer 25
How do I feel when I eat?
Greedy...
The best description of greed I know of is: "He is arrogant and never at rest, because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied."
As soon as the first bite gets in my mouth I become avaricious around food.
Where did I learn this?
My father, a very strong and courageous man, ‘Starved’ during the Great Depression, beginning when he was only three years old and lasting until the Second World War began, when he was 15 years old.
Attitudinally, he stayed a ‘Starved child’ all his life.
He did not have the “Spiritual wealth” that is so freely available, to all people, in 12 step.
(Overeaters Anonymous was not founded until January 1960…)
God have mercy on me…and my Daddy
Amen
Food Prayers 26
Organize my new life around breath prayer to access my soul.
Then Food Plan
Then Exercise
Food Prayer 27
Caffeine is a binge food for me.
It even impairs my motor skills when I play the guitar.
Food Prayers 28
In all humility, I need help to continue to surrender to you around food at this moment.
Amen
Food Prayer 29
Why do I eat too much?
“Ingestion analgesia”- the good feeling I get after eating, literally, means “Pain relief from eating”.
It's the drive to survive, pushed even harder by competition or ‘Beating the others to the food’.
That rewarding feeling, historically, ensured survival of the species.
Having such easy access to fat, salt and sugar is a recent development in human history.
The body rewards fatty, salty, sugary foods by releasing “endogenous opioids”…which help control pain.
I start off feeling not good and grumpy, then eat…and feel good
The problem, for me, is right there…I use food to change my feelings, consciously or unconciously.
Some people can just “Control it through mental discipline”.
I am not one of them…
If I am honest, after many failed attempts to control food choices and quantities.
I need the help of God, not in the form presented in church, but a more specific, more “torquey” God.
Jesus just ain’t gonna cut it, in my experience, my brotha’s and sistas’
Just sayin’
Food Prayer 30
HP,
Help me to Think, think, think...
Help me to think to turn to prayer when I feel anxious.
Amen
Food Prayers 31
HP, Help me to have mercy on me as I struggle with the food.
Food Prayer 32
HP,
Help me to be faithful to my eating disorder recovery food plan, as I achieve some modest amount of success, just for today.
Amen
Food Prayer 33
Help me to celebrate that I have not, through my eating, given myself a stroke.
Stroke is the number five cause of death the US.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 795,000 Americans have strokes each year.
That's over 2000 a day, 90 an hour, or one every 40 seconds.
By the time we finish reading this prayer…an American, somewhere, will have had a stroke.
Could be your mother...
Could be your son…
Could be you...
Food Prayer 34
I love myself with exercise and abstaining from foods that trigger me.
When I feel triggered…I surrender those feelings to HP.
Food Prayer 35
I feel fevered, heart-burned, raw-dry skin, bloated, acrid smelling, extreme, reddened, tender, victimy, overwhelmed and dread...while on coffee.
Food Prayer 36
Alona and I hit bottom with caffeine on Wednesday June 6, 2018
Food Prayer 37
Sobriety date from green tea Wednesday, July 25, 2018, 3:00 pm
Food Prayer 38
HP,
Simply, help me stay with my current food plan
Help me to serve other women in FA …as that is pretty much all there are
I am grateful to be thin and to have such super health.
Help me to not eat out right now, as that is what is best for me right now…and the restaurants here are so bad.
I am grateful that I don’t have diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, cancer or that I am recovering from a stroke stemming from my food.
I am grateful I am not in the 69% of American’s who are overweight.
I am grateful I am not in the 35% who are obese.
I am grateful, I am not going to be one of the 821 people who die today because of the complications from being fat.
Help me to realize through inventory, accept by choosing to be positive, having the courage to act on the knowledge, that I am not a compulsive overeater, or a food addict…
But, rather that I have an eating disorder.
Food Prayers 39
My Food Plan is simply not enough to be healthy...I must work out 
Food Prayers 40
Half of God’s will is self care. ”Enlightened self-interest”.
This starts with the Food Plan, but in no way ends there.
It is the basis…Workout!
Food Prayer 41
HP,
How do I feel as I am eating?
I feel safe
I feel like it is okay to use my mouth
I feel my stomach later in the feeding, filling up
I feel like I can’t slow down
Why do I feel these four things HP?
I was taught children were “To be seen not heard”
I was told to “Shut up” to “Shut my mouth”
Do theses childhood messages have any bearing on my adult practices today?
Please keep me from blaming someone, as that would simply be abusing them emotionally, but please help me understand my beliefs so that, with your help, I might have the opportunity to change
Amen
Food Prayer 42
Prayer is my most important tool during withdrawal.
Food Prayer 43
As I get older my food/exercise is crucial to me.
Food Prayer 44
I am really done.
HP, please help me to stay done, please?
Food Prayer 45
HP,
I am powerless over how fast I eat.
I cannot stop…
There is a chemical in my head that I produce, when I eat quickly, that induces me to believe that I am eating (large) “quantities”.
Help me to patiently and lovingly cut my food in very small, bite-sized portions.
Help me set my fork down between bites.
Help me to remember to pray “As though feeding a child”, when I eat.
Help me to have faith that you will heal this in me, too.
Help me to understand that this is not “Food Addiction”, but rather an eating disorder.
…and that you can probably handle this, too.
Amen
Food Prayer 46
Help me HP to stay on my food plan and exercise moderately, but fully, just for today.
Food Prayer 47
There is a competitive part of me that I will use to help me with my food.
All competition is not narcissism…Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war!
Food Prayer 48
I competed against two people and it really helped me do a better job biking.
As exercise is part of my spirituality, that competition helped my spiritual life.
Food Prayer 49
HP,
Help me to use song to reach my heart
Break through my mind
Seep into the cracks, creases and crevices
Let the gift of melody entice and entangle me
Have it throw me down, hard, and leave me in tears
Do whatever you must
Use whatever force is necessary to reach my heart
Because the heart is the pathway to the soul…
And my soul…is you
Break me…until I am down on my knees, if necessary
I will not eat, no matter what…no matter what, I will not eat
No matter what, I will not eat…I will not eat, no matter what
Food Prayer 50
I am willing to start all my recovery over for this recovery.
I leave 38 years of work behind and, just for today, I will do whatever I have to do, feel whatever I have to feel, to stay on my food plan.
I will set boundaries with others, announce limits and meet my needs.
Food Prayer 51
Anger arises by the second day of abstinence.
Food Prayer 52
HP,
Gandhi said that “Complete control of the palate makes the vow of chastity very easy”
If that is true, then sex and food are related.
The hypothalamus, in my brain, controls food and water intake, hunger and thirst, but it also controls sexual behavior and reproduction.
What I notice in me is that when I am fully sexual, I desire more food.
Also, I notice that when I eat more food than is necessary, I want to be sexual.
I believe the first reaction to be healthy: when I am sexual I want to replace the lost energy. That is understandable.
But, I believe the second response to be unhealthy.
When I “Pad my food” (eat more than planned), then I am using food as a drug, typically to relieve anxiety.
There are negative consequences for me when I do this…Why?
Because I want more!
The hypothalamus receives signals from pleasure pathways that use dopamine
Once the dopamine is released in my body…I want more!
Sex releases dopamine
I’ll take it, thank you very much
…and I’m off to the races
Have mercy on me HP.
Have mercy on me…
Food Prayer 53
I need more cardio.
I need running to augment my biking.
Food Prayer 54
AA is talk therapy.
I need something different.
I need my body to do my talking.
“Just look at your body and look at my body...who should we be listening to?”
Food Prayer 55
Choking- “To have severe difficulty in breathing because of an obstructed throat”.
Why do I choke myself when eating?
When food travels through the stomach, it has to be digested to move into the upper small intestine.
Once it gets to there the intestines release a hormone to tell the brain to stop eating, now.
As food intake increases, the hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, calms down.
If the food arrives extremely quickly then the upper small intestine simply doesn’t get this message quickly enough.
I, therefore, eat with impunity, as my body is saying to my brain “Eat more…survive, at all costs.
That is why…
There is always a reason.
The challenge, for me, is around honesty and humility.
Can I stop this disordered eating?
No, honestly, I can’t…
Fortunately, there is a power, greater than myself, that can help me around this, or any other of my behaviors around food.
All I gotta do is…get honest
Food Prayers 56
HP,
As I have lost my scale, help me to “Eyeball” conservatively.
Food Prayers 57
HP,
After one week of trying the best I can, I am quite clear that “ Eyeballing” does not work for me.
Food Prayers 58
HP,
Got a new scale. I am not trustworthy without it.
I become a starved child without it. I need firm limits to stay healthy.
Food Prayer 59
HP,
Why, in my 50’s, do I have to use a digital scale to weigh and measure everything that goes into my mouth?
Is it true that women’s number one and two reactions to abuse is
1. To eat
2. To go into depression
Why, in my 50’s, do I have to use a digital scale to weigh and measure everything that goes into my mouth?
The term "baby" is used to refer to any child from birth to age four.
When babies cry and someone appears and gives them food or cleans them, they reason
“I did that. I cry and food appears.” It is called “Magical thinking”.
When a baby, one to four years old, is abused they reason, “I did that. Something I did caused me to be hurt”
Why, in my 50’s, do I have to use a digital scale to weigh and measure everything that goes into my mouth?
When a female child is abused:
Emotionally neglected
Emotionally abused
Physically neglected
Physically abused
Verbally abused
Sexually abused
Her first reactions two reactions are
1. To eat
2. To go into depression
Why, in my 50’s, do I have to use a digital scale to weigh and measure everything that goes into my mouth?
If I believe that the disease of using food to manage feelings is simply “Fear, doubt and insecurity” as FA says, then I will never know why “I have to use a digital scale to weigh and measure everything that goes into my mouth”…
Food Prayer 60
I have utterly hit bottom with coffee (I relapsed for two months on my 30th AA birthday).
I am weak, petty, small-minded, nauseous, dry-skinned and…soulless.
I absolutely cannot reach my soul while using coffee.
It utterly stops my Enlightenment…even with chastity and a strict raw organic vegan living food plan.
Food Prayer 61
“We now see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves”
“…no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands” (AA 12x12)
What happens when I make unreasonable demands upon myself?
I feel rage!!!
When I act on it, I lash out at unsuspecting, and generally, undeserving people.
Then…I feel shame and self-hatred.
Then I eat…for the “Ingestion analgesia”- the good feeling I get after eating
Ingestion analgesia, literally, means “pain relief from eating”.
If I make unreasonable demands upon myself…I will eat over it.
Count on it…
I want peace today
I will stay within my limits...
Food Prayers 62
If everything fails I can work the food as I did 10 years ago when I closed the SLAA meetings.
Food Prayer 63
After working with 95,000 people in 30 years, honestly, no one can do what I do. I need to rethink this…
Food Prayers 64
I have failed again to be successful…but I have succeeded at staying abstinent around food.
Food Prayer 65
Is it true that “…character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of our eating disorders”?
Extremes…
Am I working more than 8 hours a day?
Am I sleeping more than 8 hours a day?
How much television do I watch everyday?
How long I am on social media each day?
How much time do I ‘hangout’ with friends?
How much do I work out each day?
Is it true that “…character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of our eating disorders”?
Extremes…
How much do I eat every day?
How much sugar do I intake each day?
How much caffeine do I drink every day?
How much flour do I intake each day?
How much oil do I intake each day?
How much fluid do I intake each day?
Is it true that “…character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of our eating disorders”?
Food Prayer 66
I am obscured from my soul, if I am off my food plan.
To be content I must reach my soul.
I count my breaths and focus within.
Food Prayer 67
"I could not find You, because I was wrongly seeking you outside of me.
...You are within."
Saint Augustine
I could not find you because…I was lost in the ambiguity around food.
Food Prayer 68
HP,
Help me accept, be positive and lighthearted…that my food is boring.
Help me to realize that if my food is not tasty, sexy, cool, fun or celebratory
…that I will look for those things in life.
Help me to look for sexy, cool, fun and celebratory…in life!
If my food is grey, my life is in color.
If my food is flat, my life is multidimensional.
If my food is quiet, my life is dynamic.
Let’s face it…I have been wrong about my food all my life.
One look at my body will tell me that truth.
I want to have mercy on myself…but I want tell the truth
…to myself, at least
Food Prayer 69
The best part about being abstinent is the way I feel when I look in the mirror first thing in the morning (high self esteem) and when I am out in the world with my partner and I feel matched to her physically.
Food Prayers 70
I want never want to have to think about losing weight or how I look again….I want only to determine, and follow, a new food plan that will accommodate the changes I have experienced at 63 years old.'
Food Prayer 71
HP,
Is there something I am missing in my personal inventory?
Why is there no crying, at all, in my life when I look back?
Was there no sadness?
Did I “Attitudinally adjust” my feeling of sadness out of my life?
Or did I decide that to cry was weak?
Did this affect my food choices at all? Ever?
Did I ever eat when I needed to cry?
Have mercy on me Lord…teach me
Food Prayer 72
I have codependence around women when it comes to food.
I compulsively feed them.
But when I do, my food addiction kicks in and I compulsively overeat.
That is the simple truth
Food Prayer 73
We repeat to ourselves, a phrase that has appealed to us. Just saying it over and over...
(AA 12x12 page 103)
“Don’t eat no matter what …no matter what, don’t eat”
“Don’t eat no matter what …no matter what, don’t eat”
“Don’t eat no matter what …no matter what, don’t eat”
“Fear, doubt and insecurity”
“Fear, doubt and insecurity”
“Fear, doubt and insecurity”
“I am enough, I do enough, I have enough”
“I am enough, I do enough, I have enough”
“I am enough, I do enough, I have enough”
“Just weigh and measure your food”
“Just weigh and measure your food”
“Just weigh and measure your food”
“Nothing tastes as good as thin feels”
“Nothing tastes as good as thin feels”
“Nothing tastes as good as thin feels”
We repeat to ourselves, a phrase that has appealed to us. Just saying it over and over..._(AA 12x12 page 103)
Food Prayers 74
After 18 months of not having a scale to measure my body…I actually have lost a pound!
Food Prayer 75
When I feel frustration and fear, help me to stay abstinent, just for today.
Food Prayer 76
Help me to laugh at the stupidity of not paying attention to food and weight
Food Prayer 77
AA aphorism: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…it might be a duck
HP,
Help me not be stupid.
Help me, specifically, not to be stupid around food.
If I am eating foods that:
Hurt me
Make me look bad
Cause me to lose sleep
Prevent me from exercising
Lower my self esteem
Impact my love life
…is that stupid?
AA aphorism: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…it might be a duck
Food Prayer 78
Complete withdrawal from the caffeine in green tea and adjustment to the new food plan took about ten days.
Now maintenance...through meditation on my soul.
Food Prayer 79
I admit that I am powerless over my codependency of needing to feed women and then binging/gorging.
Food Prayers 80
Nothing so completely insures separation from my soul...as masturbation or overeating.
Food Prayer 81
If I am failing, help me find a group where I can be honest.
Is it fear of being honest?
Is it pride (worrying about what other people will think)?
Or is it my own feeling of shame?
Is that feeling of shame driven by my own lack of mercy with myself?
Why, why, Oh Lord, can I not be honest about my food…with others?
Food prayer 82
When I fail…Please help me to get back up as quickly as possible.
Food Prayers 83
I will make amends to myself for the harm I have done myself with eating too much.
Food Prayers 84
I feel angry all the time being moderate around food, because I am never satiate…which was covering my anger.
Step work…here I come
Food Prayer 85
When I am feeling hungry, do I need food?
I eat when I don’t want to feel needy, hurt, sad, lonely, angry, tired, frustrated, bored, etc.
So all my feelings feel are covered up with “I am hungry”.
If I were really hungry, why does a meeting, a phone call, step work or prayer take away my hungry feelings?
Because I have an eating disorder…
The solution is spiritual, here, simply defined as getting connected.
But I can’t get connected unless I am honest that I need help.
Food Prayer 86
My view on recovery is changing.
I am feeling satisfied with more modest results.
Food Prayer 87
HP,
The most important thing to me today, just for today, is my new spirituality which is defined as following a food plan and exercising.
As I work hard on financial self-care,
Please, help me not lose perspective on my new spirituality.
Food Prayer 88
My father was a twenty two year career army officer.
He then spent ten years in business between military and industry.
He was married for twenty seven years and raised two sons.
He was clear that “If there really was a God, what could possibly be more important than acknowledging that fact”
He was equally convinced that there was no God.
As a result, he spent the “Spiritual” part of his life managing hangovers.
Help me not do that with my life…around food.
You can chose not to be religious…but you can’t choose whether or not to be spiritual.
Help me not do that with my life…around food.
The spiritual part of life…is like the wet part of the ocean
Help me not do that with my life…around food.
Food Prayer 89
People have complained all my life “It’s hard to lose weight when you are old.”
That was never true through my 30’s, 40’s or 50’s, until I hit 63.
Now, it is harder…but, I accept the challenge.
Food Prayer 90
“You’re fat” (Thursday May 10, 2018)
Food abstinence...my spiritual backup plan in case PrayerCall folds, (as we folded the Marina Dock SLAA in 2007).
Food Prayer 91
When I am powerless over food I don’t say to myself ,"I am going to act out with my food” or
“I am feeling something uncomfortable and I am going to use food as a drug to change my feelings”
I lie, a bald-faced lie…to myself.
I say:
“I didn’t have enough yesterday, so this is okay”.
“I will let myself have this food, because I am not acting out sexually”.
“I do not want to be rigid!”
“This is a tertiary disease, not a primary or secondary one”.
“FA allows people to not weigh and measure in restaurants”.
“What if this family celebration were in a restaurant, instead of at this home?”
“I am celebrating my:
daughter’s birthday,
AA sobriety date,
Christmas,
Thanksgiving,
my AA sobriety date,
My SAA sobriety date,
4th of July,
Memorial Day,
Labor Day,
My daughter’s wedding,
My daughter’s engagement party,
Or…
“Meeting my new partner’s family is important”
“Meeting my new partner’s friends is important”
“Wanting to share openly and abundantly, largess, with my new prospective new partner is important”
And the worst lie?
“It’s progress rather than perfection”…
Food Prayer 92
Honesty about myself:
I can destroy myself in one day, with food.
I can gain 6 pounds in one day, 10 pounds in two.
Food Prayer 93
A Food Plan that includes caffeine, in any form, is unmanageable by day three.
Food Prayer 94
How do I know if I am acting out with food if my weight is fluctuating only three to five pounds?
After I eat:
Do I feel high?
Do I feel numb?
Do I feel guilty?
Do I feel ashamed?
Do I feel depressed?
Do I feel torpid?
Do I feel like I have ‘gotten away’ with something?
Do I feel like “I have finally gotten my own way” around my food plan?
Do I feel like I need to “Go exercise it off”
The next day, do I feel pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized?
Food Prayer 95
HP,
One of the feelings I feel when I eat, is satiate, in my stomach.
Another feeling is choked .
Another is extremely impatient.
I eat too fast and am unable to stop doing so.
HP, with all my years, all my decades, of being abstinent, thin, honest and unselfish in OA and FA…I have never addressed this aspect of my food disorder...choking.
Help me now, please.
Amen
Food Prayer 96
HP,
Help me to glory in the love and acceptance I get when I share my actual food usage to safe people.
Help me to not try to use groups of people, to share my truth in, that would ostracize me, or shame me, if I actually were simple and honest with them.
Help me to realize that if I keep getting shamed, blamed or controlled in these groups, and I keep going back, then it is my fault…not theirs.
If “God in Community” is real, then let me remember that…that part of God will appear only if I am honest.
Help me to remember that I cannot recover without “My own conception of God”, p.12 Big Book, and that to try to do so…is nothing but arrogance
Help me to be humble…to be honest about my limits.
Food Prayer 97
As I become abstinent in my new way…help me to lighten up and not become workaholic
Food Prayer 98
Lord,
Have mercy on us Lord,
We are dying from our food.
B.B. King your greatest black child guitar genius murdered himself…with fat.
Hampton B. Coles (Ret.) the “ GodFather of Jam”, my friend, my most famous student, dropped dead, on stage, from congestive heart failure…from being fat.
That…even a fool could see.
But there is nothing more devious, deceptive and duplicitous that we, your children, individually, are utterly in denial around, than the effect of our food has on our relationships.
You know Lord, your hard core conservative Christians, reality based or not, hyperbolic or agelessly enlightened, say that the most salient feature of the true, living foreboding Devil , the “Boss Universal” (Big Book), is that he convinces us…that he does not exist.
If I were the Devil, daily headed into my office, determined to destroy all life, as my stated corporate purpose, I would not use:
nuclear weapons,
world hunger,
Aids,
racism
or even child molestation as my secret weapon.
That is too obvious, that would be too brief...
I would use food…
I would not just kill life, I would make God’s children live and suffer…as long as (literally) humanly possible…
…Anybody care for a snack?
Food Prayer 99
I felt tempted, but stayed with my food plan. I am so grateful, so so grateful.
Just for today, one day at a time, just for today.
Food Prayer 100
I can enjoy healthy physical competition today with myself and with others...and laugh about it!
Food Prayer 101
I am grateful for a week of new spirituality for me, as defined by food.
Food Prayer 102
If I lose myself to food, this would be true:
Was a fool with my money
And I lost every dime
And the sun stopped shining
And it rained all the time
It did set me back some
But I made it through
But I'll never get over losing you
Do you know how much you mean to me?
Should've told you 'cause it's true
I'd get over losing anything
But I'll never get over losing you
When you're young
And there's time
To forget the past
You don't think that you will
But you do
But I know that I don't have time enough
And I'll never get over losing you
I've been cold
I've been hungry
But not for awhile
I guess most of my dreams have come true
With it all here around me
No peace do I find
'Cause I'll never get over losing you
No, I'll never get over losing you
Food Prayer 103
The biggest health consideration that I have is simply becoming 63 years old.
My body will not process food the way it has for the last 30 years of abstinence. I accept this and I must not forget it. The “ism” in alcoholism stands for Incredibly Short Memory.
Think, think, think...
Food Prayer 104
Overeating…
It got my Grandmommie
The King (Elvis)
It got my brother
Alexander The Great
It got my Uncle Donald
President Zachary Taylor
It got my Uncle Chuck
William Makepeace Thackeray
It got my Aunt Annie
English King Henry (1100-1135)
It got my Uncle Billy
Swedish King Adolf Fredrick (1751-1771)
It got my Aunt Claire
Eighteenth-century French philosopher Denis Diderot
It got my Uncle Earnie
Roman Senator Lucius Fabius Cilo
It got my Aunt Margaret Virginia
Comic Actor Marty Feldman
It got my Uncle Robbie
Sir Francis Bacon
It got my Aunt Kat
John Candy
It got my Grandmother Stewart
Karen Carpenter
It got my Aunt Ann
B.B. King and Marlon Brando
Lord, give me the wisdom, humility and courage to save myself from death from my eating disorder,
not as these poor children of yours...who were not able to save themselves
Food Prayer 105
I am going to kill this food.
My militant willingness, God’s grace and the tools of the food plan and weighing and measuring my food.
Food Prayer 106
I will overcome this recent surge of addictive craving.
I will overcome it.
I will.
I will use the tools relentlessly.
I will weigh and measure my food, stick to my food plan and eat, slowly, at set times.
I shall overcome…
Food Prayer 107
Fun! Fun! Fun! That is what I need to replace the food.
3.5 hour bike ride
Up 1235 feet, 7.8 miles, in 1 hour 48 minutes
Down in 18 minutes
Food Prayer 108
On the fifth day of abstinence I burst through to the real me!
I surrender my financial cares to God and am grateful for a day of rest to read.
I trust that all will be well with me and mine as long as I stay abstinent.
Food Prayer 109
Food Addiction is an intimacy disorder.
After sex, nothing is more intimate than “putting things outside of me, inside of me”…or eating.
If I am overweight then the way I relate to those “other things” (food) is disordered
If I:
Guzzle water
Bite my tongue
Begin to choke
Cough
Gag
Burp
Expel gas
Make my stomach rumble
Bite the inside of my mouth
Cause my heart to pound
Make my face sweat
Puff my cheeks out
Bite off tops with my teeth
Drop my food on the floor (even if I don’t pick it up)
Don’t use utensils
Don’t use plates
Eating food that is too cold or too hot
Eating too fast
Then I have a disordered relationship with things outside of me.
God, whatever that may look like to me, in whatever state of spiritual development I am fortunate enough to be in, can help me…if I can be honest.
This is what a “Fourth step” is for.
Act with courage…
Food Prayer 110
HP,
The Big Book says “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? ”
Gandhi says “Complete control of the palette made the vow of chastity very easy ”…Thereby asserting, incredibly wisely, that there is some definite connection between sex and food”
It is easy, therefore, to see that if a man is having trouble having sex in compulsive, self-destructive ways that gently looking at his food might help give him some additional power to combat the onslaught of self destructive sexual behaviors that cause him to feel so bad afterward.
Nes’t Pas?
What is much harder, Lord, is for a woman to look at the fact that she is compulsive around eating foods that are self destructive…and that that, too, comes most often, from sexual experiences, rooted in childhood, that only a proper fourth step sexual history inventory will reveal.
In either case, Lord, have mercy on us. Show us only as much truth as we can rightfully bear on any given day.
Please be kind to us.
Your kindness is “Actions that relieve suffering”
Please be kind…we are but hurt children.
Amen
Food Prayer 111
HP,
Help me to turbo charge my recovery from my food disorder, just for today.
Food Prayer 112
I am “Willing to face the fact of suffering” around my food and exercise today, to achieve the health I desire.
Food Prayer 113
The difference between a food addiction and an eating disorder is the potential for choking.
Here are some folks who didn’t know what an Eating Disorder was…and they choked to death:
- Alexander Alekhine - Russian Chess Genius
- Attila the Hun - Fierce 5th century nomadic warrior
- Tommy Dorsey -Jazz band leader
- Jimmie Foxx -The second man to hit 500 home runs in professional baseball, after Babe Ruth
- Tennessee Williams - Wrote A Streetcar Named Desire
- Subroto Mukerjee -Father of The Indian Air Force
- Christy Brown Writer: had cerebral palsy and was able to type only…with the toes of one foot
- Skinnay Ennis Jazz band leader
Food Prayer 114
HP,
If I am selfish and dishonest, as all food addicts are (according the Big Book),
If I am resentful (a three syllable word for hate) or acting on fear (a one syllable word for cowardly)
(and the Big Book says I am),
If I am extreme and obsessive, which I am, in my food addiction,
then help me to realize that those six character defects are exactly what my children will learn from me…
Give me courage, naked courage, to change, as an act of self-love and for the love of my family.
My food scale is my humble altar.
Just weigh and measure your food…
Just weigh and measure your food…
Food Prayer 115
OA is so sick in Thailand that it is better for me to use PrayerCall than it is to try to get help from Chiang Mai OA.
My very worst day with food is better than any of their best days.
To not acknowledge that is to victimise myself.
Food Prayers 116
Help me laugh at fat, old, gouty, bitter, passive aggressive, shaming and controlling old men spouting self-control and Anti-God diseased slogans through their poisonous lips.
Food Prayers 117
With PrayerCall peaking I need to stay spiritually fit, challenged and surrendering to stay at my peak, so I am going to change to food.
Food Prayers 118
The silly girls in FA will give you the evil eye if you walk into a meeting in work-out clothes because they believe you are an unrecovered exercise bulimic.
While it's true that only 10-15% of weight loss is attributable to food, in my experience, exercise is not evil…that is silly.
Weight loss is about the food.
It’s about the food!
But exercise can make a lovely ninth step amends to myself for the harm I have done my body.
Food Prayers 119
What constitutes food abstinence for me today?
Not gaining more than three pounds, and if I do immediately losing it.
Never eating flour and sugar, ever.
Weighing and measuring my food.
Always making a food record.
There are also finite periods when I do not eat out…I am definitely in one of those right now.
There are finite periods where I make a food plan and follow it…I am definitely in one of those right now.
Being grateful always...
Food Prayers 120
“Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”
Now this is pretty extreme, but it does appear twice in the New Testament, so it must be a noticeable feature of the guy whose example influenced Jesus to give up his work as a carpenter and try his hand at preaching.
Food Prayers 121
“Let him share with the beasts in the grass of the earth,
and let him be drenched with the dew of heaven”
Look!!! Wheatgrass is in the Bible, Lmao!
Living Food, Bitches!!!
Food Prayer 122
HP.
I see PrayerCall changing…reaching out to women
To make an example of my betters:
“The Jewish believers who came with Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles.”_Acts 10:45
There is a peace that comes over men at prayer
There is a peace that comes over women at prayer
But there is an irrepressible joy that I clearly see and can hear that appears in women at prayer
We must open the door to them
Help me to do this your way…not mine.
Amen
Food Prayer 123
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts”
It also separates me from my soul.
In that sense it moves toward a form of death.
Spiritual death...
Food Prayer 124
When those around me are relapsing, help me to remember to:
Mind your own business
Keep the focus on yourself
Keep your side of the street clean
Keep your eye on your own plate and
There but by the Grace of God go I
Food Prayers 125
Stick with the Food Plan
Stick means:
ongoing
continuous
sustained
persistent
steady
relentless
rolling
uninterrupted
unabating
unremitting
Food Prayer 126
Help me to remember there are two simple parts to food abstinence:
Weight loss with it’s excitement, hope, discipline and neurochemical stress
and maintenance with its ease, grace and potential ennui…if I am not grateful always
Food Prayer 127
HP,
Help me to remember that food at street markets and restaurants...is not my food.
Food Prayer 128
Lord,
If I am honest, eating too much is fun.
But if I am honest, I hate the way I feel and look very shortly thereafter.
Obviously, I need to have fun.
Please, help me find other ways to have fun.
Amen
Food Prayer 129
I am a stone cold food addict.
I have watched dozens, scores, hundreds of men and women lie and lie to themselves around food for 63 years.
Good loving men: Priests, monks, blues singers, lawyers, bass players, sailors.
I have done the exact same thing.
I have: lied, rationalized, excused, given a pass, looked the other way, smoothed over, caulked.
One of our prayers says:
"Two men:
I see the strengths in one…and emulate them
I see the weakness in the other…and correct them in myself."
HP, help me not be a liar, to myself, around food.
Bust my chops, bring me to my knees. Do whatever you have to…have no mercy.
And in your merciless honesty, you are merciful to me…and you give me my freedom.
Food Prayer 130
Nobody wants this recovery:
Not my partner
Not my two closest friends
Not my brother
Not my Board of Directors
..but I do.
I will have it, but I will be silent,
…like S recovery in AA for 20 years.
Food Prayer 131
Just for today I will:
weigh and measure my food
stick with the food plan.
...cause I'm fat when I don't.
Food Prayer 132
“Without discipline, we usually ended up doing what was familiar to us”.
This is particularly true, for me, with my food.
I have eaten to change my feelings since before I was one year old.
I use it as a way to calm my anxiety.
That is nothing but pure addiction.
My gauge on how much food I’m ingesting is simply broken, forever.
I require, for me, a digital scale that weighs and measures all the food I eat before I eat.
Otherwise, I do what is familiar.
I am an addict…
Food Prayer 133
Thank you for the wisdom to remember “Think, think, think” when I feel frustrated and tired,
so that I stick with my food plan, weigh my food and eat at set times.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for “Think, think, think”...
Food Prayer 134
HP,
Help me through this long night of fasting.
Amen
Food Prayers 135
In the state of California 16% of our 2-4 year olds are obese…Really? Those are our babies!!
Martin Luther King use to say “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Gandhi would say “Be the change you want to see in the world”
Just do it...One meal, one day at a time.
Food Prayers 136
“Starve a fever, stuff a cold”
To stuff means—shove, thrust, push, ram, cram, squeeze, force, jam, pack, pile, stick
…Not a good idea for a compulsive overeater.
Food Prayers 137
Wouldn’t it be lovely to never lose or gain weight again, one day at a time?
To be free of “The great obsession of every abnormal overeater"
How would I do that?
Weigh and measure every meal, stick to the food plan and, unlike FA rubric—if I eat out...to bring my digital scale, or I simply don’t go.
Food Prayer 138
HP,
Help me to follow the food plan.
If I fail, or find it very hard to do, help me to be honest with myself.
Help me to have the humility to remember that I am powerless…and that I need help.
Amen
Food Prayer 139
HP,
Help me to gently announce limits, set boundaries and detach with love from anyone who is acting out with food, just for today, one day at a time.
Help me to retain my newly attained food serenity.
Please help me HP, your child, your servant.
Amen
Food Prayer 140
If it is boring…just do it.
Weigh my food
Stick with Food Plan
Eat at set times.
Fast 18 hours per day
Food Prayer 141
"The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his eating is the great obsession of every abnormal overeater. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing."
Illusion is external, a distortion of the senses.
"The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."
Delusion is internal, mental, a fixed belief, which can be either false or fanciful.
Food Prayer 142
Spiritually not:
Gandhi
Jesus
Boundaries
Limits
Feelings
Needs
My childhood
My Inner child
but rather...whatever is left when I am abstinent.
Food Prayer 143
Help me to be merciful and forgiving as I re-write my food plan:
Wheatgrass
Sprouts
Greens
Nut butters
Nuts
Bananas
No flour or sugar
No meat, dairy or eggs
Organic foods only
No cooked foods
No salt
No carbonated drinks
No aspirin (that had become a food group)
Food Prayer 144
In part of PrayerCall's daily literature there is a line "Spirituality is defined from within”.
For nearly three decades that has meant surrender of masturbation and affairs.
But, I've got that for 27 years and 10 months, now.
What is changing is that my spirituality is becoming defined by my food, because that is such a close and impactful act in my relationship to myself.
It is…”Defined from within”.
Food Prayer 145
What if I retire as an apostolic and take up, fully, the contemplative?
Food Prayer 146
If you live a life of prayer and fasting...you never have to go to a meeting again, if you don’t want to.
You can retire as an apostolic.
You can live a humble simple life as a guitar teacher and marry Alona.
You have devoted 30 years of your life to this and you have invented a cure for sex addiction. You have healed yourself.
Now you can just teach guitar, read books and workout.
Food Prayer 147
Not more meetings, just PrayerCall.
Thin, athletic, well-dressed, reading...That is the new me, in my new life.
Food Prayer 148
I commit to no 12 step meetings
I commit to PrayerCall, ActWithCourage and Monks
I commit to my Food Plan and Exercise
I commit to reading for pleasure
Food Prayer 149
Gift to Myself:
If I stay with the Food Plan, I do not have to go back to FA and be emotionally brutalised.
I also get to live a normal life.
I can move to acceptance, from courage.
From war with my addictions, to peace.
From change to repose.
Food Prayer 150
“Repent and Live”
If I give up the fun of eating for fun what shall I do for fun?
Read books, watch opera, sing with my wife, watch movies...
Food Prayer 151
Finding my soul when I am fat is like trying to pick up a newly minted penny hidden between two 10 pound sheathes of frying Mangalitsa leaf fat.
You might be able to do it…but more likely, you’ll just slip quick.
Food Prayer 152
I cannot rely on my strength alone.
Fierce willpower, tremendous self-discipline, colossal effort will fail
because, honestly, I have limits and the addiction is bigger than me.
I cannot rely on God’s grace alone to heal me.
That is magical thinking.
Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy types of relationship.
I need structure, meaning: meetings steps, phone calls, reading spiritual literature, posting, prayers, sponsorship and anonymity.
Finally, with willingness, Grace and structure I will still fail…if I simply don’t want it
I need four things: discipline, structure, Grace…and “Want to”
Food Prayer 153
Step Five:
I admit to God, myself and another human being that I have obscured my soul:
Obscured means - hidden, concealed, covered, veiled, shrouded, screened, masked, cloaked, cast a shadow over, shadowed, blocked out, obliterated, eclipsed,
I have darkened my soul...with compulsive eating to manage my feelings for 63 years.
Food Prayers 154
What am I going to do?
Weigh and measure my food
Stick with my food plan:
Wheatgrass, Homegrown Sprouts, variety of Greens, Nuts, Nut Butter, Bananas
Eat every two hours
Fast 18 hours from dinner to breakfast
No meat, dairy, eggs, flour, sugar, salt
Raw organic vegan
Do multiple sets of 50 pushups throughout the day
Bike or run every day
Core work, karate, yoga
Count breath prayers to get in touch with my soul
Sing!
Food Prayers 155
I will have faith and continue to try and stick with my food plan, one meal, one day at a time.
Food Prayers 156
What do I want to enjoy instead of the food?
Humility
Breath prayer
Exercise
Reading
Sex with my beloved
Monogrammed shirts
Food Prayers 157
I can do this. I can do this. I can never eat out again...one day at a time.
Food Prayer 158
After rigorous research I am staying with:
Wheatgrass
Potted sprouts: Sunflower sprouts,
and Podded sprouts: Mung, Lentil and Black Eyed Peas
Food Prayers 159
I have experimented with three hour, two and one-half hour and two hour intervals between meals…Two hours seems most health producing.
Food Prayers 160
My food is splendid at 88% living, organic and raw. 100% vegan. That is good enough for me.
Food Prayer 161
Do I believe it is God’s will for me to follow this food plan?
It’s the best thing I’ve got, since I became 63 and the only thing that works.
It’s my best bet…
So, it doesn’t really matter. This is the will that will save me.
Food Prayers 162
Honestly, I do not trust the sponsorship, spiritually or food plan of FA...but I love making a food plan, weighing and measuring,
Food Prayer 163
Focus on myself.
Keep my eyes on my own plate.
Mind my own business.
Keep my side of the street clean.
Food Prayers 164
As I round that corner round the last two hours of the blessed fast, help me stay faithful.
Food Prayer 165
People come and go: wives, children, parents, friends, school, work, careers.
No one can get God on the line, all the time, every day…no one.
The only person that stays…is me.
Therefore, it is wise to act healthily, lovingly towards myself.
Food Prayer 166
I surrender my overweening instinct for Society.
I accept my instinct for Security, but want not to be workaholic.
There is an appropriate relationship between these two instincts.
Being abstinent with food helps me do this.
Food Prayer 167
“I can’t get no…satisfaction!”
Traditional 12 step programs do not satisfy me.
I need more. I need to know my soul.
My very first steps are to have a food plan and a rigorous exercise program.
Then meditate, using breath prayer, to locate my soul.
Then, and only then, will I be satisfied.
Food Prayer 168
A new model, not based on:
Steps
God outside me
Family of Origin
Meetings
Or Feelings
...but simply on a Food Plan, Service and finding my soul through meditation.
Food Prayers 169
My 6th food plan in 5 months of experimenting worked.
I have found a place where I can stay thin and not feel starved.
So, for 60 days I have fasted 18 hours, from 6:00pm until noon the next day and then eaten four 8 oz meals, at 12:00, 2:00, 4:00 and 6:00 pm
The most surprising benefit is a tremendous, stable surge in my self-confidence.
Abstinence...nothing else matters.
Food Prayer 170
When I am abstinent my:
face looks better
torso looks better
heart pain diminishes 85%.
dizziness disappears
arthritis diminishes 80%
desire to be sexual improves
tailored shirts fit
pants are looser
belt is looser
When I am abstinent I:
can get up in the morning much more easily
want to work
want to save money
want to invest
read more books
think about playing the guitar again
want to be in public with my partner…looking’ thin
Food Prayer 171
When I am not abstinent my:
face looks old, sickly and pallid
breath is taxed because of the pressure on my lungs
feet and calves feel and look big and bulgey
eyes lose their steadfastness
mind is dense, thick, blurry and wandering
new shirts bulge
When I am not abstinent I:
just want to sleep
feel emotionally hopeless
lose interest in any activities
don’t want to work out
lose the cut and curve of my abs
fear being naked
have dreams of being chased…(that’s weird)
And finally….looking in the mirror in the morning is quite painful
Food Prayers 172
As my spiritual better, Voltaire, did with Christianity...help me do the same with 12 step around food.
In AA we have a service position called “Sweeties”.
That is the guy or gal who volunteers to bring cake, cookies, donuts or candy to the meeting.
It is designed to be a generous way to create fellowship after the meeting…(some of us can’t wait till the end).
This is a beautiful, kind, light and fun way to “carry the message” to another alcoholic, particularly to the newcomer or the poor.
But what if I am already fat as 75% of America is now…Hmmm?
Food Prayers 173
I am completely done…
Can 12 step be one of the paths to enlightenment?
If so, what then?
Maintenance, just maintenance….
And I might find some new friends in the minds of great authors
Food Prayers 174
I don’t want to be mentally ill (Step 2 AA 12x12)
and I don’t want the depression that now follows acting out
now, knowing that there is a solution to addiction.
Simple life: staying abstinent, working, family
Food Prayer 175
Food addiction is a thought disorder.
The proof that it is healed would be peace of mind...combined with thinness.
Food Prayers 176
I must be eternally vigilant.
On going to the emergency room I was fed a one liter IV.
The next day I weighed 5 pounds more.
What I was ignorant of was that the IV was 5% dextrose (corn sugar).
Which has about as much sugar as one half of a large Snickers Bar, in two pounds of water….Yuch!
Food Prayers 177
“As with the body…so with the Universe”
I could just give up and drink coffee and smoke cigars.
But, if drank coffee I would get fat.
(Cause I would eat to calm down…which I always do when employing caffeine) And that would never do…
I think working out for hours every day is a better idea than caffeine.
Food Prayers 178
My recent food objective was not aimed at feeling good or looking good.
It was simply to complete a recovery task I had started, 43 years ago…to save Steve D.
Food Prayer 179
Do I want to continue my abstinence?
I am below 129 regularly,
swimming daily,
playing my guitar,
marketing my business,
am chaste,
praying privately,
selling my audio gear,
and taking good care of Alona
Oh yeah. I think I want to continue my abstinence
Food Prayers 180
Sometimes when I was struggling with the food , I just had to “Take the hit and keep on firing”.
Food Prayer 181
Do I really want to go back to:
Coffee
Tea
My favorite restaurant which sells raw organic, sugar free, wheat free, dairy free cheesecake…that is laced with espresso?
Cigars
Ibuprofen, aspirin and antacids
Cacao bars
Or just plain too much food?
Not today…not during this three hours
Food Prayer 182
Getting old is cool, if you do it right
Things that make you age faster:
Caffeine
Tobacco
Alcohol
Drugs
Meat
Dairy
Flour
Sugar
Foods that are neutral:
Nuts and fruits
Foods that make you youthful:
Wheatgrass
Sunflower sprouts
Food Prayers 183
Here is the truth…
I can lose 17 pounds in 9 days.
but…I can gain 6 pounds in one day and ten pounds in two days, easily.
Food Prayers 183
I have recovered from all these addictions
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Cigarettes
- Coffee
- Masturbation/Affairs
- Fat
- ACA
- Coda
- Narcissism
- Alanon
- Anon-anonism
- Victimhood
- Workaholism
- Debting
- Underearning
- Gambling
- Love Addiction
- Romance Addiction
- Relationship Addiction
- Sexaholism
- Artistic and Mystical Preoccupations
But none, has the denial around it that food addiction has…it is absolutely pernicious .
Food Prayers 184
Caffeined Foods :
I am grateful the compulsion is gone.
I am grateful the craving is gone,
I am grateful the obsession is gone.
Food Prayers 185
In Thailand I decide I wanted to let go of these things:
Cigars
Tea
Aspirin
Ibuprofen
Rinitadine
Harnal
Herbal tea
Co2
Cafe Gratitude
Cacao
Food
I talked about it all in Overeaters Anonymous.
Boy…were they upset.
Food Prayers 186
Food abstinence gives me perspective on all my challenges, which is the Big Book’s definition of sanity.
Therefore, abstinence is the first tool of sanity.
Food Prayer 187
HP, I am acting insanely.
Defined as “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
As many times as I have fingers, cacao it has led me off my food plan.
Cacao is okay in it self, for others.
But I simply can’t make the connection that it is a gateway drug to the food.
It is a mental disconnect.
A denial
A blind spot
A mental weakness
It is the very definition of mental illness
If I am to stay abstinent for a lifetime, one day at a time, no cacao and no eating out, are necessary for me.
I renounce restaurants...and I pick up books
Food Prayers 188
I am abstinent from flour, sugar, caffeine and alcohol, but I start abstinence again, with cacao,
One day at a time, just for today...
If there is finally is to be a cure to be effected for addiction…it will be through the food.
Food Prayers 189
- Stay abstinent
- Pray
- Meditate
- Practice the guitar
- Market teaching
- Read journals
Food Prayers 190
As I beat the cacao and the subsequent food...I will have “cured” my illness.
There will be no possibility of the thought of “mental illness”, only the normality of working and being in a family.
Prayer, exercise and reading will be our life.
Lot’s of swimming, wheatgrass and sprouts.
Counting breaths, surrendering thoughts and locating my soul.
I want never to talk about recovery again once I have attained this.
I want to practice anonymity.
Food Prayers 191
HP, I have felt slight depression the two times I have acted out with cacao/food since I discovered the cure for addiction…hmmm
Pay attention to your feelings, Steve D…pay attention
Food Prayers 192
HP, Why do I feel so good?
No coffee, tea,
No Gracias Madre (my favorite restaurant)
No cigars
No OTC’s
No cacao
No meat or dairy
Food Prayers 193
Weighed and measured food only
Fasting 18 hours a day
Swimming every day of the week
Core, pushups and yoga everyday of the week
Lot’s of sleep
Reading all the time
I surrender trying to make a lot of money.
Food Prayers 194
“As with the body…so with the Universe”
After many failures I surrender, completely, fully, forever...just for today.
Without abstinence, there is no recovery.
Food Prayers 195
Reformation…
Coffee...June 6, 2018
Tea...July 25, 2018
On March 26 2019 I was 127.8 pounds.
Reformation…
Food Prayers 196
Now that there is a cure…I have no choice but to surrender or fall into depression.
I surrender
As I beat the food...I will have “cured” my illness.
There will be no possibility of the thought of “mental illness”, induced by the disease of addiction.
Only the normality of working and being in a family.
Food Prayer 197
Physical Inventory:
My daily weight is 127.8 pounds
I eat up to three pounds of food a day peaking a maximum of 130.8 pounds daily
That food is weighed and measured on a digital scale.
I do not eat in restaurants or other people’s homes.
To replace the joy of surrendering those two pleasures, I read books.
The 48 ounces of food I eat consists of living foods (food harvested from my garden and eaten within 5 minutes of harvesting, raw organic nut butters and organic fruit)
Food Prayer 198
Spiritual Inventory:
AA’s express belief is that we drink because we can’t live life on life’s terms.
It is also their belief that, once recovered, demarcated by the Step Nine Promises, I must do three things to recover:
1.brief daily inventory
2.daily prayer/meditation
3.serve others
Or in AA shorthand I have to live the Maintenance Steps 10 through 12.
It is AA belief that living this way prevents the return of craving.
Food Prayer 199
Binge Foods:
One of FA’s four parts of their definition of abstinence is “No known binge foods”
Any food or beverage containing caffeine is a binge food, for me. I can simply not control it.
Food Prayer 200
Abstinence Definition:
FA’s abstinence definition does not include exercise, in part out of fear of exercise bulimia.
This definition does not acknowledge the phenomenon of the Millennial’s incipient “Digital Death” from being ever sedentary.
As the expression goes “My generation’s sitting...is your generation’s smoking”.
To not acknowledge the relationships between food, exercise and health is not wise, for me.
Therefore abstinence, and the potentially ensuing health it brings includes, for me, strength, endurance, flexibility and cardiovascular exercise.
Food Prayer 201
Frank Zappa, in his sardonic way, used to say “Cigarettes are a vegetable” partly to make fun of the Reagan administration’s cut back on school food subsidies in the 1980’s, but mostly to rationalize his addiction to tobacco.
I gave up smoking 32 years ago.
But there have been four times in the last 32 years when I have briefly smoked Padron 7000 cigars.
For me, this is not abstinent behavior...despite Zappa’s admonition
Food Prayers 202
I spoke to a man today who I sponsored in FA eight years ago.
He liked to binge on boxes of cookies.
Our Light Hearted Offices says, “Walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”
Confucius
HP, help me to do whatever is necessary:
Feel all my feelings
Loving myself through the God Within...encouraging and calming myself.
Going to PrayerCall throughout the day to get strength
Sponsoring others
Reading spiritual literature
Writing Prayers
Doing Step work
Having fun
Doing nothing
Doing whatever is necessary to keep all my addictions perfectly at bay
So that I stay free of all my addictions one moment at a time, one day at time, three hours at a time.
Food Office 203
There was a woman when I first got clean and sober in 1988.
I met her in AA, but soon found she was in CoDependency Anonymous , Overeaters Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and Incest Survivors Anonymous.
She was doing expensive, esoteric therapy (that she really couldn’t afford), posted affirmations around her home, was practicing chastity, and ran as much as ten miles per day.
She wasn’t a genius like Gandhi or Bill Wilson but she was spiritually gifted.
Meaning she could understand things that were hard for other people to understand, she didn’t pushback on solutions...and she wanted to solve every spiritual problem she saw in herself.
Seven years later, I would meet a man in SLAA who was in OA, too, but he was also a psychotherapist and a professional monk for 10 years.
He was even more gifted and eventually developed the religious gift of “The laying on of hands” where you can heal people by touching them (which I frankly didn’t believe...until years later I saw him do it in right front of me)
These two people, Phoenix and Pablo, early and later in recovery, respectively, were real inspirations to me on what was actually possible spiritually.
They both were very open minded about spiritual matters and yet very gentle in their beliefs.
There is a 1990 Robert De Niro/Robin Williams movie called “Awakenings” about a doctor who creates a treatment for catatonics, which was miraculous...and then heartbreakingly, it stopped working.
Both these two beautiful, gifted people went “back into the food” and lost every trace of spiritual giftedness God had allocated each of them.
It is a sobering story...
Food Prayers 204
HP, I am not foolish enough to think I can stop food addiction by myself...so this writing is for me and someone else.
I am not foolish enough to think I can control my weight with exercise and yet I am not so foolish as to not count exercise as part of my spiritual wellness, as FA does. I need a more moderate approach.
I also know that, for me, without weighing and measuring all food that I eat I can get out of control in about 90 seconds and that is very scary to me.
I do not need a food plan, but I do need a food record. My scale tells me if I am doing something wrong...as DA says “God is in the numbers”.
Food Prayers 205
HP, I want to say that the “ingestion analgesia” that I feel when I eat too much feels not only good, but fun, while I am doing it and, if that is true, similar to the SAA program, I must replace my addictive “Inner Circle” behaviors with fun “Outer Circle” behaviors.
I love to read, play music with my friends, play with my son and sing with my wife.
But, I have no illusions that Outer Circle can replace inventory, prayer and service.
Food Prayers 206
HP, there is something really scary and really hopeful around food.
I have seen food destroy the most gifted 12 stepper/psychotherapist/Catholic monk I have known in 40 years of recovery.
I have seen the most comprehensively recovered, mentally gifted and physically beautiful 12 stepper eat her way into such obesity as to not even be recognizable on the street by her friends.
I have seen my closest spiritual ally become sotted: first with food, then prescription drugs and then fall into the abyss of pornography.
I have seen the most enlightened man I know become lazy, dishonest, corrupt, depressed, bitter and isolated because of food.
But...I have also seen the possibility of food recovery opening the door to a whole new stage of wellness, not just to food addicts, but to all addicts, where all the childhood injuries and all the adolescent defects of character are diminished to the point of eradication.
Food Prayers 207
HP, I have not eaten in a restaurant in four months and I don’t miss it a bit.
I like my wife’s food.
She is a grower... a really good one and I am so appreciative of her giftedness, discipline and love 
Food Prayers 208
HP,
Please help me not drink coffee.
Food Prayers 209
HP,
Please help me not eat food...(that would lead me to being over my ideal weight).
Food Prayers 210
HP,
My plan is to live a very long time, to take care of my wife and son.
The things that are most likely to impede that are too much food and not enough exercise and, for me, caffeine, as that triggers my food.
Caffeine is, as FA describes, “A binge food”...It is my only binge food...but, it only takes one.
Help me to do what is necessary to have a long, healthy life.
Amen
Food Prayers 211
Sobriety without food abstinence does not feel sober, to me.
Here’s how food abstinence feels...“Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed.”
Food Prayers 212
Food abstinence also feels like this:
“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.
Cherish her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you.
She will give you a garland to grace your head and present you with a glorious crown.”
Food Prayers 213
Holy War on Food
This is not for the people who love, nurture and value themselves as they are, as fat people.
This is not for the people who are fat and can diet and work out till they are not fat, but just don’t.
This is for the people that really don’t want to be fat, and can’t stop being fat, no matter what they do.
This subset of people, that includes me, must have a God that will help them not to be fat.
Overeaters Anonymous is helpful, but too weak structurally, for me.
Food Addicts Anonymous is strong, but too shallow spiritually, for me.
I need God, a lot of God, five times a day in fact, just like my sponsor did, who died two months short of 100 years old and was thin his whole life till the day he died.
Food Prayers 214
Food abstinence tools:
No flour or sugar, ever...learned that in FA
Weigh and measure all my food on a digital scale...learned that in FA
Journal everything I eat during the day...learned that in OA
Daily meetings, step work, sponsoring, reading the literature...learned that in AA
Writing literature...learned that from reading King David
Food Prayers 215
Big numbers:
At 34 years old and 5’10” I weighed 187.5 pounds.
An enlightened Episcopal priest recommended a then new product, Slim Fast, and I lost 45 pounds and have kept it off, using 12 step tools, never to go above 142 pounds in the last 32 years.
I am proud of myself and humbly grateful to God for his unbelievable mercy, faith and patience with me, for that success.
Food Prayers 216
Medium sized numbers:
There is an old expression in the land of Television “The camera makes you look 10 pounds heavier”.
14 years ago, at 52 , and 5’9” (I had lost an inch of height at that point) I was shooting a lot of video for my work and requested of my sponsor to okay a 10 pound weight loss.
He did. I lost it, and my new professional weight was 132.8, which is where I start to look sleek...for an old guy.
Three times in the last 14 years I have gotten back up to 142, but immediately lost it.
That sounds good, but there is something that those numbers don’t say.
The truth, the real truth, is that I can gain 6 pounds in one day and 10 pounds in two days. Equally true is that I can lose that weight in three days.
Food Prayer 217
Small numbers:
In Debtors Anonymous there is an expression “ God is in the numbers “.
When I am at at 132.8 I find that there are three pounds, headed down to 129.8, where my mental acuity radically improves, I need less sleep, my memory improves, my interest in art awakens, my writing output dramatically increases and my virility is off the charts.
If it is to be...it’s up to me.
Food Prayer 218
There are those that believe that that the August 9, 1945 dropping of nuclear weapons on Nagasaki Japan began an 18 year peak in American power.
There are those that believe that the 1963 Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, Watergate, The 1973 Oil Embargo and The Great Recession of 2008 are clear signs of the decline of that power.
Me...I believe what Saint Augustine said “As we are...so are the times”.
If I am fat I am going to feel bad and life is going to look bad.
“As we are...so are the times”.
Food Prayer 219
I want to beat old age and death, to death, at least for a while...
To do that, I have to give up coffee.
And that’s not all...I have to be at 128.8 and stay there.
And I have to do cardio in the day and strength/flexibility exercises at night.
And eat as much living foods as possible.
That’s all I have to do to beat death and old age, to death...for a while.
Food Prayer 220
My 15 month old son is a hambone.
He loves to be the center of attention, particularly in a crowd.
I can’t imagine where he got that from...
He likes to see himself on video and he likes to look at himself in the mirror.
He is discovering himself.
David Letterman used to say about getting old...”They just see through you”
But...with being food abstinent and working out hard, that’s not true...some folks actually do stop and take a look.
Everyone has a need for “Esteem of others”....everyone
It’s part of being psychologically healthy.
So yeah, for different reasons...My son and I are both hambones.
Food Prayer 221
Sometimes Humility is saying, “ I don’t know what God’s will is.”
Sometimes it’s saying “ I know what God’s will is, I don’t want to do it, but I’m doing it anyway. “
Sometimes it is saying, “ I don’t know what God’s will is, but I am going to take my best guess...even if I make a fool of myself.”
But my favorite form of Humility comes from the AA 12x12 which says “ The acme of humility is being able to laugh at yourself “.
Who uses a word like acme, anyway?
Food Prayer 222
Mentally unpeaceful stuff I am willing to let go of:
What my college roommate thinks of me,
My daughter’s lack of contact with me,
The shallowness of my brother and I’s relationship,
My mistakes, foolishnesses, tomfoolery, disasters and just plain bad ideas in the past.
I am willing to forgive all that, if I am willing to stay abstinent around food, one day at a time, three hours at a time...
Piece of cake...so to speak.
Food Prayer 223
In the midst of Revolution:
Generally, I treat other people the way I treat myself.
It’s important when I am taking inventory of myself, and not liking what I see, and becoming willing to change that I do not look at other people in that same way.
Otherwise, I become an intolerable, shrinking, old shrew that no one wants to be around.
And who wants to be around Disney’s Maleficent?
Food Prayer 224
“What if it is God’s will to be beautiful?”
I don’t mean Tom Cruise or Helen of Troy type beauty. That is genetic celebrity.
I mean the beauty that exudes from someone who treasures their body through food and exercise.
There is a beauty that appears from that type of self-love that appears in no other way.
And if “Taking care of myself through enlightened self-interest” is God’s will, then it is the beauty of God that is shining through me.
Don’t tell L’Oréal that...before you short the stock
Food Prayer 225
Food/exercise recovery doesn’t have to be all work.
My wife got a new watch with a “Beats per minute” function to measure her heart rate as she ran.
She was so “Happy, joyous and free” and it helped us press our maximum heart rate way upwards
...She even lent it to me
Food Prayer 226
HP,
It doesn’t take long for me to be out of withdrawal and, ever, ever so slightly, the feeling of boredom may begin to appear.
But where did I get the idea that it wasn’t-okay to feel bored, or more accurately, to just not feel excited?
As a professional performer for half a century, if something was boring it was the “Kiss of death”.
I think it may be okay to not feel excited...
I sure don’t want the distended stomach, night sweats, headaches, congestion, nausea, enflamed nasal and bronchial passages, pasty skin, heart pain, disturbed breathing, sexual aversion-cause-I’m-fat, achey bones, oversleeping and torpid, turgid thinking of overeating.
I’ll take pure and unexcited...any day.
Food Prayers 227
When my behavior influences my wife she says “You are wiping on me“.
I guess the raw organic living food stuff was meaningful to her when it came to our son.
She grows our food and twice a day she harvests it, blends it and feeds it to our son.
But the amazing part is that our son will only eat that food if he gets to watch himself on the iPhone while she feeds him...one spoonful at a time.
It takes 45 minutes each time.
First Corinthians 13 says “Love is patient” but that kind of long suffering, seems to me, will earn her sainthood (that and putting up with me).
I think I would have just tossed our son a steak and hoped for the best.
Food Prayers 228
HP,
Thank you...
2020 was a great year for me with food.
I discovered a way that keeps me at my exact weight every day...all day.
It is ridiculously simple.
I pick an ideal weight, in this case 128.8, and lose whatever weight I need to get there (Food addicts are great at losing weight...it’s staying there that is the problem).
Then, the trick is, I can eat whatever amount I am BELOW my ideal weight.
So, if I am at 127.8 I can have 16 oz of food.
As simple and elegant as this solution is I destroyed it twice this year by drinking coffee on my SLAA 30 year birthday and my 66th natal birthday...pretty stupid, I know.
Lesson learned...amends to myself is clearly upcoming.
Food Prayers 229
When I was 12 years old I looked in my mother’s medicine cabinet and read the yellow, white, red and black label on the Bayer Aspirin which said “For pain relief”.
I instinctively knew that I was in some kind of pain, although if my life depended on it, I could not have told you that it was emotional pain.
So I took two...
And I have been taking them ever since...they are a virtual food group.
An unnecessary food group...that I have now left behind.
See ya “Wonder drug”!
Food Prayers 230
When I am squeaky clean on my food I notice I become very serious, blackly, forebodingly, chokingly, gravely, writhingly, viciously, aridly serious.
I need to do have what Workaholics Anonymous refers to as “Unstructured activities without goals”.
That is just a fancy way to say...fun!
Food Prayers 231
Why is thin so attractive to potential dating partners?
I live in a young neighborhood where straight men are in short supply and straight women are hunting for scarce, eligible, unattached males.
It is an extremely competitive marketplace where looks, age, income, neighborhood, status and dress all play an integral role in the women’s decisions.
Fortunately, I am off the market and am happily married and fathering.
But, as regards food, what I notice is that fat on a man’s body sends out a message to potential mates and that message is “I can’t handle life on life’s terms and when life gets challenging...I turn to food”.
That’s a message that no woman, or man, wants to hear.
It’s not that thin is beautiful...it’s because thin says “ You can count on me not to fold under pressure”.
Food Prayers 232
My second AA sponsor used to say “ I am a liar, cheat and thief....when it comes to alcohol”.
He was sharing in the first person but it was obvious that he wanted me to see that in myself, as well.
I could see how I was that way to other people when it came to alcohol, but I never really got that piece...I mean way down deep in my soul.
But, now I can see how I was a “liar, cheat and thief”, to myself...around food.
A really simple way to see if that is true about me is to take off my clothes, stand in front of the mirror and , with all the rigorous honesty that I have, look at myself and ask “Am I fat?”
Am I lying?
Food Prayers 233
Step 9
I am feeling really angry at myself for having discovered a new way to eat this year that really made me feel and look better...and having abandoned it to celebrate my 66th Birthday.
I forgive myself for my mistakes.
I make amends to myself by practicing the music that I truly love, which really is a bit nerve wracking, for myself.
Food Prayers 234
HP,
Help me not be a complete ass.
Amen
Food Prayers 235
“If there was a Devil he seemed the Boss Universal”
Big Book p.11
Dear Boss Universal,
As a faithful employee of yours I want to report that I have successfully convinced your potential victims that they can be faithful followers in their respective religions, and eat to the point where they have heartaches, strokes, diabetes and cancer and that this particular death is sinless...and therefore does not affect the probability of their direct transmission straight to heaven and into the arms of their beloved Savior.
We got ‘em Boss.
According to the World Health Organization every 11 seconds we kill another one with the food.
In two years and two months alone we will pass what Hitler did during the entire Holocaust.
Boss...If you like my work, could we talk about that corner office I asked you about last time?
Food Prayers 236
My son loves to touch things...but as soon as he does, he loves to put them in his mouth.
This includes rocks, guitar picks, wet wipes, dry tissues, hair combs, rolls of tape, phone chargers, grocery bags, portable vacuum cleaners and UPS crates.
He is infinitely interested and never dissatisfied with the results.
He is content with his lot in life.
He is a funny baby.
Food Prayers 237
When I am feeling frustrated while on long, COVID-19 duration, holds for internet, phone, or electric customer service...I am not walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
Even if it does feel like a Russian breadline in the 1950’s...it is not.
And the truth is I can feel the frustration because I am sober around food...
Thank God I am abstinent...
Food Prayers 238
HP,
Thank you for guiding me when I wanted to lose weight.
Thank you for sending me someone to help me to lose it.
Thank you for the willingness to do what I needed to do.
Thank you for the thin body you have allowed me to live in the last 3 decades...it has been a comfortable place to live.
Food Prayers 239
Step Eight
I was angry with myself, outraged more than angry, that I found a cure for addiction, through food...and then:
Fooled it away
Trashed it
Threw it out
Minimized it
Forgot about it
Let it go
Abandoned it
Devalued it
I fully forgive myself...
Food Prayers 240
Step Nine
As an amends for harming myself by letting go of the cure I offer myself a deal:
I can play and write as much avant-garde guitar and stand up bass music as I want...as I used to do in my late teens and early twenties.
So fun!
Food Prayers 241
In the highest peak of the Second Wave of the Covid 19 Pandemic, the week of November 21, 2020 there were 10,815 deaths in the US according to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.
That same week there were 10,192 deaths caused directly from being overweight.
Covid 19 is winning at the race to death...but not by much.
Food Prayers 242
I never wanted to accept myself when I joined recovery 40 years ago...I wanted to change.
Now that I have changed all that I want I accept myself.
It is impossible to treat people better than I treat myself, so now, I accept other people...because I accept me.
It makes me a whole lot easier to get along with...ask my wife.
Food Prayers 243
I drive myself crazy...I really do, and it’s only me. It’s no one else’s fault.
I do this with an attitude of merciless self-demandingness.
My first waking thought is always “ I got to...”
This brutal self-treatment kindles a desire to get out of my life and the only way out left is food...and that is not an option, for me.
There is another way out, a spiritual way, from Workaholics Anonymous.
That is to look at the spaces in my life as
“Unstructured events...without goals”.
Wow, there is a whoosh of fresh air that comes into my life when I change my mind to “Unstructured events...without goals”.
And the funniest thing happens...I’m not hungry anymore.
Cool.
Food Prayers 244
As Saint Augustine lay dying the Vandals were besieging his beloved city of Hippo in Africa.
Here was a man who had, after his conversion, fought all of his life to protect his faith of choice and yet here he was about to have his home land burned to the ground, which the Vandals did in fact finally do.
And yet, he was calm...because he meditated on King David’s Seven Penitential Psalms which he had his friends post on his walls.
Lord, help me to remember that fine example of a man...when I am upset that I can’t return an Amazon purchase.
Food Prayers 245
HP,
Patrick Cranes says that “Addiction is the disease that migrates”.
3 1/2 years ago my disease moved from sex addiction to food.
I struggled mightily to conquer the disease and I have, just for today, one day at a time, three hours at a time.
But it must have been painful for you to watch me struggle and fail and struggle so many times until I could finally succeed.
Thank you for helping me when you did and thank you for not helping me, when you could have, but didn’t...because I needed to learn to help myself.
Your patience and love are immeasurable.
Food Prayers 246
I must be able to feel wildly frustrated...and not use food to comfort me if I want to maintain being thin...sho’ nuff did it today!
Food Prayers 247
Step Six
“Walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”
Confucius
The first time I heard the words “Borderline Personality Disorder” was in the late 1960’s in a Life Magazine issue on Vivian Leigh, the star of “Gone with the Wind” and “A Streetcar Named Desire”.
It said that the disorder struck women three times more often than men and that high-risk sexual activity and broken relationships were a couple of the signs.
I was 12 years old....what did I know?
But, what I did know was that Vivian Leigh was my mother’s lifetime role model...ever since she was 12 years old.
I ran across someone who displayed those characteristics this week.
The Mayo Clinic says Borderline Personality Disorder looks like this:
- An intense fear of abandonment
- A pattern of unstable intense relationships
- Impulsive and risky behavior such unsafe sex, binge eating or drug/alcohol abuse
- Ongoing feelings of emptiness
- Wide mood swings
- Rapid changes in self-identity
- Inappropriate, intense anger
- Periods of stress-related paranoia
- Suicidal threats or self-injury
Well, Hell...that’s every alcoholic I’ve ever known in my life.
There is something funny about this.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does say that “ If someone displays all these characteristics, but is below 18 years old, they are fine....they are just teenagers.”
God,
Help me not act like a teenager...just for today, three hours at a time.
Amen
Food Prayers 248
HP,
Thank you for helping me not drink coffee, use absolutely no medications and for staying at the same weight every day, all day.
What a relief. There is space in my life.
I can now run 5 miles every other day with my wife and son (in his carriage).
She can do her art work at night and watch YouTube videos and I can write weird music and read books.
Add praying five times a day...and I am as happy as a hound dog in the sunshine.
Food Prayers 249
It is crucial, as I get healthier physically, that I neither demand, expect, hope, talk nor even think...about anyone else doing the same.
As Al-anon says “I mind my own business“.
Food Prayers 250
Step Six
HP,
I am grateful not only for helping me not to drink, masturbate or to be fat, one day at a time, three hours at a time, but also for helping me to stop being the unfathomable jerk that I was when I came in to recovery.
I had six “Deadly Character Defects” when I came in:
I was a selfish, dishonest, resentful, fearful, obsessive and extreme man who could not understand that these six things, internally, lead to being fat, externally.
I was selfish, just like the Big Book says on page 62.
I didn’t care if being drunk, cheating on my wife or being fat affected other people like my wife, kids, friends or employees.
I was in denial, or if I did admit it, I became narcissistic, and if my actions harmed anyone else, I would silently (and euphemistically) mumble “Screw them”.
I was also dishonest, as the Big Book says on page 58.
I lied to myself mostly denying I was alcoholic, or that I was fat.
I also lied to my wife and my friends about cheating with other women and I absolutely would not tell anyone about masturbation...that was going to my grave with me.
Thank God that I don’t have to lie anymore, to myself or others. As I lied to myself, my waistline would expand...just like Pinocchio’s nose.
I was resentful (page 64 Big Book) of my parents, the US government’s involvement in Vietnam, and much more particularly, I was resentful at any girl that wouldn’t have sex with me, when I wanted, how I wanted, as often as wanted, believing that women had all the real power, and that they were holding out on me...Jesus, what an idiot.
I was afraid (page 67 Big Book) of being rejected and of being a failure, or just being too weird to fit into society in any meaningful and satisfying way.
I really wanted everyone to love me, as all codependents do, but I was afraid to the point of being nearly neurotic that everyone would hate me.
I was obsessive in all my pursuits, although I could hide it easily as self-discipline...but what my workaholism really accomplished was that it perfectly severed me from any capacity I had to feel.
I was also extreme. All or nothing, black and white. No compromise, nothing in the middle, no balance or moderation...Imagine being on a long trip in a small car with someone like that!
God, I love not drinking, not masturbating and being thin, but thank you for helping me improve a bit as a man.
As my second AA sponsor used to say “Try to have some character...instead of being one”.
Food Prayers 251
How sober can I get? I mean if I stay abstinent?
Well, I can learn, over the years, to get all these needs met:
•Safety
•Love and belonging
•Esteem of others/Self-esteem
•Spirituality through connectedness, originally with God, then others, and finally, lastingly and constantly, with myself...through meditation and service
•Contentment through realization of my highest, realistically attainable goal
•Creativity through creating beauty for the joy of it
•Peace of mind through knowing my soul
The first three needs are espoused by Abraham Maslow, spirituality and creativity are inchoately postulated by him.
Contentment and Peace of mind are found Anonymously.
But let’s say you do get all that. What then?
Well, if I am peacefully in touch with my own soul, and if Gandhi is correct that the soul is immortal....then maybe, just maybe, one of the possibilities is for my soul to connect to God.
Wow!...Now that is not as far flung as you might think.
Yoga does not mean sitting in class on a mat, listening to music, while nursing a Starbuck’s Mocha Cookie Crunch Frappuccino and scanning the room looking for a potential hot date.
Yoga comes from the Sanskrit meaning “To yoke”. Specifically, to yoke the God within you to the God outside of you.
After stopping acting out, and learning to get all my needs met, this is just one of the myriad possibilities.
Food Prayer 252
It is never too late to change the way you eat - once you do, your body will thank you with a longer and healthier life.
If someone paid me a million dollars to drink a glass of milk, I wouldn't do it…maybe that's because I don't need the money.
I expend a lot of energy in my 50-60 minutes of cardio and strength training every day.
We have developed a culture in which we eat with our taste buds, not our brains.
Personally, I like to juice up several different kinds of fruit and vegetables - which may include various combinations of bananas, red bell peppers, apples, carrots, celery, broccoli, spinach, parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.
Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and other varieties have anthocyanins that can help reverse some loss of balance and memory associated with aging.
Exercise your brain and body, keep engaged with work and friends, and feed your brain with a healthy, plant-based diet - as well as knowledge.
My plant-based diet plus fish is to credit for my low blood pressure, high energy, and robust immunity.
Exercising and eating properly will build your physical and mental strength to endure the stressful situation.
My own recipe for longevity includes considerable amounts of fruits and vegetables. An additional major responsibility for the maintenance of our bodies is regular exercise; at least 4 to 5 times a week.
By eating many fruits and vegetables in place of fast food and junk food, people could avoid obesity.
No pills, not even aspirin, and certainly no supplements ever enter my mouth - everything I need comes from my fish and vegetarian diet, which incorporates many different kinds of fruit and vegetables every week.
Many of the people I work with that are half my age complain that they feel tired all the time. I tell them: 'Look at what you're eating, how much you are exercising, and how much sleep you are getting.'
I think anyone who wants to live past 100 can do it.
I never think about age at all. I just think about what I eat.
I try to eat as near perfect as possible, but once in a while I eat for my taste buds. For example, I occasionally like to treat myself to a small cup of chocolate frozen yogurt - plus toppings.
I believe that proper eating will help all sorts of diseases. I can't say it will cure, but I can say it will materially help.
I never have anything go wrong. Never have a backache. Never have a headache. Never have anything else.
There's all kind of things going on in the world that I don't like but I can't change. But at least I can say, 'Change the way you eat!'
I never had a boss in my whole life. I've totally destroyed anybody's ability to tell me what to do.
Success isn't something you achieve by accident, but rather by design.
I'll match wits with anybody. I don't care if they have the top degree in the world.