Food Recovery Offices -

“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…

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

Matthew 3:4

“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

Daniel 4:15

“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

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.

253) "Spirituality is defined from Within"

“Spirituality without sacrifice...means nothing”
Gandhi

“Ultimately, the Second Step helped us define spirituality for ourselves.”
Hope and Recovery

“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
First Commandment

For me, I define my spirituality as the relationship between food and exercise, and I worship the God that heals those things.

254) Food and Love

What's the problem with being a human?

There's not enough love…

What does real love look like?

Love is human warmth, compassionate, tender, humorous, open, wise, forgiving, self-sacrificing, boundaried , disciplined, funny, truthful, flexible, merciful, perseverant, courageous, dedicated, willing, humble, understanding, accepting limits, strong, faithful, hopeful, patient, prayerful, service-oriented, and non-violent physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally.

Why am I not that way? Why are you not that way?

Because I am disconnected from my soul…That's all.

There are a lot of things that we humans do that can disconnect us from our souls and death is a good, clear, concrete way to begin to measure the absence of soul. So, let's say we have soulful on the one extreme and death on the other extreme…

Soulful-----------------------------------------------------Death

According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta 300,000 of us Americans die each year from food related/overeating illnesses.
That's over 800 people a day, 30 an hour, or about one every two minutes.

A more frightening fact is that 67% are overweight.

And while those folks may not be at the extreme where we are going to die from heart attack, stroke, diabetes or cancer, they may be a lot farther down that line towards death, away from soulful, than they'd like to be.

You mean I can't be overweight and be soulful?

Food Addicts Anonymous says food addicts are typically selfish, resentful, emotionally dishonest, negative, obsessive, extreme and self pitying (Not really very soulful qualities when you think about it).

So, that overweight stuff, which is killing one of us every two minutes in the extreme and affecting 2 out of 3 of us in America all the time (including our children), is caused by the above character defects, which in turn separates us from our soul, which in turn prevents us from getting the love we need, which in turn keeps life from being great?

Yes…

God can change that...if I do my part.

255) Fasting and old Jewish Prayers

I humbled myself with fasting
Psalm 35:13

Declare a holy fast
Joel 1:14

Help me fast the rest of today, just to help my prayers.

Amen.

256) Food is health care...Medicine is sick care

“As with the body, so with the Universe" Gandhi

“Nobody expects to trust his body over much after the age of fifty.” Alexander Hamilton
America’s first Secretary of Treasury

Really? That must be sad to be essentially dead at 50.

Guess he didn’t know about living foods…

257) Food and America

I have been working 12 Step programs for 42 years now.
In the late 80’s, when the Boomers were all getting sober, sex addiction was the cutting edge.
It still is. Sex addiction is the most subtle and profound of all addictions.
But, America has changed a great deal in 42 years.
Now, food is the greatest problem.
I commit myself to solving this problem and serving others in 2023 the way I did sex addiction, in 1988.

258) More Food and America

John Steinbeck in his book “Travels with Charlie” circumambulated America to see what had changed since the last time he had traveled around. This is my fourth time crossing the country and Americans are pretty much the same: there are good, kind, loving, open and helpful people...if you approach them that way. Then there are some folks who are shut down and cold...no matter what you do.
What I have noticed is that due to e-commerce there is a huge increase in the number of 18 wheeler trucks on the highway
But, by far the most noticeable thing about Americans that is different from 19 years ago, 47 years ago and 65 years ago is how stunningly different we are as a people physically.

259) The "Narc" of Food

In 2003 I used to eat at what would become a famous restaurant Cafe Gratitude.

Woody Harrelson used to eat there.

He did a TV interview on what he was a raw, organic vegan.

He said he used to eat lot’s of meat, to get that “Narc” effect, that would put him to sleep afterwards.

That is any experience, too.

Eating too much makes me sleep too much…

260) Food and The Bible

There is something about “living foods”, foods that were in the ground five minutes before you eat them.
There is a world-weariness that dissipates in me when I eat that kind of stuff.
John the Baptist was known for his honey and locusts.
Daniel the prophet was known for his drinking only water and eating vegetables
…and they didn’t do too badly for themselves.

261) Fasting and Longevity

Karen Carpenter, a pretty good pop singer and a terrific drummer famously died in 1983 from anorexia by using OTC emetics.

It scared Americans, particularly young girls, into an awareness of the dangers of under-eating.

There is a sense of power, being in control and euphoria that accompanies food restriction and that can be addictive on the “Overeaters-anon” side.

Completely unrelated, the genetic celebrity, Cameron Diaz, used to say “Make hunger your friend”...I could never quite get behind that.

But what I do support, moderately, is “Make fasting your friend”.

There is now documented medical evidence, according to my doctor, that fasting increases longevity.

I’m in...

262) Food and Chastity

Since 1997, I usually think of my food affecting my sex addiction, after reading Gandhi for the first time.

But, chastity also affects my food addiction recovery.

Over and over again, in the AA 12x12, it says that we do addictive things in reaction to our poor relations with others:

Money worries, somebody says something that hurts my feelings, someone does something threatening, then I feel anxious, and I want to eat more at my meals.

Gandhi is absolutely right about one thing, if in nothing else: In chastity lies the protection of the body, the mind, and the soul.

So, if I apply that truth, and practice chastity, then when someone says or does something hurtful to me...it doesn’t hurt me

...like water rolling off a duck’s butt.

263) Living Foods

When I have three living food drinks per day 95% percent of my aches disappear.

That really matters to me as I get older.

I really don’t want end up sitting around and talking to other old people comparing aches as a form of intimate conversation.

I do not want to live like that...living foods rescues me from that fate.

264) The Devil Juice

People ask me “Steve, what’s the big deal about coffee?”

Even in the Big Book, on page 135, there is a defense of coffee.

So what’s up?

For me, I love being high on coffee. I love a Starbuck’s double latte Grande, or two, or three, or quite frankly...four.

And I can maintain that high for a few days, but...

On the third day I become so rattled that my food addiction kicks in and I have to eat meat or dairy...and a lot more of it than I would like...to calm down.

That makes me look old and fat...which triggers my sex addiction because, as a sex addict, even if I am 90...I still want to look hot.

At this point I have activated three addictions...

By the way, on that same page 135, there is also a defense of smoking...which is what actually killed Bill Wilson, the Big Book’s author.

My 100 year old sponsor, Father Malachy, when he fell in the monastery infirmary, where he knew he was dying, was asked if he wanted anything...he said “Coffee”.

But he could do something I can’t do...he could stop I can’t...

And even if none of this we’re true...I am too vain to be fat.

Besides, peace of mind, satisfaction, contentment and serenity are not possible with caffeine.

Joyousness and happiness, maybe...but how can you be peaceful with a double Latte coursing through your brain?

265) Anti-sexiness

Downsides of Caffeinated Foods:

Acid reflux

My body starts to stink

Gain weight

Heart hurts

Congestion

Headaches

Burping

Gas

Itching

Red blotches on my legs

Feel heavy, torpid

That doesn’t sound to sexy to me...

266) My wife told me that people who don't eat flour and sugar are insane, today

Here are five things that Gandhi said. He might have been smarter than this person...

"I found that complete control of the palate made the observance of the vow very easy."

"Fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet."

"The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting."

"I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in the fear of God and would see him face to face, restraint in diet, both as to quantity and quality, is as essential as restraint in thought and speech."

"My experience teaches me that, for those whose minds are working towards self-restraint, dietetic restrictions and fasting are very helpful. In fact, without their help, concupiscence cannot be completely rooted out of the mind."

267) The Horse and The Mule

I do not want “to be like the horse or the mule”._Psalm 32

I know that, for me, God wants me to have health.

I know that, for me, that means no binging on food.

I know that, for me, caffeine leads to binging on food.

So, that is not God’s will...for me.

I know that, while God accepts me if I smoke, that that is not healthy and, trying not to be as dumb “as a horse or mule” that it is therefore not His will, for me, to do that, either.

These are really sensitive topics for lot’s of people, but I must “To thine own self be true”...and these are my truths.

268) Food and Erection

Sometimes people wonder why we talk about food on essentially sex addiction site.

Gandhi was the first person that I know of who could connect the dots between sex and food.

Dr. Terry Mason, Urologist for 37 years, is another: “Erectile dysfunction is actually the first clinical indicator of generalized cardiovascular disease".

It’s the thing that let you know that you have some significant vascular disease much earlier than with a heart attack.

I don’t know about you, but it’s important to me that my sexual organs work…

I mean, I’m a sex addict…I like sex.

When comparing obesity or smoking, now.

“Obesity is the most serious condition.”
Rand Research

Guess those Big Mac’s gotta go...

269) Ancient Greek Character

An Ancient Greek’s character was judged by his “Fairness and courage and ability to meet any crisis that arose”.
Introduction to Homer’s “Odyssey”

“Security based on our own belief in ourselves is the only security that lasts. As hard as it may be for adult children to learn they can trust themselves...it still is the only lasting security.”
DOH, DOJ

I want a completely different direction in my life. How?

I want to embrace anonymity as a form of grateful humility.

If I lose my abstinence from food, I lose the joy that comes from the freedom from all addictions...and the self-esteem that comes with it.

I simply want to get completely free of all addiction...at any cost.

270) The Right we have as 12-Steppers

“Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?“
Page 12 Big Book

For two months I have participated in Zoom Christian book club with the priest that helped me start getting sober 40 years ago.

The priest, while the most dynamic Christian I had known, 40 years ago, is now so obese that he wears nothing but extremely large black sweatshirts to hide his shame of girth.

There are 16 people, 4 of them men.

They are all in their 50’s to 70’s, upper middle class, liberal, white, mostly widows, spinsters and therapists.

We have been reading a horribly negative book called “The Denial of Death” which is so creepy that I have actually had nightmares about it.

So, I have to ask myself “What is it about me that needs to be accepted by them?”

Because I leaned on this church so heavily when I first got clean and sober I have the delusion that this group of church people is what Christianity truly is...and I do not want to be left out of my religion.

But the truth is I do not believe what they believe.

The truth is that, after 57 years of being a “ cradle Episcopalian “ I studied for a year and became a Catholic.

I am no longer one of them.

Also, while my religion is important to me, it does not come before my program.

I believe that overeating and not exercising enough is my number one addiction problem.

I believe that God will help me if I ask Him.

I believe that the Healing God manifests in community.

In the last three years two of the most religiously faithful people ,closest to me, were decimated by food.

Religion is no match for Food Addiction...

271) Outer Circle

Okay, I made a mistake.

Five years ago, at 62 years old, my body began to change and I couldn’t process the amount of food I ate as quickly.

I didn’t want to gain weight after keeping over 50 pounds off for 30 years so I made myself a deal:

If I gave up eating for pleasure...I could read all the books I wanted.

I’ve read a major Victorian novel every ten days for over three years.

...it’s been one of the best deals I ever made.

A couple of weeks ago I sorta wanted to start doing some more musical type business and the books fell by the wayside a bit.

I had abandoned my “outer circle” around food recovery.

The addictive desire began to reappear.

I regrouped, started reading two books for me, two with my son, and one with my wife.

The addictive drive started to disappear because I had something fun to do.

272) Vanity or Sanity?

HP,

Sometimes my memory lies to me, sometime.

Not really lies, just leaves out important facts...lying by omission.

It says that coffee or a lot of food, or a cigar would be good.

But that is “euphoric recall”.

Coffee feels cool, exciting and sexy for 45 minutes and then it’s misery the rest of the day with the only way to stop it’s nutritional ravaging is by overeating.

Cigars stink to high heaven, cost $20/apiece, hurt me like little knives stabbing me in the back of my throat and give me smokers cough...besides smoking a cigar while walking with a baby in a carriage is a good way to die by drive-by shooting.

Too much food makes me feel bad and look old...and God has restored me to vanity.

273) Old and Fat?

Why is it that food always get’s older addicts?

Think about it...

How many 60-somethings’ bodies can get away with heroin addiction?

How many people in their 70’s, still left standing, can tolerate the alcohol hangovers of their 20’s?

People still smoking in their 80’s are often carrying around a portable voice box...sounding like Peter Frampton.

But food...that’s another matter.

There something very siren song-esque about the comfort, the laziness of food.

HP, help me stay within my boundaries. Amen

274) Food, Sex and Surrender

HP,

To the best of my knowledge, I am fully surrendered to you today

As I am reasonably clear, help me access as often as possible my soul

When I start to workaholically ignore my soul, please help me to focus and concentrate

Help me to breathe slowly and deeply and focus on my solar plexus, as though it were a doorway

While I access my soul, let me stay fully ensconced in my group of friends, to stay grounded

Help me be grateful that I have escaped so terribly much wreckage, by the Grace of God

Help me stay solid with my food plan

Help me stay chaste, just for today

Help me, please, please, please...

275) Break my Fast?

HP,

Help me to fast 12 hours a day between my dinner meal and breakfast meal…

That is why they call it breakfast…I break my fast.

Please help me not let overeating food, compulsive eating or obsessing over food impact my capacity to feel my soul, just for today.

276) Sacrifice

When I feel untethered, unmoored or disconnected I remember what what Gandhi said:

“Religion without sacrifice means nothing”.

Recovery is the same.

The healthiest posture, for me, in my life, is to be surrendering behaviors that are self-destructive to a Power Greater than myself.

Earlier in my life this meant things like alcohol, drugs, smoking, masturbation and affairs.

Now it means being overly sexual or overeating.

Saint Augustine said “Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”.

Today, I surrender both sex and food to the Universe, that non-verbal void, that, honestly I feel no emotional connection with at the moment.

In humility, I know that this is the next right thing for me to do…just for today

277) Just Another Bozo on the Bus

HP,

New outlook:

I am as healed as I am going to get...without alienating every single person I know!

The struggle with food is finally gone and all the losses associated with that struggle were worth it.

I will do and live as directed.

Consolidate wins and be kinda normal…

278) Millennial Malaise

Sitting to this generation is what smoking was to my generation.

“Digital Death” is forever sitting down.

Turn off your phone, unplug your computer....Run down the street naked if you have to!

279) Food and Sex

As Gandhi said “The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting.” And “At that time I did not understand, or nor did I believe in, the efficacy of fasting.”

I wanted a spiritual food plan, and I didn’t like the spirituality in FA. It was weak and shallow, so I researched the old Jewish texts and I found:

Declare a holy fast” Joel 1:14

“I humbled my self with fasting” Psalm 35:10

“The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals. Ezekiel 4:10

From the book of Daniel I took:

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.

To temper my research I threw in a little Gandhi: "Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake they're all on them."

280) Shut Up!... about the Food 1

People ask “ Why do you talk about food all the time?”

I could say “ Gandhi did and he was smarter than me”

Or they ask “These guys here are sex addicts, why are we talking about food?”.

One reason is that excess weight dramatically affects sexual desire and desirability.

I am 67 years old, but I do not want to stop being sexually desirable.

I don’t want to let French Fries, Cheeseburgers, Pizza, Pepsi, Snickers or Spicy Buffalo Wings determine the frequency, duration or even the possibility of sex...Yuck!

What kind of “Temple of the Holy Spirit” would that be?

I am a Real Sex Addict

281) Shut Up!... about the Food 2

There were three really big things that changed my life:

Stopping drinking, stopping masturbating and staying at the exact same weight every day.

That last one required that I carry a 10 ounce metal food scale on the back of a bike 1000 miles through six countries in Southeast Asia for 16 months.

There is a famous old Scriptural line “Their God is their stomach”.

I hate to admit that that was me..but it was.

282) The Old Physical Strength B Office

He is richest who is content with the least...for content is the wealth of nature.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

Any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete.

Physical training should have as much place as mental training.

As with the body, so with the Universe.

Food should be limited, simple, spiceless, and, if possible, uncooked.

In chastity lies the protection of the body, the mind and the soul.

My body speaks for itself.

Just breathe.

283) My Dead Best Friend

My oldest friend of 35 years is an African-American man with Type II Diabetes, lethal levels of potassium due to kidney failure, high blood pressure and is also 85 pounds overweight

I hadn’t seen him in nine years and when he began to start passing out at work, and taken out in an ambulance, I sent him an airline ticket to visit me, with his 14-year-old autistic son who he raises by himself.

My most regular friend the last 17 years, my former bass player, who is a doctor, invited us over to listen to his stereo. Afterwards he told me simply that my friend was going to die if he continued to do what he was doing.

I had promised my friend to raise his child, upon his death...If he bought a life insurance policy to help with the costs of raising his son as San Francisco isfive times more expensive than Atlanta, Georgia where our friendship started.

I called Georgia Regional Health Center, the state agency for autism. I got him a job interview in his chosen profession ten blocks from my house. I researched free medical care for him and his son, and researched low cost and even temporary free housing for them.

The whole time he was here he simply drank liters of Pepsi and ate “Hole in the Wall” pizza…An excellent pizza choice.

My wife who has the compassion of the Virgin Mary (if she can put up with me) finally said to me “Steve, there’s nothing that we can do…He won’t help himself.

In the last 32 years I’ve worked with well over 50,000 addicts and I have walked away from tens of thousands of men who just simply weren’t ready to do their part, yet.

But this was my oldest friend…I sobbed like a child.

Paul McCartney has an old song that says “Live and let die”... and that’s what it finally came to.

I am going to live by trying to do God’s will around food to the best of my ridiculously flawed abilities…And I am just going to watch my best friend die.

In AA we believe that it is God’s will for us not to drink.

And Sex Addicts Anonymous we believe that it’s God’s will for us not to use porn, masturbate or cheat on our partners.

The question I have to ask myself, as I cry over my oldest friend… Is there a will of God around food?

284) Death and Acceptance

My best fried of 35 years died from renal failure caused by diabetes.

He was not only been my closest friend for 35 years, he was my bass player for a good while.

Five years ago, Mark T., a former bass player of mine died. I remember in his wonderfully cynical, darkly humorous way saying to me,
“I’m on my way out, Duke”.

My beloved Brother Wayne went "his way out"…and the reason is because of his food. All sugar, quesadillas, pizza and Pepsi.

I have learned after 42 years of studying addictions, that eating disorders have more denial than any other disorder…and I am at peace with myself with that .

How did I love my friend?

Not by confronting him (which anyone who is reading this has probably experienced from me) but rather by accepting him.

How? Accepting is "being positive about a situation or person".

I loved him by accepting the positive in him…and turning all the rest over to God.

Amen

285) Moderation...where the yellow stripe lies?

I have never liked moderation.

In the 60s we had an expression that said “The middle of the road…is where the yellow stripe lies”, implying that moderation, if not cowardly, certainly showed a lack of commitment.

That is a very bad slogan for an addict to adhere to…because addicts are extreme by nature, or more precisely, by nurture.

But here’s something I am absolutely certain of: It is God’s will for me to eat moderately.

If I don’t eat enough…I starve.

If I eat too much, I get fat and become subject to diabetes, stroke, coronary heart disease, cancer…And most recently COVID-19.

...And it makes me feel and look bad.

God, please help me to be moderate with my food. Amen

286) My Son's Best Chance

The most important thing I can do for my child is to stay alive and strong...He needs me.

How?

The obvious answers are about not doing anything addictive:

Drinking and driving is hazardous, smoking will kill you, opioid pills are an epidemic, unsuccessful treatment of sex addiction leads to depression which can lead to suicide. All these are extreme behaviors and consequences.

But the thing I can do, moderately and consistently, is turn my life and will over to God around food and exercise.

That is my son's best chance.

287) Help me to "Mind my own business"

HP,

“As with the body so with the Universe”

…help me to take care of myself in an “Enlightened Self-Interest” sort of way and to “Mind my own business”

….by following my food plan and exercising

288) "We were reborn"...

The Big Book says “We were reborn”
p.63

When does that happen?

It has happened three times for me.

First, when I got clean and sober from drugs and alcohol in 1988.

Secondly, two years later when I achieved my first chastity period in 1990.

Thirdly, thirty years later in 2020, when even though I was consistently thin, my weight became dead-on-stable-everyday.

What does being reborn mean?

Initially, it means freedom from some particular addiction.

But, positively, it means I can feel more, I have more intuition, more self-esteem, more power in personal relationships, more social resilience and my memory improves.

My posture improves. I smile more and laugh more easily.

I am more interested in other people, yet I take better care of myself.

This third and last “Rebirth” in 2020 was weird.

I felt like I imagine the first amphibians who ever made it to shore felt: panting for breath, not sure where I was, just grateful to be alive.

It can be rebirth from anything:

Years of depression

Smoking

Porn

Poverty

Codependence

Victimhood

As Dr. Martin Luther King would say: “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty I am free at last”.

289) Food and Freedom

“Control of the palate is very closely connected with the observance of celibacy. I have found from experience that the observance of celibacy becomes comparatively easy if one acquires mastery over the palate. This does not figure among the observances of time-honored recognition. Could it be because even the great sages found it difficult to achieve?”

Gandhi is saying that even for the most spiritually gifted sages of all time controlling what, and how much, food, goes in your belly is hard to do.

It was absolutely pivotal for my recovery.

I was just stuck in third gear for a long, long time.

Conquering the food kicked my recovery into overdrive.

And now I am free...

290) Say you want a Revolution...Well

HP,

The only revolution I can start…is in me.

Revolution in a 67 year old man?

Revolution in cardio-vascular exercise...will do very nicely.

291) Hunger and Chastity

“Control of the palate is the first essential in the observation of the chastity vow”
Gandhi

Why does that work?

Because when I am super hungry...A pretty girl is not near as interesting as a broiled steak.

292) On “Improving Our Relations With Others” The White Book

What are the 3 A's in Al-Anon?

Awareness, acceptance, and action…

Awareness:

In the past, it took me months to become fully aware that a qualifier that I loved had an illness, and I have dated more than one addict in my life: My second wife and I met in an OA meeting, my last girlfriend I actually 12-stepped into SAA, I met one of the loves of my life in a DA meeting.

I would just keep trying to reason with someone who was doing something self-destructive…and you can just imagine how that went.

Once, it took 200 days, of incredible misery, to accept illness in someone I loved.

I could see addictive illness in myself clearly, but, like any good Al-anon, I thought I was “ talking bad” about my qualifier, if I accepted illness in someone else.

Acceptance:

So awareness was first, but being “ like the horse or the mule”, in other words me being incredibly stupid, has always been an unfortunate, but necessary, component, for me, to “hit bottom” and accept that someone in this world had an illness…besides me.

The reason for that is my own character defect.

I was 35 years old and sober in AA seven years (5 plus 2) before I realized my mother was an alcoholic.

She told me that my father was an alcoholic but that she was not…And I believed her. I did not question her. That would’ve been “talking bad” about my Mama… Something you don’t do in theSouth.

Action:

One of my best sponsors died at 91 years old, with 54 years of AA sobriety.

He was a crusty, difficult old man, but he had one redeeming moral quality:

He would always inventory his thoughts, words and behaviors and ask himself one simple question: Is what I am doing loving?

That works a lot better than trying to beat a qualifier to death with reason… And it gives me “The priceless gift of serenity”.

293) On The “Our Father” Prayer

“Our Father”

I feel relaxed when I hear those two words. It’s because I believe that someone else is in charge. I am responsible, but I am not in control.

“Who art in heaven”. Most of my life I have thought of God as being poised in the clouds in the sky someplace, not quite identifiable on the radar. But, now, I believe, as my betters Saint Augustine and Gandhi believed, that God is within.

“Hallowed be thy name.”

If even God’s name is holy, then how indescribably holy must all of God be.

“May thy Kingdom come” means that Love and Truth reign Supreme, because that’s how you get to the Kingdom.

“May thy will be done” . This is a prayer affirming that the Kingdom coming into being, is God’s will.

If that is true that the Kingdom of God is within then, when it says “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it means that whatever Love and Truth is on the inside, of me, I am supposed to bring to the outside, of me. This is the crux, the pinnacle of the prayer.

“Give us this day our daily bread”, is a simple admission of our dependence, not just on the metaphor, food, but everything.

But, then we take a hard left and are guided in our relationships with others. “ Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”.

“Lead us not into temptation” Why? Because it leads us away from the Kingdom.

“But, deliver us from evil” This is the tragic result of losing the Kingdom.

“For Thine is the Kingdom”. Truth and Love are God’s, and anytime I am with Truth and Love I am with God.

“The Power and the Glory”, These are simply too wondrous for humans to understand…just nod and smile.

“Forever and Ever” The Kingdom is eternal.

Amen…which just means “Let it Be”.

294) An Old Sage's Food Office