My favourite quotes from the 10th Tradition

Hi there. I'm Foodfairy, a compulsive overeater. When I was reading the Tenth Tradition in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, I wrote down these passages and I thought I would share them with you.

"The OA recovery program is essential to each one of us. Our very survival depends on it. Without it...many of us would have litle time or energy left to do anything else." -p186
This is a helpful reminder when I don't feel like working the program. I need to remember how much I would lose if I lost my recovery. I need to remember the promises of the program. I might not die in a physical or literal sense, but I would lose so much of my vitality, that I would be useless to the world around me, and die a slow emotional and spiritual death

"We find we can live happier and more effective lives wehn we focus on doing our Higher Power's will each day, rather than on conflicts." -p189
Dale Carnegie once said that we should avoid conflicts like we do a pit full of snakes. He pointed out that they really serve no good purpose. Most of the time when we are involved in conflicts we are not taking constructive action. The Big Book says that faith without constructive unselfish action is dead.

I hate my sister and my boyfriend

Resentments, resentments, resentments. I know the Big Book says that we must be rid of them or they kill us. It also says that our troubles are of our own making, a result of our self-centred-ness. Yeah? Well perhaps that's true. But right now I still feel #*%* resentful of both those people...so much so that I'm sobbing in my bed at 3:30am in the morning. Unless I write SOMETHING I'm going to eat for sure. I can't write too much, because I don't want to violate their privacy and abuse them online. Essentially, it comes down to both of them making me feel rejected and unimportant. That desire to be important and loved by others is one of the strongest forces in my life.
Today I was watching a movie called "Too Good to Be True". Basically it's a thriller about a woman who has two men after her. In my self-centred insanity I found myself desperately wishing I was her, that I had men who loved me that much. I think now that I've lost almost 60lb, boys should be falling all over me. Wny not? because I suck! What's wrong with me that no boys even look at me except for the boyfriend that treats me like crap??? *sighs* What's wrong with me that my own twin sister doesn't answer my SMS? I don't know. Maybe I'm self-centred. I can only pray for that to change. I commit to you guys that I won't eat over this problem, at least not for the next 24 hours.

Mini Big Book.....What the????

I would really love to know if I am the only person in the world that finds it extremely ironic, to the point of being a little bit freaky, that there is a pocket-sized version of the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book?

Well there is. And since I'm a big fan of anything portable, I bought one at a meeting I attended recently whilst travelling away from home. And it's been a Godsend! I've been carrying it everywhere with me and reading it on trains, buses and in waiting rooms.I've also been listening to speakers whilst working out, doing housework, and doing pretty much anything else. I've been trying to work the program for an average of 2-3 hours per day. It's a lot, but the speakers help me to do it without losing too much time. And it's definitely worth it. I'm grateful to say that I have been abstinent now since Friday February 8th, despite some quite severe personal problems. As a reward, I've lost more than 1kg since then. I am now 27kg down from my top weight!!! Great news. Keep watching that ticker. Wiht God's help it will continue to move in the right direction.

If I had to sum up what I've been learning with all this program work I've been doing, it's this: that this program must truly have a spiritual basis for us. "Derrrr!" I hear you saying "Doesn't it say over and over again in the program literature that the spiritual is foundational?" Well yes it does, but that doesn't mean I was listening does it?

When we come to OA, we are told immediately that "This is not a diet and calories club or a weight loss program." and that we shouldn't treat it as one. I couldn't understand what they meant. I treated OA as a diet and calories club. Then, my sponsor's constant insistence that OA is not about weight, it's about changing your life, finally sunk in, and I started to examine myself on an emotional level. I thought that by unearthing my emotions, and learning about myself, I could learn how to fix myself. I started treating OA like a therapy program.

Chapter 3 of the AA Big Book, however, blasts the therapy program illusion out of the water, with the same torpedoe that blasts all hope of future physical normalcy out of the water. Here are some of my favourite quotes from that chapter (translated for the compulsive eater):






Parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking compulsive action around food. Our sound reasoing failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out." p 37

"In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to binge or purge, feling ourselves justified...But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a binge was insanely insufficient in light of what always happened." p37


"She made a beginning...All went well for a time, but she failed to enlarge her spiritual life. To her consternation, she found herself stuffing her face again half a dozen times in rapid succession." Chapter 3 p35



"The actual or potential food addict...will be absolutely unable to stop eating compulsively on the basis of self-knowlege."



"The compulsive eater at certain times has no effective mental defence against the first bite....Neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defence. Her defence must come from a higher power. "Chapter 3 p 43

Chapter Four then says:

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma....that's exactly what this book is about. It's main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself...."

For those of you who are interested, my fourth step inventory is also going well, albeit slowly.
See you all again soon.
Love from Foodfairy- Compulsive Overeater, and powerless to manage my own life.

I want abstinence!

Hello Everyone! I’m powerless over food and I cannot manage my own life. How about you?

So...a new post, a new excuse for blog neglect. This time I’ve been tripping from one end of my country to the other, stopping in at home for a night or two to fulfil a local commitment, then setting off again. Travelling can be great fun. But it’s not wonderful for recovery. Not only does it often become difficult to find the time, privacy and internet/phone/meeting facilities for working the program, but there are a lot of triggers for overeating, including stress, change, fatigue, lack of control over what and when you eat, and so on. Overall I saw progress on this trip compared to previous trips in recovery, but failed to maintain abstinence, mainly due to a combination of stress, fatigue and program neglect, as well as just plain self-will.

Early Thursday morning I left home for an 8.5 hour train trip to visit my paternal grandmother in the town where pretty much all of my dad’s family grew up and resided for two or more generations. It’s a country town which gets pretty boring at times so I took a friend along. Being a compulsive people pleaser, living with two people outside of my “inner circle” was slightly stressful. Moreover, food has always been a huge part of my relationship with my grandmother. Just stepping through the door at her house is a trigger for me.

I almost made it through that trip abstinent. I say almost, because on my last full day there I gave in and had “just one” of my grandmother’s home-made sugary treats. I managed to be abstinent after that for about 12 hours...but the obsession that had been triggered was brewing inside me, and eventually broke through the flimsy barrier of my willpower. After everyone had gone to bed I raided the cupboards not once, but twice, and and did not regain abstinence until two days later. However, progress not perfection is my favourite OA slogan. I can definitely say that there was improvement. Apart from the length I held out, I was much firmer with my grandma about my eating requirements, and less worried about putting her out, than I have been in the past

I arrived home at about 9pm on Tuesday the 29th of January, and hurried to prepare a lesson for the next day. I felt very resentful when only 4 people turned up to the free, volunteer English class that I had cut short my time at my grandma’s to eat. After getting home from the lesson I packed my bags for another destination, got to bed around midnight, and woke up at 3:30am the next morning January 31st to head to the airport. My second destination was more than a twelve hour drive from my home, but this time I flew. I went to visit a very dear friend of mine who is now studying there. I got back from that trip at 12:30am of February 6th, snatched a few hours sleep and hurriedly prepared a shambles of a lesson for that afternoon. After getting home on the Wednesday night I collapsed into bed, and I’ve spent the last 2 days recovering.

I started my abstinence again on the morning of the interstate trip. During my time with my friend, I slipped up a teensy bit once or twice. But overall I would say I was abstinent the whole time- eating according to plan without white flour or sugar. That was a definite record for time away from home. However, getting a record for nomadic abstinence made me cocky and wilful, as did the loneliness and depression at saying goodbye to my friend again. By the time I left her I was back in the illness. As I was saying goodbye to my friend all I could think about was how I would soon have the chance to eat without any accountability at the airport. I did overeat in amount at the airport, but I still stayed away from white sugar and white flour. That was definitely my Higher Power not me at work, coz I came awfully close. Unfortunately, even that abstinence broke when I got home. I had two white rolls on arriving home, and the next day I also ate some of my number one binge food: ice cream.

The thing that really ruined my abstinence this second time was the return of self-will and cockiness. I’ve just started my fourth step. (More about that in another post), and one of the targets of resentment I found myself writing down was God (see the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter 5 for more about self will and resentments in the fourth step) . I’m so angry at him for giving me this disease and making me do all this work to overcome it, and for not taking away the cravings, and for everything else that sucks in my life. At the end of the second week away I was so exhausted from maintaining abstinence, so annoyed at all the times I’d felt deprived, that I just said “Hang it all, I deserve this binge”. That’s, of course, a stupid way to think, but we compulsive overeaters are insane after all.

My abstinence started again this Friday. May God help me to maintain it. I’m working my program hard now. I’m sick of breaking abstinence again and again. So many long-timers have years of back-to-back abstinence. I know it’s possible if I just work the steps. I am continuing to work my third and fourth step. More about that later. For now, thanks to all those of you who have bothered to read this far. I hope my story has been of help to you. And thank you to God for the more than a day of abstinence. Please continue to grant me more. I offer myself to you, as your servant creature. Please mould me and remake me so that I might serve you and do your will as you would have me. Amen.