The Flatlands

Have you ever been in the Australian outback? It’s a wonderful experience and I really recommend it. There’s nowhere else on earth like it. The remoteness is unimaginable to all but a few. The colours are brighter than anywhere else on earth, and contrast with each other in a raw primeval way, even as they blend together into one another to form strangely beautiful new hues like green gold, red-blue, and silver-cream.

Of course all this can be observed fairly early on in one’s journey, and, since journeys through the Australian outback take hours.....and hours....and hours on end, the novelty can wear off, or at least become drowned out by the car-sickness, boredom, drowsiness, and other more familiar, if less pleasant, sensations we associate with road trips.


I feel that my recovery is in a bit of an outback spot at the moment. I’m travelling along a flat road, neither improving nor deteriorating...at least the landscape around me isn’t deteriorating. It’s been the same for the past couple of months. But I am deteriorating. My recovery is going backwards. Recovery is a mountain, not a plane. I haven’t been climbing it. I’ve been content to coast along and hope things improve. I was so excited by my progress, that I just let things slip. This program requires so much dedication and perseverance. Sometimes we can be deceived by the beautiful country of wellness that we are entering, into thinking that we have left our disease behind for good. The moment we forget our first step, we are bound to slip. I keep forgetting my first step.

I think part of the reason is that I don’t like the second and third steps, and the first step makes them necessary. If I can’t manage my own life then I have to let someone else manage it. It’s hard not to admit I cant’ manage my own life. Just the other day my mother said to me “We’ve tried so many things to make you happy, and you’re never happy. You need to spend a long time with God.” I knew the first part was true. I didn’t like what she deduced from it. But that second part was true too. I need something outside myself to manage my life. If nothing else that means the program. I need the program, and I need to be devoted to achieving recovery through spiritual renewal. To get that spiritual renewal I need to work the steps and use the tools. Even if I don’t want to. Well at least I’m writing here now.

The biggest problem for me at the moment is in the relationship department. I finally laid stuff on the line to my boyfriend over a month ago. The way he treats me would be totally unacceptable under almost any circumstances. (I don't mean he hits me or anything like that). But our circumstances are very unusual, and he is going through a LOT at the moment. I said I would stick by him through this hard time, but I still feel taken for granted and besides, what's so great about this relationship anyway? We don't really have that much in common to be honest.

Anways, I layed things on the line. I was sure that was God's will. But I was angry and resentful in the way that I spoke to him. That was not God's will. And I wasn't honest. I blamed him for our problems, and ignored my own part in them. Moreover, I was insecure and distressed. I said in the email I sent him that "I don't suppose you'll even bother to answer" but the fact was I really hoped he would. He didn't, and I felt so rejected and alone and lost. So, about a week or two after that, when I hadn't heard from him, I sent him another email, saying I was so sorry for being so mean to him in his hour of need, and would he take me back. (Can anyone say "coward"?) Now I'm back where I started....thinking I'm in a relationship that isn't God's will but not trusting God to get me out of it and take care of me...after all I tried that. Oh yeah...my boyfriend replied to the second email, and we talked, but I haven't heard from him since. (can anyone say Jerk?)

Sorry Guys!!!

Ok well I know that not many of you are reading me at the moment (and who can blame you?) so you might have missed the fact that I've been missing in action for almost two months now. I have quite a few excuses. But they're all pretty lame ones. I need to blog here. I need to be part of this online community of OA bloggers. I know there are only a few of us that can post every day, but here's my new commitment: to post once a fortnight and to comment on each of the blogs in my blogroll during the same period. Let's see if that's do able shall we?




In the meantime, my food has been off and on. I finally broke 50 days abstinence the other day (my longest time yet) and haven't got anywhere near that since then. But it's all about progress not perfection and there was a time when 50 days abstinence would have been as impossible for me to achieve as a gold medal in skiing. Also, I've hit the 30kg mark in my weight loss (that's 66lb). Which is just awesome for me. I've never lost anything like that in my life. I'm a special breed of yo-yo dieter- the "inverse inexpert kind". You know how kids (like me) who can't use a yo-yo properly, end up with it bouncing up and down at the end of it's string, never rising back into their hand? Well my weight bounced up and down within a range of about 5-10kg (10-20lb) and never got anything like target weight. In factg I was never anything less than obese. I am now just 3kg away from normal weight. Amazing! Praise God!!!


Here are some photos:


These first two are of me near my top weight (around 95kg/
























These are from my "losing weight" phases (somewhere between 80 and 90kg/ 175 and 200lb)

And these are from my graduation and my trip to the easter show in the last couple of months (71-75 kg/155-165lb)

Crash

Attention All: this is a community service announcement concerning public safety:

Foodfairy is learning to drive!

Actually, I've been learning to drive for a while now. But today I had my first accident. I'm pretty shaken up about it, and my natural reaction would be to eat. I can control it for the time being, but without some program work that will only be a temporary soluation. As one of the virtual speakers I've been listening to lately mentioned, if you don't write about your feelings you will eventually eat over them, sooner or later. That has certainly been my experience. I can deal with my emotions by bottling them up for only so long. But inside that bottle they all ferment into hunger. So I know I need to write about how I feel right now. I haven't been injured physically by the accident, but I could still be injured by the emotional fall-out.

So basically what happened was this: I was driving along a two-laned road that becomes one lane about 200m down from where I was. So, knowing I would have to change lanes at some point, I thought I would be smart and get in early. However, there is an important turn off before the lanes merge, so, the cars in the target lane are liable to be stopping quickly. This is why, in fact, my supervising driver had always waited until AFTER we passed the turnoff to tell me I needed to change lanes.

So, being inattentive and wilful as I usually am, I decided to change lanes early, without being directed, and without seeing that there was a car getting ready to stop and indicate.I was going too fast and I didn't check in front of me as well as behind me before I changed lanes. I think I got distracted when my supervising driver asked me why I was changing lanes. Anyway, I pulled in behind the car in question, and, I think, accelerated. I saw it, and my supervising driver yelled BRAKE!!! and I put my foot on the ACCELERATOR. I soon realised that I had put my foot on the wrong pedal and switched, but it was too late. We banged corners. Here's a picture of the corner of my car.

So the other guy got out and said I'd hit something. I said I hadn't, because my supervising driver said she didn't think I had. This got his back up, and he said "Yes you have, get out and have a look." Well I didn't want to get out and have a look. I was stopped in the middle of the road held in place only by the footbrake, inches from his car, and taking up two lanes. I asked if we could drive down the shoulder at the bottom of the hill. But by now he thought I wasn't going to take responsibility for it, and so he was trying to insist that I give him my name, license and registration before I went anywhere. We managed to convince him to follow us 100m down to the kerb, and I got out and gave him my license and name. But by that time I had started crying and was close to breaking down. So my supervising driver took over and I went to the car and started shaking and bawling. We went straight home, and I sat on the couch and bawled and cried some more. My supervising driver happened to be my mum, and so she sat on the couch with me and comforted me.

I have so many feelings going round in my head at the moment and I don't know what they are. I feel angry and resentful towards the other driver and my mum. I'm not exactly sure why. I mean he didn't really do anything wrong. The accidwent was undoubtedly my fault. It was no one else's fault- not my mum's and not his. He was angry and pedantic about getting my details-but who wouldn't be, especially after I denied I hit him in the first place? I'm resentful of my mum because she didn't tell me that I was a wonderful driver and it wasn't my fault (which is what I wanted to hear, but it wasn't the truth) and because she's still upset and gloomy, and that makes me feel bad and guilty.


I'm afraid, very afraid. I'm afraid that he will come after me for all I've got, and that the damage to his car and/or our car will be much worse than it looks, and there will be, at the very least, a huge insurance excess that I can't afford and my parents can't afford (I'm really struggling with money at the moment anyway). I'm afraid that my mum will think I'm a terrible driver and not take me out driving again. Or, if she does take me out driving again, I'm afraid she'll get all overcautious and overprotective and do the whole "You have to drive at 40km an hour [24miles] in an 80km [48miles] zone" thing. I'm afraid that my ADHD will stop me from ever being a good driver. That I'll never be able to pay attention to everything on the road, and that I'll be stuck at home with no life forever. Or else I'm afraid that one day I'll have a terrible car accident and get brain damage and turn into a zombie or a horrible person or something. (Yes I'm getting ahead of myself). I'm afraid that my parents will be angry at me and hate me.

I'm also afraid of my feelings- that they're not right or proper or real or something. This is a longer-running issue that is coming out in my fourth step. But I often use sad feelings to manipulate others, and I can't tell the difference between genuine bad feelings, and dramatized ones. Often I think it's a combination of both. But I still have this guilt and confusion about where one ends and the other begins. Today, when I was crying and shaking, was it to get sympathy and leniency from the other driver and from my mum? Or was it because I was actually shaken up? The thought certainly did cross my mind that I should cry, and that it would be better for me if I did, but I was also upset, I think. And when I called the people whom I'd been goin to see to say that I wouldn't make it, did I really need to tell them I'd crashed my car, so that they'd be all sympathetic? Couldn't I have just said something happened? Wouldn't other people be too ashamed or shaken to tell anyone that? Doesn't the fact I was able to use it to excuse something show that I wasn't really feeling ashamed, guilty and shaken enough?

I also feel fear about guilt. I worry taht I don't feel guilty enough. I'm really quite self-centred in my reactions to all of this. I"m not concerned for the person I crashed into, or my mum's trauma and state of mind. I'm not concerned for the other people on the road (primarily). I know I need to feel guilty, and to feel humbled so that I won't be so cocksure of myself next time I drive. But I can't make myself feel these things to a satisfactory extent, And if I did feel them to the extent I think I should I woulnd't be able to cope anyway. So I'm scared of not feeling the right way, scared of feeling the right way, and just damned confused and guilty.

Epilogue: Learning to drive in my part of Australia:

Ok, so the first thing you guys need to know is that I've had my learner's permit for about five years. That's a little bit long, but the reasons for it are threefold:

1. Finding the time and money was difficult for a long time

2. I am a procrastinator

3. The laws about driving in my part of Australia are insanely strict. So it's becoming more and more common to take a long time to get your licence

In my state you have to go through ALL the following stages to get a full licence

1. Turn 17 years old

2. Take a test on the road rules and safe driving habits, getting a very very high score

3. Complete 50 hours of driving practice under the supervision of a fully licensed (not provisional) driver, practising a variety of manoevres in a variety of conditions (since I got my learners' permit it's gone up to 120 hours thank goodness I missed that.)

4. Pass a very strict on road test, which almost everyone fails the first time.

5. Receive a 1st level provisional license (red P's) and keep those for a year. Your driving is restricted during this period, and you have ot display P-plates on your car

6. Pass a test based on a computer simulation designed to test how you deal with emergencies on the road

7. Receive a second level provisional license (green P's) and drive for another two years with P-plates on your car and restrictions

8. FINALLY receive your full license.

Is that overkill or what???

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.