Step 1, Question 5

*** I'm going to skip ahead a few questions, since I answered them in my notebook and don't feel like re-typing them all.


5. Have I tried to control myself and wound up demoralized? Even when I succeed, has it been enough to make me happy?


I have tried a million different diets and workout routines, inspirational quotes and pictures, weighing myself regularly, not weighing myself regularly, etc. But my problems with food never went away, even if I was at my goal weight. I tried to do it on willpower alone, hating myself when I failed and not being able to understand why others could do it and not me. Now I know. It's because I have this "disease" and they don't. Knowing that is actually very comforting. I have a disease that makes me unable to control my reaction to food. I need to stop trying to control and deny this fact, and turn my situation over to God so that he can help me overcome the really difficult moments. I must let God be the control in my life and I will do everything I can to stay abstinent. But I will LET GO and LET LOVE.


I've had a very hard time understanding the difference between tight-fisted control over my situation and working hard to recover. I keep hearing over and over again, "Let go" "Stop controlling" "Turn it over to God" etc etc that I thought if I just went to meetings and did some service, worked my steps here and there, it would come easy. That no effort was required on my part to resist a binge. I am at least required to ask God for his help, which I was totally unwilling to do. I am at least required to call an OA friend before I take that first compulsive bite, which I was also totally unwilling to do. I am required to put abstinence first, as a tool of recovery, not as the "goal". All of these things are EASY. But they are new and different, and thus require WORK. I must always remember this important distinction.