Throwing up

I felt a little queasy after dinner Sunday night but didn't make too much of it until I woke up at 2 am desperately needing to throw up violently.

It was awful and sickening and painful and terrible. All I wanted was it for it too end, please, please, please.

It occurred to me that for most of my life, i CHOSE to throw up in and throughout the day. AND i even got some perverse pleasure from it -- i felt i was regurgitating all my problems AND all the calories i'd binged in right before the purge. I'd come out lighter, i thought, emotionally and physically.

It hard to imagine voluntarily doing what i went thru Sunday night.

God and Addiction

i spoke at a detox the other day. I spoke about the 12 Steps and how practicing them completely changed me and my life.

I spoke about a sometimes controversial point - reliance on a Higher Power (often, aka "God") and discussed how i came to AA a sure and proud lifelong atheist.

Thru the 12 Step process, I did come to believe in Spirit and that has helped and guided me every step of the way, filling the emptiness with something far better than food, crack or alcohol.

It was a process and one that gives me goosebumps to this day -- it always amazes and thrills me that I can believe.

Through my beliefs and my actions, i AM able to realize that substance, any substance, will not meet my emotional needs. Even with food, i really am perfectly and comfortably moderate. i may still be cuckoo about the weight from time to time (mostly when i'm hormonal) BUT i don't use food.

So, there i was at the detox with a group of detoxing addicts and alcoholics, most of whom put on a tough exterior. And i gave my little usual talk.

After i spoke there was a LONG LINE of people lined up to ask me the same question, "I'm an atheist like you were -- can I find God?"

I suppose i shouldn't have been surprised. All my life i envied people of faith. All my boyfriends were always deeply religious and i wanted what they had, but i thought it wasn't available to me.

AA literature says of atheists, "actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God."

i can not speak for anyone else, and wouldn't want to, but for me that is true.

BREAKING UP WITH THE SCALE!

The scale's beginning to work it's evil magic again -- i've gained 5 pounds and it's making me grumpy. My guy friend says, "throw it out. stop weighing yourself. if you didn't know, you wouldn't be miserable".

Spoken by someone who's weighed the same thing since high school, and he's 53.

But he's right. All these years later, and those damn digits can still bum me out.

Okay, here I go. It's going in the trash. I can barely believe how difficult that feels.

How will i do? Stay tuned.

This blog will help to keep me "honest"

Fat and Fit?

My weight has fluctuated 100 or so pounds through out my life. At my top weight, i was perfectly healthy. When i was anorexic, i could barely stand without fainting, i didn't get my period for years, lost a lot of bone density, was mean and an insomniac....When i was bulimic for years and years and a very average weight, i could not have been sicker or done more damage to my body. I deal with the aftermath every day.

Someone asked on facebook - Can someone be fat and healthy? My answer - i was

Getting Over Getting Over my Eating Order

I still lean on my eating issues. When I'm having a tough day or coping with fear, i think about what i'm eating and what i'm weighing or ...whatever i can to keep my mind busy.

After all these years, do i still nurture and fan the power of my disordered eating? Do i cling to it and actually not want to let it go?

It's different these days because i don't binge, purge and starve, as I did most of life; I'm a perfectly normal weight, not emaciated or obese, as i was, up and down most of my life. I'm a moderate eater nearly all of the time - NOT something i could have said, most of my life

and yet.

There are real life issues I need to look at and deal with and still, i turn to body image, when i don't want to look or deal with the real.

I can get sooo interested in the whole body thing - journaling and contemplating and yet, that doesn't pay my bills or get my old car fixed or find me a career.

Time to start getting into the world and getting over the old standby - the Eating Disorder

Fear, Self Confidence, Disappointment

"Fear keeps me doing what I shouldn't be doing and keeps me from doing what I should."

That's what my sponsor tells me, and it's true. Fear has kept me from doing many things -- pursuing any real career, taking better care of myself and well, developing a full and fulfilling life.

Here I find myself at 48 so unsure of myself and my abilities that I stay stagnant. I haven't courageously grown the necessary skills to do much of anything in the real world.

I just took a little hostessing job at a local restaurant for a couple of reasons -- I need to get out and it seems social, it's close to home and the people seem nice. BUT as easy as it is (i had my first night last night), i am scared that i'm not capable of ably seating people in a smallish restaurant.

AND i went after this particular job, because i'm convinced i have NO other skills. Vaguely pathetic, huh? Still, i'm doing something which is better than nothing

I kept my life tiny for, well, all my life. For the first 40 years, all efforts went toward food -- bingeing, puking and starving. Then, i blotted life out through drugs and alcohol.

Those "coping" methods are gone and now i have to face the life I never developed.

I read a lot of autobiographies about people who found their passions and achieved in ways, big and small. i always thought i'd be one of those people who found what i loved and built around it

i consider myself to have a creative temperament; however, i don't have creative talent which is, evidentally, a bit of a problem.

I've always been a dreamer, but not much of a worker.

All I can do now is be brave and hardworking for as my sponsor says, "fear keeps me doing what I shouldn't be doing and keeps me from doing what i should."

More OA sponsees

There's a therapist in my AA group who keeps referring her clients to me for 12 Step sponsorship -- women who have eating issues, often in addition to other addictions.

I can not tell you how much i love working with these women -- eating issues are my heart, i find. Sure, it's great working with alcoholics and drug addicts; yet, there's something about the food stuff that just goes to my soul.

Compulsive eating, self-hatred and body loathing were my constant companions and non-stop obsessions. "Fat Pig" was my name for myself.

I don't live that way anymore -- food (alcohol, drugs, men et. al,) won't cure anything, so I don't try to use them. I'm pretty content with my body - it is what it is and it's gotten me this far, regardless of how badly i've treated it!

I love passing the freedom on to my new sponsees.