One afternoon last week I answered the phone and the voice on the other end of the line said, “This is Brother ______, the man in your ward who said he was interested in loosing weight. You said you’ve lost 92 pounds. So, what do you eat for breakfast?”
The question caught me completely off guard, maybe because it was a man, and he was so direct. Usually when women inquire they’re a little more vague. They say things like, “So tell me what you’ve been doing.” I understand that they want to know what food plan I found to be so successful and if I go to the gym twice a day. I always explain that my weight loss is due to treating my struggle with food as an addiction, the same way an alcoholic, who wants recovery, treats his or her alcoholism. I try to live each day applying the spiritual based, gospel based 12 Steps to my life and I attend the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 12 Step support group meetings.
For some reason when this gentleman called and asked what I eat for breakfast everyday I told him. As I hung up I imagined how ridiculous it would be for a disparate alcoholic to call an alcoholic living in recovery and say him, “Hey, I’m struggling with alcohol and I need help. So what do you drink now that your not drinking alcohol?”
I imagined the man in recovery answering back, “Well, I have orange juice with my breakfast, milk at lunch, ice water with my dinner and a little apple juice in the afternoon.”
No one in his or her right mind would even begin to think that this information would be helpful to the struggling alcoholic. My experience is that, “What do you eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner?” is likewise the wrong question for the compulsive eater!
Generally, people know what to eat, drink, spend, play, and view. We know what moderate work, exercise, spending, and frustration look like. We know what other people take for pain and how much. But knowing what is right and choosing the right are two different things for the addict. For the person wanting lasting relief from addiction there is only one question. “What must I do to receive the power to change my destructive use and excess behaviors?”
I too use to ask recovering compulsive eaters what they ate for breakfast. Now I understand that the information I really needed was, “How do you live between breakfast and lunch, between lunch and dinner and until you go to bed to receive the power to eat meal after meal in health and moderation.
I pray I will continually remember that my recovery is the result of the power I have received and continue to receive from God. It has not only changed my body, it has changed my life, and it most certainly is not simply about what I eat for breakfast!
By Nannette W.
Posted Saturday, March 28, 2009
Copyright 2008 by Nannette W. All rights reserved. Making or sending copies is permitted if the page is not changed in any way and the material is not used for profit. This notice must be included on each copy made or sent.
What a great post! I too, have run into this, especially when I first “lost weight”, I would try to explain the 12 step program and they would impatiently say, “Yeah, but what do you EAT?”
That was really good, but you really should have told him what you it for breakfast!!! 🙂