A Story of Recovery:

Look Who’s Talking

Temptation is subtle, quiet, cunning, and powerful. When faced with temptation, I have thoughts that I actually believe are great new ideas or epiphanies. My ideas usually start something like this: Wouldn’t it be nice to have…, or how about eating this tonight to break things up…, or this food is really boring, so let’s go out to eat “real food.”

Living in recovery means learning to be able to distinguish between sane thoughts and ideas and those of when my food addiction is speaking to me. The food addict thoughts want to sabotage the spiritual path I am on in FA. I can walk on the spiritual path or on the self-serving path of food addiction. I can’t confuse the discomfort I may be experiencing in my life with the “great ideas” of my disease, which chooses to solve that discomfort with food.

I refuse to give into my disease. I realize that the discomforts I sometimes experience in my life are just my growing pains. Growing pains never go to waste, because the pain of my experiences will someday help another member in fellowship who is going through something similar.

My first year in FA was not easy. I learned that all my “good ideas” (especially about food) needed to be run by my sponsor. I am willing to do that today so that my sponsor and I can decide which good ideas are keepers and which ideas need to be filed under “no thank you!”  I cannot make good decisions alone. The decisions I made alone got me to 300 pounds. That is a whole lot of bad decision-making! I need to ask myself every day, when a thought comes to me, “Is this my disease talking to me?”  If it is, then I am not answering.

 

This story was originally published in the Connection Magazine. Subscribe to the Connection Magazine for more stories of recovery. Or submit your own story of recovery.