Book: Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous
Inner Voice: Write Things Down, Then Walk Away
Writing things down helps you to process your feelings.
If someone has made you upset, write a letter to them explaining why you feel that way. Decide at the point of writing that you won’t send it to them so you can just say whatever you want to say and get your feelings off your chest. Once you have written the letter, walk away from it for some time — at least a few hours, or perhaps as much as a day or two. When you read it back later, your feelings about some of the things you have written will likely have changed. You may be surprised at some of the things you have written. You might be surprised at the strength of your anger or disappointment. You might also start to be able to see your own part in the conflict in a different light. Writing a letter and not sending it, but rather walking away from it, can help you figure out what is bothering YOU about the situation so you can decide whether or not YOU can make any changes to help improve the relationship between you and the other person. Do you need to be a better communicator? Do you need to hold your tongue when you only have sharp words to say? Do you need to have better boundaries around that person? Try to figure out what YOU can do rather than spending time deciding how to get the other person to change.
This method can also work if you have too many things to do and you feeling like you are spinning out. Take some time to write down a list of everything that needs to get done. Then, walk away from it for some time. When you return to it, you will probably have gained some perspective on the tasks and will be in a better position to figure out the relative priority of each of the tasks.
Writing things down and then walking away is a powerful way to solve problems by giving yourself the time and space to calm down enough to be able to access your own better intuition.
Podcast: No God OA – An Atheist’s Journey in Secular Overeater’s Anonymous
Organization: National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD)
Organization: National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA)
Facebook Group: Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous
Story: In a World…
How was it then?
I would think to myself, why can’t I just eat whatever I want? It’s not fair. Why are all the foods that are good for me so bland, and all the foods that are bad for me so tasty? Why does food have to be fattening? Why can’t we just eat whatever we want and excrete whatever our bodies don’t need? I would think about this a lot, and would feel very hard done by that I had to live in a world where I couldn’t eat whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted.
~ A Food Addict
How is it now?
Now I live in reality. I understand and accept that I can’t just eat whatever I want. It might be unfair, but it’s the way it is, and I have to accept it and live with it. There is no point wasting time dreaming up fantasy worlds where food has no caloric value, or ruminating on how much better things would be if I could just eat whatever I wanted all the time. This is “magical thinking” and it got me nowhere.
~ A Recovering Food Addict
Story: Extra Extra
How was it then?
I hated shopping for clothes because nothing ever fit. It was humiliating and disheartening to try on item after item and have them not fit. The clothing that is made for large people is usually not shapely or fashionable, and it usually looks like it was made for someone twice my age.
I hated having to buy things that were XXL or XXXL. Or even bigger. Just before I started my recovery, I had some 4XL and 5XL shirts. On the one hand, I was happy that I could buy clothes that actually fit on my body, but looking at those sizes was so depressing.
~ A Food Addict
How is it now?
I went shopping the other day and bought a shirt that was sized as “medium”. This blew my mind. And there were so many shirts in the store that fit me. I had an actual choice of what to buy, instead of being forced to buy the only thing in the store that both fit me and didn’t make me look like I had zero sense of how to dress myself.
~ A Recovering Food Addict
Organization: Food Addiction Institute
Website: https://www.foodaddictioninstitute.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheFAIOfficial
Inner Voice: Likes and Dislikes
It’s okay to have likes and dislikes. That is what makes us unique individuals. We don’t all need to like the same things. However, if your particular likes and/or dislikes are interfering with your recovery, you need to get curious about why you have those particular preferences, and see if they still hold any meaning for you, and if they are serving any particular purpose. Are they more important than your recovery?
