Why aren’t the tools I’m using for alcohol recovery working on food?

When we stop drinking/using, we require something to provide the ease and comfort that alcohol used to, but in a healthy productive way.  That “something” is our program of recovery. We make new friends, we rebuild our lives, we clean up the messes from our addiction, and we tap into the source of ease and comfort that is always available to us – which many call the “Higher Power” – or God, or Spirit, or Universe, or Her or Him, or anything you’d like (It’s just gotta be not you, not another human, and something that always gives you a sense of ahhhhhhh…it’s ok).

When we stop overeating, we also require tools to provide the ease and comfort that food used to – but when we turn to our Higher Power, many of us feel that we are in a cold, dark place. It’s almost as if the channel isn’t available to us when we “turn over” issues relating to food. Where is our HP in food? Why aren’t we getting the same relief - the feeling that the problem is removed?

I think it’s designed exactly that way for a reason.

Overcoming food obsession requires a different set of tools, and those tools require us to face our discomfort head-on. These tools ask us to not just turn over, but to truly examine resistance, desire, boredom, deprivation  – to make a map of them, feel them as part of our deepening humanity, experience them without avoiding or distracting ourselves. Our Higher Power in essence is letting us do just a little bit more of the work. That’s a beautiful thing. They are saying - You are capable. You can face your discomfort, your negative emotions, and in doing so, find a strength and ability to do so many things in your life that you thought were impossible - like creating a peaceful and happy relationship with food.

Many of us stop right in the middle of this process - in the uncomfortable part. We start a healthy eating plan, we experience discomfort, and our brains freak out - we make the negative feelings mean that something’s wrong, that our plan of eating isn’t sound, that we need that magic diet that lets us be comfortable and magically remove the obsession (science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn’t done so yet…) But if we are truly allowing, facing, and feeling these emotions – they start to soften. They aren’t so…negative. They aren’t so acute. We start to believe that we can handle them. They don’t scare us anymore. We break free from the ways in which these feelings used to hold us back.

And then the miracle happens.