Abstinence

[MajestyJo]

Most of us are familiar with the basic principles of good nutrition. By abstaining from compulsive overeating, we are giving our bodies the best possible treatment. By avoiding refined sugars and starches, we eliminate empty calories and choose those foods with the protein, vitamins, and minerals necessary for good health.

- From Food for Thought for Today

I had trouble with this word because all I could think of was well how can I abstain, I have to eat. What I needed to do was stay away from what was not good for me.

My bridge party was a good example of that. I got back into the old thinking "I deserve a treat today. This is a party, a little bit won' hurt me." I ended up putting my blood sugar up and it took two days to get it back down to normal.

It doesn't matter what the substance is. Some is good, more is better is part of my disease talking, not my recovery. It is the thinking not the substance that is the problem. There is nothing wrong with food. It is about making healthy choices.

[MajestyJo]

When we eat right, we live right.

Order my living so that I may eat to serve You.


We don't have to abstain from eating, we need to abstain from eating the wrong foods. We need to make healthy choices. This was posted over 3 years ago, and I still go back into that old thinking when I am upset, depressed, lonely, and a lot of other emotions that keep popping up. They make me glad it is a one day at a time program.

I remember my sponsor saying to me, "How often did you drink to someone else's health, with an attitude of don't tell me what to do, I'll drink if I want to. I can have the same issues with food. The same thing with my pills, I would pop another one, just because I gave up my power, and let someone else push my buttons and I took things personally.

Just this week, when I bought the 20 Timbit Donuts, I intended to share them with my son. Because he spent money that was suppose to go to bills, I was very angry and decided that he didn't deserve the donuts. I ate them all. I had the thinking behind the eating, just like I had the thinking behind the drinking. How many times do you drink or eat to someone else's health, by thinking, I'll show them.

I use to resent my ex-husband and dad, because they would drink all the booze, pass out and go to bed, and leave nothing for me who still wanted to party. It was the start of hiding a stash for myself. The same thing with food, I would open the door and what I wanted or thought was there, was gone.

[MajestyJo]

Abstinence Is a Way of Life

Each morning when we wake up, we give thanks for another day of abstinence. Our bodies feel good, function well, and look better. To go back to our old ways of eating compulsively would be to give up the new health and peace of mind, which we have acquired through OA.

We do not want to go back. We are learning a new way of life, one that is infinitely preferable to our old ways. In order to maintain our abstinence and continue to make progress, we need a program. For most of us, this involves working the Twelve Steps each day.

Program sponsors can help us with this new way of life. Other OA members share their experience and tell us what has worked for them. Most of us find that we need the spiritual part of the program if we are to maintain our abstinence. Abstaining purely for weight control is usually not enough.

If we are to keep what OA has given us, we have to share it with others. We find that the more we give it away, the more progress we make with our own program.

To abstain is no sacrifice; it is growth and life.

I am grateful for this new life.

Heard once the word 'sacrifice' meant to make sacred. When I let go of things that are harmful to me, I am respecting myself. I am a child of God who cares for me. Why should I continue to hurt myself, when His Love is all consuming.

As I have said many times, I not only need to surrender my drug of choice, my drug of the moment, but the thinking behind it. As it says in the Big Book, spirituality is a change of attitude sufficient to bring and aid recovery. p. 569.