Reason 103, Terminally Unique

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

At my favorite Al-Anon meeting, I heard the following statement: Treat me special I feel normal, treat me normal I feel neglected. Wow! Did it strike a chord with me. All my life I've wanted someone to make me feel special, to make me feel a part of life, of a society, of a unit – a family or a couple.

To me it is either all or nothing, either I am the center of the universe or I don't exist at all. Living in sobriety and being abstinent is extremely difficult, especially in dealing with food three times a day. The whole weighing and measuring puts me in an abnormal state of mind and body. Why can I not be like a normal person and eat a normal amount? Being in a black out, drunk or over-stuffed with food or in a sugar stupor is for me normal living. I do not know how to live life – either I am in fear of it or I am trying to control it. For most of my life, I have thought of food, alcohol or some person, place or thing was going to fix it – this is my obsession.

For today, my life is exactly the way it is supposed to be. I am learning that nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.

Reason 104, What Choice Do I Have?

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. Page 44, AA Big Book.

To live on a spiritual basis is not whether I believe in a Higher Power or not and to die an alcoholic death is not based whether I am drinking or not. It has to do with the kind of life I am living. The choices I make in life determine the kind of person that I truly am. I am certainly capable of having negative thinking and a foul outlook on life, but whether or not I listen to my mind is the biggest determination on what kind of day I will have.

To live on a spiritual basis is to rely on a power greater than myself and at a time in my life when I was eating and drinking myself to death, it was the last thing I would ever do. All I wanted to do was to die without hurting anyone else or leaving a mess behind. But, did I really have a choice? I certainly believe I was lead into the rooms of AA, it is by my Higher Power's Grace that I chose freedom.

Or did it really choose me?

Reason 105, Out With An Illness ~

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I am such a wimp when it comes to being sick. It is like I have to be pampered 24/7. Don't even mention food. Food is the last thing in my mind, the thought of it makes me nauseous. I've been in bed unable to move in bed. It's like my body was attacked by some paralyzing virus. Every muscle ached so I didn't even bother to move except then it began to hurt by not moving.

The other thing about being sick it puts you at the mercy of whatever is ailing you or causing you pain. It is the only time where everything in my body shuts down in order to recover, even my mind stops thinking. I have to believe that the body including my mind is regenerating new growth and strength. I think it is one of the rare occasions where the mind and body work together instead of at each other.

Being sick allows me the privilege of doing something for myself that I would not do any other time – rest. It forces me to stop and put everything at a stand still. It is so very hard to stop when you been running in life like a chicken with its head cut off.

Reason 106, Unanswered Prayers And Questions

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Hurry up and wait! A friend of mine use to say as we waited for directions on how to proceed with a certain project. It never frustrated me, I still earned my salary. It didn't matter to me if I did something or not, it wasn't my time it was my employers.

I realized today, I believe I'm my own boss, that I have the right to control and make decisions. I do not! I think I do, but in reality I don't. The feelings of being irritable and discontent, where anything and everything pisses me off is why my life is unmanageable. Lack of power was my dilemma and that is the foundation for my insanity. Trying to figure out why the Universe (Higher Power) listens only to certain statements and not others is my task at hand. Why? I don't know. My mind wonders at the marvel of the spoken word.

Recently, I debated whether or not to begin working on a body of artwork that will eventually (hopefully) be exhibited somewhere. The amount of trepidation is not about making the work, it is about putting myself out there. After a few days, I made the decision to have a show of my artwork, pieces which I haven't produced yet. I told a very close friend. She asked when I would begin and I replied the very next day. The very next day, out of the clear blue sky, I get a call from a curator inviting me to participate in a different kind of art exhibition in June, not what I had in mind.

Coincidence? This has occurred various times of my life, which has me wondering – I must be careful for what I ask / pray / wish. Although its been a couple of years since I have made any work, I wonder just who is out there listening?

Reason 107, The Easier, Softer Way

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Maybe it is my natural instinct or a habit learned from society to find the easiest, quickest and least painful method to lose weight. If there was a magic pill, I will be the first in line at the pharmacy, in fact I am available right now for the research study. I don't mind being a lab rat if I can eat all I want and lose weight! It is the delusion of sick mind of a compulsive eater wanting to be like a normal person. I cannot and will never be capable of taking a bite and walking away.

The thing about being a compulsive eater is the many character defects hidden behind the obsession. Following the food plan is only a small part of the recovery needed for a change. The biggest learning experience for me has been the fellowship; being of service to others. In interacting with others I learn a great deal about myself. It is not easy looking in the mirror by being with others. Through the eyes of other's reactions one learns acceptance, love and tolerance. The courage to change things in myself is the wisdom I gain by being with others. Our friends are our biggest reflection of ourselves that tell us who we truly are.

Reason 108, Some Are Sicker Than Others

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Words don't hurt you unless you listen to them. Recently someone went off on a tirade about how I was not doing the program the way it is written. It is my belief, I have been known to be (not perfect) incorrect about certain matters you do what is good for you. If it doesn't work, then do something else.

Today, is my nine months of following the food plan, my abstinence from compulsive eating. In that amount of time, I have lost 121.5 pounds in nine months, 138 pounds from my top weight. I had to fail in order to surrender. I don't know if that is my top weight since the scale stopped weighing at 417 pounds. I continued eating.

The thing I realize with this person who blew a gasket, the disease was in its full manifestation controlling his emotions and thinking, it was not about me. While he suffered with his obsession on how to work the tools of the program he had no abstinence, no weight loss and especially no recovery.

I paid a high price for compulsive eating. I'm paying a high price for my recovery. It doesn't cost me a penny; but I am willing to work and do whatever it takes to recover from a seemingly hopeless disease of mind and body. The best thing about my recovery it shows.

Reason 109, Principles Before Personalities

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Am I putting personalities before principles? Yes, there is no denying it. It is one of the biggest reason I ate compulsively – people. I couldn't control my feelings about what people did. I am still sick, recovery is slow for me and it will take some time where I will not let the actions of others affect me.

For myself, the disease of compulsive eating is serious business. It is the first bullet that kills. I recently heard at a meeting where a member took a bite (just a taste) of his wedding cake; that sent him off to five years of compulsive eating. He could not stop eating sugar and white flour. It took him five years for him to stop; gaining most of the weight back he had lost. I must, therefore be diligent in my recovery. I must protect my abstinence if I am to recover from this seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

Am I abandoning the wounded? Definitely, if people are not capable of saving themselves, how am I to help save them? It is obvious, they do not want what I have, which is recovery in all three areas of my life – spiritual, mental and physical. The only difference between us is the fact that I am willing to do what it take to stay abstinent even if it means not eating compulsively.

Reason 110, The Courage To Let Go

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

I have one more obligation, then I am done. I will have fulfilled and kept my word and that is all that matters to me right now. I do not know why I feel the way I do. Maybe it's because I feel threatened. In all honesty, I am angry, resentful that someone else is coming into our little group. One more person would not matter to me, except it is another relapser. Maybe, if it had been another female, it would not have made much difference. But, she thrives on male attention, especially if they are sick ones that she can save. I can say that because she didn't have to save me – I have more time than her and her two co-dependent friends.

I made the commitment to myself that I would not get emotionally involved with anyone until after my first abstinent year. I sincerely believe the Universe heard me and is now in the process to fulfilling that prophecy. At the same time, the Universe has also put several people in my life to tease and taunt me on what I'm to do. I have roughly three more months – 90 some odd days to go. I know I can make it.

I am not going to let the negativity in sick relationships sabotage my abstinence and recovery. I have worked really hard for it, even if it means losing her.

Reason 111, Lost Causes

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

I value my recovery more than my new friends; without recovery I will have nothing. It is necessary at this point in my recovery for me to move on. I cannot continue to grow with people who are a reflection of each other. I have grown as much as I am to grow; it now becomes a risk. It is a risk I cannot afford and choose not to take. I have worked hard for my recovery. I cannot lose what I have.

It is very difficult for me to let go. I know I must if I am to move on and continue to grow. I keep hoping for a miracle, yet I been told not to fret over lost causes, that I should avoid them. I feel like I am in a movie. It's almost at the end where the movie is almost over and everyone is going to perish. The survivors very co-dependent go against all odds. The movie keeps me on the edge of my seat as I keep hoping for miracle. I hope a fluke occurs causing dramatic changes where the world and survivors are saved. The fantasy is I believe there is hope, when I should be realistic and accept that nothing is ever to happen.

Reason 112, I Can't Save The World

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

I can only save myself. In learning self-acceptance, there are two distinct facets I must surrender. First is the self-acceptance of who I am as a person to myself, this includes my self-esteem whether I like me on any given day. It usually does not involve other people. My self-esteem is not warranted on whether people accept me or like me or not. Second, is my self-acceptance as a person in society or in a group setting. This is more difficult because I tend to compare myself to others. It is not that I am afraid of getting hurt or hurting someone, but rather the biggest obstacle is what I think of myself when I am with people. It is one of the biggest reasons I isolated myself from the world by eating compulsively.

The character defect is fear. I am not capable of changing into a person I am not. I am not someone else. I can never be someone else because I am not them. I wish I could be someone else and because I wish to be someone else it must mean I must not like myself. That is a very hard thing to swallow.

I have always relied on other people to like me for my self-worth.

Reason 113, The Defiant Rebel

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

If you can't handle me at my worse, you don't deserve me at my best. What I thought I once was is no longer what I am. I am turning into a softy, a wuss. I am no longer the mean, leave me alone, don't bother me with your problems kind of guy. I am no longer afraid that someone will hurt me or that I will hurt someone. I will make mistakes and people will make mistakes, there is no doubt about that. I am no longer afraid of life. I used to live in fear, be afraid of the unknown, well, not so much anymore.

I have given myself permission to live from my heart, to be able to make mistakes with people and myself. I no longer have to live with the rules of I should, I ought, I must – it is now that I want. It is a big difference in my life. I am the warrior in the arena fighting for a worthy cause – for myself. I am worth fighting for I deserve to have beautiful life, to experience love, and be a happy person.

Reason 114, Self-Care Is Not Self-Hate

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

As a compulsive eater, there are many factors of my life that I am in constant battle, the main one being negative thinking. It can creep into my daily activity by someone making a comment, looking at me funny, or not doing what I want them to do. I must keep a close watch on my mind, what it is thinking, what it is observing in others. It needs to mind its own business.

The second factor of negative thinking or character defect I need to be vigilant on is procrastination. I love putting off things until I am like a chicken with it's head cut off looking for a solution to the problem I face. Instead of working on the problem / issue / job from the very beginning I wait until the last minute. A sub-topic of procrastination is being late to events or appointments. Is my time worth more than theirs?

Part of my negative thinking is sloth or saying, “I don't feel like it.” Sloth lurks like a virus in my mind. I will talk myself into or out of anything that might be good for me. I didn't “feel” like going for my nine mile power walk, yet after I was done, I finished in record time: 1 hour – 31 minutes! I was grateful I didn't listen to my feelings or my mind. I do it whether I want to or not.

Reason 115, Could And Would If Were Sought

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

. . . emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink (compulsively eat, unable to accept life on life's terms) again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery. On the other hand – and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand – once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able . . .

I have no idea what my Higher Power is, what it looks like or why I should believe in it and why it does and does not do the things it does. Just as the statement above from the Doctor's Opinion is something I read time and time again. Did I believe that it would work for me? Not really, but it was not until I started applying the concept that my life began to change. My psychic change (my opinion) occurred when I fully turned my life and will over to the care of my Higher Power (still don't know what that is – it just is). I am no longer an entity trying to figure out, second guess, manipulate, control and be God trying to change things in my life that I can't. I didn't have to accept anything or do anything – I just had to let things be, not to let go and let God, but just let go.

Quote from The Doctor's Opinion – page XVII from the AA Big Book

Reason 116, Wishing I Was Never Born

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

It has been an intense time of my life, getting to know myself, searching for the path, not knowing what I am looking for, knowing that my love is out there. I know I have to wait, to wait patiently for time to pass me by. I believe there are certain times in my life that the Universe listens, believing that it also filters all the negativity, obliterating it into nothing; taking all the good thoughts, intentions and setting them into action. I believe there is a power, a force that is supreme, an infinite source of energy that is so beautiful that no amount of imagination or thought process can describe it.

As a child growing up, many of my experiences, my perceptions of life lead to a place of wishing I was never born. The memories of those moments when I wished that some higher power, death or a person would come along to end my life only provided a sense of endless torture.

Today, I realized I had not wished for a very long time that I was never born. It is a miracle for me to understand that there is a greater purpose for me in life.

Reason 117, Comparison Shopping

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

I had just arrived in time to find an empty space where I could sit down. I asked the young woman if the seat was open, she gestured for me to sit down. I sat down as the meeting about to start. During the meeting she would fidget and play with her phone, sometimes texting or looking up something online.

I could not help but notice how attractive she was wearing a low cut blouse her ample breasts making her cleavage very evident and appealing. She wore tight jeans and nice shoes. She was dressed appropriately for the type of speaker meeting. I am pretty good at judging a person's weight and she must not have weighed over one hundred pounds.

But, for a compulsive eater like myself who has weighed over four times that amount and losing one hundred thirty-five pounds in eight months – it does not seem enough. I kept looking at her figure comparing her size with mine. There is no way I can attract a female of her stature and beauty.

Negative thinking creeped into my mind and began destroying all that I had accomplished. I was not good enough and how could someone like her even want a guy like me?

Reason 118, A Spiritual Life

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

I usually do not talk about my spiritual life or my spirituality, which in my thinking are two different entities. Living a spiritual life means that part of my life that focuses on things other than the material and day to day things of having a life. For example, doing random acts of kindness, leading a good and just life is living a spiritual life. A spiritual life it is not just the act of believing, it is the act of doing. Do I lead a very spiritual life? I don't think so. I try to live spiritually.

I don't do spirituality well just as I don't do perfection well, it is impossible. I am not perfect. Sometimes I meditate and sometimes I don't. On days that I don't, there is something missing from my daily activity. I believe that to be the connection, my conscious contact to my Higher Power. Yes, I can pray until kingdom come, but if I don't listen to that inner silence, then how will I ever know God's will?

Spirituality is meditating, reading spiritual material, attending meditation classes, or other alternative spiritual methods of obtaining a conscious contact with a Higher Power all for the purpose of benefiting and supporting a spiritual life.

Reason 119, Where Truth Hurts . . . Truth Heals

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity . . . ~ Gilda Radner

I believe she is scared of me, well maybe not of me, but of the feelings she will get if she allows herself to love and be loved. Yesterday I allowed myself to really feel. I realized that I had been walking around for years like a victim, angry at life, but angrier at myself for letting it all happen. I felt not only like a victim, but a fool, which is a hard thing to admit. For most of my life I relied on emotional intelligence, which I have none, since food or compulsive eating repressed most of my emotions most of the time.

I realized this story I had been telling myself was, in fact, just a story, a tale of events occurring only in my mind. I had told myself this story so many times that I identified with the main character – my self-centered ego. I was attached to the story because the story was of me, because it set me apart and formed a part of my identity. It gave me feelings I didn't know in reality, I knew them only in my mind. The story had drama, strong emotions, a flare of excitement, of unrequited love, at least in version I repeated to myself in my head. As the feelings washed over me I realized I was wasting my life living in my head.

Reason 120, Echoes The Thoughts Of My Soul

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Life has been patiently waiting on me as I fought the demons of my life. I watched the years pass by as I continuously ate myself to death, the devil in the bottle almost killing me. In giving away my moral inventory, I realized I parlayed most of my character defects of my alcoholic behavior to my new addiction. This never allowed me to change. Although I had seen tremendous growth in my twenty-five years plus of sobriety, I grabbed onto my new obsession using the same weapons to destroy myself.

For over nineteen years I have battled the disease of compulsive eating. I had never totally surrendered. I treated the program and the food plan as if it was just a diet. I would lose the weight, then be gone on my merry way. The problem was I still carried around the baggage of regrets – the self-hatred, resentments, anger and hurt that was the burden of blame. I no longer have to carry the past of regrets.

I am letting go of my desire to love, to want someone is as much the need to be desired, loved and needed. I am empowering myself with God.

Reason 121, Nothing Lasts Forever

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

Food doesn't cut it anymore. I used to think food provided relief from day to day anxieties, problems, and a solution to the feelings I had. If I was sad, it would make me happy, if I was depressed and mournful, it gave me the feeling of comfort and cheerfulness. It would wipe away the lonely tear and make me feel that someone cared. Food provided an illusion of a lie, an obsession. It is no longer an illusion. I can recognized it as such, therefore is dissolves into nothing. My recognition of my obsession, the illusion that food will fix it (whatever is bothering me) comes to an end. The survival of my illusion, the obsession depends on I mistaking it for a reality, of what is not really real.

I am on my own in regards to the feelings I left with, I see who I am not. For the first time the reality of who I am emerges on its own. It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. ~ Twelve Steps And Twelve Traditions, page 90. Now I get to really look at the problem, which is really me. It is no longer buried in the spoonfuls of food, oblivious from the reality of life.

Reason 122, What Might Have Been

Why I Hate Being Fat – 217 Reasons ~ 217 Pounds

There are so many questions that go unanswered. Is someone, something other than what is in my mind, my unconscious, my conscious state, governing the selection of the women I choose? Does the past repeat itself in the same form of what I grew up with? Or is there a Higher Power placing and choosing a particular person to be in my life? Am I subconsciously resisting change therefore causing me anguish and fear of the person I am to meet?

I keep searching for an answer. In the past I used to find love, comfort and security in food and alcohol. Lack of power was my dilemma. In so many ways I still choose to control my life. I cannot let go – let God. My mind continues to claw into an obsession. My compulsion is to want to LOVE and be LOVED. But first, I need to recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body so I may have what I want.

In doing a fearless moral inventory of myself, I found that I am self-centered to extreme. I am the center of the Universe. It is all about me! I can't help myself. I need more work on me.