Losing Unnecessary Weight

I finally found a spiritual solution to not being overweight. It’s in the first 3 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous:

Steps 1-3 of the AA program are:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Step 1: I replaced the word “alcohol” with “food.” I am in fact, powerless over food. My eating habits became unmanageable from an early young age. I cannot control how much food I am going to eat but specially, what I’m going to eat.

In my early teens, I ate and exercised excessively because I erroneously thought food converted into muscle with this practice. At the time, having a muscular body was one of my main obsessions because I had an inferiority complex. I thought having a muscular body would increase my self-esteem.

When I became an alcoholic in my late teens, I no longer exercised and I became overweight because I drank to oblivion with no limits. When I quit drinking in my early twenties, I became obsessed with food; specially carbohydrates. Many people say alcoholics in recovery replace alcohol with food. I’m not sure, maybe I’m just the obsessive type. Either way, for years I obsessed about what to eat and not eat in order to have the ideal weight. I tried the protein diet, praying to the Higher Power to not overeat, replacing whole meals with certain foods, but nothing worked. If I ever lost my extra pounds, they inevitably always came back because of my mental obsession and wanting to control my food intake.

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Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Pexels.com

Step 2: I believe a Higher Power has restored my eating habits to normal. By practicing the prayer, or meditation “I am powerless over food,” my obsession is lifted and the Higher Power somehow allows me to know when I’ve had enough food, and not eat anymore. I no longer obsess or worry about food.

Step 3: I leave my eating habits and my food intake to the Higher Power. I can even cook cakes, and not eat them, nor feel compelled to. It doesn’t matter what I’m cooking or serving. My Will when it comes to food is left at my Higher Power’s hands and I no longer eat more than my body needs. AA’s twelfth promise comes true:

“We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for
ourselves.” (Copyright of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services)

Not surprisingly, in my last two annual checkups, my doctor told me that my body mass index is very good.

Tags: food obsession, losing weight spiritually, powerless over food

This entry was posted on April 1, 2020 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Spiritual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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