2016-02-08

I am a member of a few general recovery groups on Facebook. Most of the members are addicts or alcoholics. I am not. I consider myself addicted to food in some ways, but it isn’t like I can just stop eating, like an addict can quit their substance of abuse. I’m not saying that’s easy either. That’s my point of this post.

Most recovery groups are based on some twelve-step model. As such, we see a lot of references to a higher power or God in the posts. One that I came across recently was that we have to redefine willpower. Willpower is the will to turn over the reigns of our life to God.

I like this statement. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to attempt abstinence (or in the case of an eating disorder, balance). We do still need to refrain from engaging in addictive behaviors. The difference is, God is guiding us on our journeys. If we turn over the reigns of our life to God, we are realizing that we need to follow His lead, not the road of addiction.

I am a person who often turns over the reigns of her life to other people. I allow others to make decisions for me and in some ways, I’d like them to make the decision that I can’t have binge food, too. Staff won’t do this, as I’m an adult and responsible for my own recovery. My husband sometimes gets me a small bag of candy when I’d intended on eating a far larger quantity. This may lessen the physical effects of a binge, but it still means I engage in compulsive eating.

The first step of Overeaters Anonymous is to say we’re powerless over food. (The same statement is used in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, with “alcohol” or “drugs” instead of “food”.) Therefore, we need to find a power greater than ourselves to help us recover from our addiction. Note that this higher power doesn’t necessarily have to be God: for atheists and agnostics, it can be the OA group they participate in. This signifies that, while no-one is taking responsibility for another’s choices, it is the guidance of our higher power, be it God or the group, that leads us into recovery. Even as believers, we believe that we have free will, but we can still turn the reigns of our life over to God. If we do this, we learn to rely on Him for paving the way for us into recovery. It isn’t that we are no longer ourselves in recovery or not, but we rely on God for facilitating our process of recovery.

I am nowhere near recovering, as regular readers of this blog know. My last binge was last Friday, and I was tempted to give in again today. I didn’t, which is a small win, and my thoughts on willpower contributed to that. I realized that God doesn’t want me to binge, and He gives me the means to resist the urge. Today, I was led to write this post instead of binge. It may sound like I don’t practise what I preach, as someone who’s still pretty deep in her eating disorder, but it personally helps me to preach recovery.

Filed under: Healing Tagged: Addiction, Binge Eating, Binge Eating Disorder, Christianity, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorders, Food Addiction, God, Higher Power, Overeaters Anonymous, Overeating, Recovery, Twelve-Step Programs, Willpower

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