First and foremost, my disease wraps itself around the honesty center of the brain. I’m not talking about “checkbook honesty,” most of us pride ourselves on that kind of honesty. But what about honesty when it is concerning our food? Not so much. I was often not too honest about my food with others when I was in the food, but I was mostly dishonest with myself. I had – and still have – an almost unlimited amount of self-delusion when it comes to food. I need to remember, however, that this not me, but my disease hard at work to convince me that “everything is fine.” As long as I think things are fine, I haven’t taken the first Step in admitting I have a problem. If I don’t have a problem, I don’t have to look for a solution.

If I am trying to get abstinent, the disease has only one job to do every day: to get me to put off dealing with the food for another day. This is smart thinking on my disease’s part: if it can convince me to put off recovery just one more day… then that’s one more day it’s got the foot in the door. Chances are if it can convince me to delay recovery today, it will be able to convince me again tomorrow as well. Reciting the “tomorrow mantra” was responsible for years of delayed recovery for me. There’s one indisputable fact: if you are in a room full of recovering compulsive eaters, none of them started their abstinence on a tomorrow. They all started it on a today.

The maddening thing about this disease is that there is no getting ahead of it. Everything I learn about this disease is simply more ammunition for it to use against me. There is, of course, nothing wrong with many of the program phrases you hear, but an active disease can grab onto those phrases, twist them around, and come up with a reason – using those phrases – that I should go another day without putting down the food.

This happened for me when I was trying to get my abstinence back in a program with a flexible food plan. I would come to meetings, hoping to be inspired. If truth be told, I was coming to meetings hoping that the “Abstinence Fairy” would come back and give me back that first grace abstinence that was easy and brought no urges with it. In other words, I wanted what everyone had without doing any of the work. That kind of thinking is another aspect of the disease, and another weapon in my disease’s arsenal.

I particularly used that tired old saw “I’m praying for the willingness.” As a Convention speaker I heard once said, “when it comes to addiction, willingness is highly overrated. If Bill W. and Dr. Bob had waited until they were willing, there would never have been an AA.” Of course, the reality is that we all need to be willing in order to recover. At that exact point in my relapse, however, my disease was trying to use the program concept of willingness against me as a way to get me to “kick the can down the road” another day when it came to actually putting down the food. That phrase also did double duty for me. Not only did it keep me from actually putting down the food, but it also made me feel like I was actually doing something when indeed I was not. I had just come to use a program phrase to justify my continued eating.

“A little knowledge can be dangerous” was the story of my relapse. After 15 years in program and knowing all that I knew about the disease simply meant I had to get more creative with the BS I used on myself. One of my favorite phrases was: “I’m redefining my abstinence…” In retrospect, it wasn’t true. I had broken my abstinence (again) and was simply redefining my honesty.

Why did I do this? Insanity. Today I look back and realize that I didn’t do this. I allowed the disease to do it to me. Understanding that the little voice that is constantly trying to find the “easier, softer way” is my disease was the key to getting on the road to recovery for me.

I also remember going through a phase of eating and then “trying to be gentle with myself.” I would come to meetings and say “I ate again last night, but I won’t beat myself up over it.” The trouble is that I did that over and over. Finally, one day a fellow member asked me: “Isn’t eating again last night ‘beating yourself up’ too?”

Another one I used at one point was: “I can’t feel deprived. I can’t be on a diet.” The question I needed to ask myself was: “Is it you that can’t feel deprived or your disease that can’t feel deprived?” After all, every one of us is on a “diet.” I’ve been on a no liver diet since I could get out of my mother’s house. Anything short of constant bingeing is a diet to my disease. As to feeling deprived? Puh-leeze!

My disease wants to take the balance sheet of recovery and then white out the plusses and put all of the minuses in big bold letters.

You know my disease doesn’t say to me? It doesn’t say “You poor thing! You don’t get to be out of breath halfway up a flight of stairs! You don’t get to wear out your pants in the inseam because the fabric rubs against your enormous thighs! You don’t get to live an isolated, dismal life with few friends and even fewer romantic interests.”

In some ways, people in program do newcomers a true disservice by trying to play to the diseased portion of their brains. We want newcomers to feel like there is nothing to give up and all to gain. That’s just not true. People in A.A. have to give up drinking. It’s unreasonable to expect that we won’t have to sacrifice some things for our recovery. 12 Step programs shouldn’t compete with a billion dollar diet industry out there trying to convince people they can have something for nothing. If we are a program of honesty, we shouldn’t be playing that same game.

At another point in my slip, my disease convinced me that I should work on the spiritual part of the program. What was that about? Well, trying to focus on the spiritual part means I don’t actually have to do anything about stopping the eating! Maybe if I worked on the Steps, the food would magically fall into place! While I truly believe that abstinence is a gift from my Higher Power, I need to meet him (her? it?) halfway and do the footwork.

There is a school of thought in program that says perhaps you should work on the Steps first, and that the food will take care of itself. I have to admit that I have seen the occasional person for whom this was true. The fact is that I think for the vast majority of people, in the “chicken and the egg” discussion, the food has to be put down first. Think about this logically: was there ever any discussion in A.A. that people didn’t have to stop drinking first? No… of course not. In speaking about those rare cases where they used the Steps first and then got abstinent, I think they are very much the exceptions and not the rule. Sadly, for every one of those rare cases, there are probably a hundred people desperately hoping they can find recovery that way – and to no avail. I often wonder how many people heard of these stories and hung on for years before becoming disillusioned and leaving program convinced it “didn’t work.”

When people say they are going to “work the Steps” without putting down the food, I have to ask an important question: what about that pesky first Step? It says “we are powerless over the food” and yet you’re saying “I’ll get back to that one.” Exactly how is that admitting powerlessness? How do you do Steps 2 through 12 before handling Step 1?

The bottom line is that there is really only one way I found to break the stranglehold of compulsive eating – I had to put the food down and pick up the Steps. I truly wish there were an easier, softer way, but all those other things I tried were just the disease using my self-delusion to win the battle for another day.