For 15 years, I would sit in meetings and say “I’m powerless over food.”  And then I would eat.  Then I would come back and say “I’m powerless over food.”  And then I would eat again.  This begs the question: “Just how powerless did I really think I was?”

I truly believe that I’m powerless over a bullet in a gun.  Do I really know that?  Well, not totally, but I have never put a gun to my head, and as I’m pulling the trigger say to myself:  “I’ll start again on Monday.”  My guess is that there would be no Monday for me.

So when I went to go eat during those slips, was I saying “The heck with 12 Step programs!  I’m done with them and I don’t care?”  No.  I really wasn’t saying anything to myself, but if I were to stop and consider what was going on in the back of my head, it would have been something like: “I’m going to go break my abstinence, and when I’m ready I’ll come back and get it back.”

And this was the basis for my illusion of powerfulness over the food.  After all, how many times had I had slips in the past?  And after every one of them, I had come back and eventually gotten my abstinence back.  That was the empirical proof that no matter how much I said I was powerless – I really wasn’t, was I?

And there was the problem.  I just didn’t understand the concept of powerlessness as it pertained to me and my food.  I had seen a perfect example of powerlessness with my alcohol consumption.  If I had a little as one drink, it had become physically impossible for me to stay away from the next drink. 

With the food, however, I knew that if I “got back into the food”, I could work on getting my abstinence back.  It might not be easy, I might have to get a new sponsor, might have to go to a lot of meetings for a while, but eventually I’d be able to grind that train to a halt.  Again.

I came to that realization one day after the umpteenth time and getting back into the food.  I remember asking myself “Why did I break my abstinence again, after a few months of clean eating?”  And a little voice in the back of my head said to me “You didn’t break your abstinence again, you haven’t had any real abstinence since you broke your abstinence many years back.”

And it was true.  I had periods of not eating compulsively, but was that true abstinence?  Today, I don’t think it was.  I was just on another “in” cycle, waiting for the next “out” cycle to begin.

What I truly get in my gut today is a different outlook on the concept of powerlessness when it comes to the food.  I understand today that I am powerful over the food – in the small picture.  But what I need to do is pull the camera out for the “wide shot” and look at my whole life in terms of the 12 Step programs for food.  And for me today, I get it:  I am powerless over the food… in the big picture.

 The best analogy is that I can run for 500 yards, and then sit down.  After a while, I can get up and run another 500 yards -- and then sit down.  I can do this again and again, until I have run a total of 26.2 miles.  Or... I can run a marathon.  The difference between those two things is huge.  True abstinence is a marathon.  It's dealing with everything life has to throw at you without turning to the food.  It's not easy, but that's how we grow and that's how abstinence gets easier.

When I first came into program, people use to practically pound the podium and say “We don’t eat no matter what!”  It was a very strident, adamant kind of statement.  A while back, I heard the same concept put in a much gentler way.  The person said “If you are a compulsive eater, and you’ve made food an option, it will always be the only option.”  This is my great truth about the food.  The food, if I allow it, will always be the path of least resistance.  If I have a choice of going through emotional pain and turmoil, or eating something I enjoy and which – at least at some point in my life – did something to calm that turmoil, it’s a no brainer!   Of course, I am going to go to the food.  And that’s what I needed to realize – the real idea of powerlessness.  It just could not longer be an option to soothe my emotions.  It needed to be fuel for my body – no more, and no less.  I could enjoy it, mind you, but I needed to be aware of why I was eating it.

And ironically, once I made that commitment to work through my problems, instead of getting into the food as a way of running away from them, I found life starting to get easier, because I had, truly, now taken Step One.  I was powerless over the food.