When most people are asked about why they want to be abstinent, there are a few common responses:  Get to and maintain a healthy body weight; To relieve the insanity of constantly thinking about the food; and to help lose the shame and self-criticism that comes from failing at something again and again.

These are quite valid, but let’s pull the camera back to look at the bigger picture:  what are your values in life?  Also, what are your goals?  What kind of person do you want to be?  Most importantly, what are you trying to achieve with abstinence?  Think of your values as the compass point you wish to follow, and your goals as the steps to get there.

Hopefully, abstinence for you is about more than losing weight.  Many of us did that before with diets – except it didn’t last because we didn’t change.  An initial period of abstinence can certainly help you achieve that, but what happens once you get to where you want to be, weight wise?  If you’re like I was, both in diets and later in 12 Step programs, you then go back to being the old you and you gain the weight back.

Admission that you are an addict, a compulsive eater with food needs to come with an admission that this condition is never going to change.  AA and the Big Book figured this out long ago (“we are like men who lose their legs, they never grow new ones”).  However, science has caught up with what was at that time an opinion, not based on any scientific facts.  PET scans and other tests on active addicts shows one very important thing:  they have changed their brains.  We all have neural pathways in our brain and also body chemistry.  Long term use with any substance means those pathways and that blood chemistry have been permanently changed.  It is the now proven scientific version of “losing your legs and never growing new ones.”

If you are thinking about goals, look back at your life in the big picture.  What did the food take from you.  Yes, it gave you weight, but how many things did it rob from you?  How many things did you not do, or did in a limited fashion because of your eating? Do you really want that back?

Is all of that behavior – not only the eating but the sneaking of food, denial of the effects of eating, the self-loathing, the frustration – moving you towards or away from those values and goals I spoke about previously?  Are you still pointing toward the compass point your values turned you towards?

This is the first consideration you will need to figure out.  This will help you keep the reasons you are working so hard in the forefront of your mind.  This, however, is exactly what your disease will try to wipe out of your thoughts totally if it starts to get its hooks back into you.