'NORMAL' EATING

[MajestyJo]

"Normal" Eating

The idea that we will one day be able to eat spontaneously, like normal people, is a delusion. We compulsive overeaters tend to think that once we lose our excess pounds, we can go back to "normal" eating. Not so.

From Food for Thought

When ever I see the word 'normal' my immediate thought is generally, "..compared to what?"

As the old saying goes, "Normal is a cycle on a washing machine."

What is normal for one person, doesn't mean it is normal for someone else.

When my friend Schell shares with me what she eats, it makes me want to barf. When I share what I eat, she knows it will make her barf.

On the whole, I am very picky about what I eat. I am very big on textures, taste, and appearance. A lot of it steps from the abuse in my past.

Have found with my irregular sleeping patterns, I don't have a normal schedule when it comes to eating and doing a lot of things in my life. What is important is that I not miss meals, that I take my medication, especially the one that have to be taken with meals.

It is best that I take my meds at the same time. I am often taking my breakfast meds before I go to sleep in the mornng and/or taking my dinner meds at midnight, and that is not good. I try to have something to eat and take my dinner meds, and then cook a meal later.

It was normal to do 90 meetings in 90 days, and I did 2 meetings a day for 2 years. I was not capable of doing more than putting one foot in front of the other, go to a meeting in the mornng, be with recovery friends during the day and go to a meeting at night.

That 90 and 90 is suggested so that you can find a home group, people who can relate to you and find a sponsor who has what you want, someone who walks her talk and not just tell a good story.

Learned to trust the program, couldn't always trust the people in the program. My sponsor told me, that is where you are at, and that is where they are at, and we each work our own program according to our individual needs.

I had special needs. I had to go to different fellow ships and to counselling to get those needs met.

Many people were put on anti-depressant and my doctors over the years have tried to put me on them. I found them to be mood altering, not in a good way, I felt repressed and they stopped me from being me. They also put weight on and that wasn't good for my eating disorder. I either thought, well I am fat, so what does it matter or it was oh no! I am fat so I wouldn't eat or just eat one meal a day.

I didn't know that only eating one meal a day puts weight on. I didn't know that it was quantity, less is more. It was quality, not just food to fill up that empty space.

Being Type 2 Diabetic, made a big change in my thinking and my eating disorder. I not only had to turn the food, my habits, my old patterns and behaviors, I had to turn the thinking too. It has always been my thinking that was the problem, no matter what substance I picked up, be it food, alcohol, pills, men, work, etc.

Never wanted to be merely 'normal' as it seemed so boring and as my Native American Co-sponsor told me many years ago, they aren't normal, they are Earthlings, and many of them don't even know they have an addiction.

I don't metabolize things in my body the way normal people do and through this program I can change, even so, it is still one day at a time. Some people think they are normal, even though it is all in their own minds.

I was surprised that normal people have for the most part, thought of life as one day at a time. I thought I had found this new profound thing, when in fact it was old news to others.

Something I posted on another site