April 4, 2009
Before I start on the information for the third step, I would like to put down some thoughts that were expressed in the Saturday morning session of Conference. I do not have all the names of the people that made these statements, but feel they are important to get on paper and watch conference later to find their names.
These are the statements that are causing me to contemplate and what to know more about their subject matter:
Brother Packer (not Boyd K.) Cautioned us to “build on the bedrock” the rains will come. He also counseled us to “acquaint ourselves with the promptings of the Holy Ghost.”
“We watch for answers when we listen to thoughts and promptings that are in our minds.” (Brother Packard, not Boyd K.)
“A Testimony is to know and feel – Conversion is to live and do it.”
“Addiction is a craving of the natural man”
A sister that has been called to be an addiction missionary stated: “Addiction is what I turn to instead of the Lord.”
The Third Step in Overeaters Anonymous is: “Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the card of God as we understand him”
The first three steps are: “I can’t; God can: I think I’ll let God!”
It is impossible to take step 3 until you have take steps 1 and 2. “We must accept help without reservation from a greater power than ourselves.” Step 3 is a simple step, but not easy. “We must adopt a new unfamiliar way of thinking and acting in life.” “From now on, we let go of our preconceived notion about what is right for us. When faced with choices, we earnestly seek guidance from our Higher Power, when that guidance comes we act upon it.”
The Lord will still expect you to use your free agency in making choices, but he will send the Holy Ghost to help you with your decisions.
Brother Packard in conference also taught us: “We watch for answers when we listen to thoughts and promptings that are in our mind.” We must learn to understand when we are being prompting from the Holy Ghost and to follow the impressions we receive by the spirit.
“Many systems give us diets to follow but make us responsible for adhering to them. Weight loss is not our only goal, and we accept that even a “perfect” body (if there is such a thing) would not make us happy. Our primary purpose is to abstain from eating compulsively, and we know that in order to do so we will need help.
As you start this program for a while you will do well, but be prepared for a honey moon period to be over. You will be tested time and again and there will be slips in your progress. You must learn to forgive yourself and move on. Do not dwell on the slips, dwell on the success and that you have the Lord on your side.
“What we need now is a way of being abstinent over the long haul and living through good times and bad.”
“Often we cause ourselves problems because we don’t realize that there are some kinds of eating we could handle comfortably and some kinds we cannot.” Identify the behaviors and food that cause you to be compulsive. By eliminating these eating behaviors and foods our lives will experience fewer struggles. “Our common sense will tell us to avoid our own particular problems and follow sound nutritional guidelines.”
“We have found that when we give up self-will regarding food and completely turn our lives over to God, we receive all kind of guidance.
“All of this experience, knowledge, and help are augmented by a source of wisdom inside of us that becomes more powerful . . . through prayer and meditation. The inner resource is our intuition. . . Intuition is supposed to be God’s direct line into our minds and hearts, but our problems and our self will have interfered with this connection. As we work on the steps, the interference begins to be removed, and intuition begins to function properly, helping us to focus on God’s will, both for our eating for the living of our lives.”
CAN WE SAY THAT INTUTION EQUALS THE PROMPTINGS OF THE HOLY GHOST? Being able to recognize the promptings of the Holy Ghost is like building a muscle. You must work at it every day, exercising you spiritual ears and heart to hear and fell the promptings. At first they start small, but after exercise they become stronger.
“As we become aware of what our eating guidelines should be, we ask God for the willingness and the ability to live within them each day. We ask and we receive, first the willingness and then the ability.”
“We can confidently face any situation life brings, because we no longer have to face it alone. We have what we need any time we are willing to let go of self-will and humbly ask for help.”
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Understanding God's Hand in Our Lives
April 2, 2009
The second step of Overeaters Anonymous is:
“Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
It starts with the question: “Have we acted in an extremely irrational and self-destructive manner when eating?” Some examples of this are: driven for miles in the dead of night for something we crave -- eaten food that is frozen, burnt, stale, or even dangerously spoiled – eaten food off other peoples plates, off the floor, off the ground – dug food out of the garbage and eaten it – stolen food from your friends or family. Have we eaten beyond the point of being full, beyond the point of being sick of eating?
Does this mean I have to give up the 10 second rule when we drop food on the floor?
Have we become obsessed with diets – spending lots of money trying everything from diets to drugs to hypnosis to stomach stapling? Some of the things that we try can be damaging to our health: the pills we take – laxatives – vomiting and the list goes on. “They work for awhile, but we inevitably lose control and over eat again, putting back on the weight we had worked so hard to lose.”
Overeaters Anonymous is a spiritual program not a religious program.
This statement makes me ponder: “Sometimes we religious ones (the others are agnostic or atheist) have trouble because we believed in God’s existence, but we do not really believe God could and would deal with our compulsive eating. Perhaps we don’t believe that our compulsive eating is a spiritual problem, or we feel that God is concerned only with more important matters and expects us to control such a simple thing as our eating. We failed to understand that God loves us in our totality and is willing and able to help us in everything we do, that God will help us with every decision, even food choices and amounts.”
Sunday, a young woman told us how she had lost an important check and prayed that she would find it. The Lord answered her pray. She said she felt silly and embarrassed talking about her simple request when there were many more important requests for help. But her prayer was answered.
We are taught in the scriptures to pray morning and night. We are taught to pray over our crops and everything in our lives. It is important we learn to pray for the small and simple things like lost key or lost checks.
“Most of us have asked God to help us control our weight and this prayer hadn’t worked. . . our pleas for helped seemed to fall on deaf ears. What we were really asking God to do was remove our fat while allowing us to go on eating whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.
How do we ask for God’s help? We need to put in simple words what we need help with. Help me feel full so I will not want to eat that chocolate. Help me have the strength to not eat the junk food. Help me remember what I have learned about healthy eating. Help me not eat compulsive while I am dealing with this problem that is causing me stress.
These are some of the questions that I have been asking myself:
How does God fit into my life?
Do I understand how God’s hand works in my life?
Do I have faith? Can I act on that faith?
Do you like yourself? Do you love yourself?
The willingness to act on faith is the key to step two – new faith in ourselves, in others, and in the power of love.
When we begin to develop a new relationship with God, when we have the faith that he will help us, then we are ready to move ahead with our program of recovery.
The second step of Overeaters Anonymous is:
“Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
It starts with the question: “Have we acted in an extremely irrational and self-destructive manner when eating?” Some examples of this are: driven for miles in the dead of night for something we crave -- eaten food that is frozen, burnt, stale, or even dangerously spoiled – eaten food off other peoples plates, off the floor, off the ground – dug food out of the garbage and eaten it – stolen food from your friends or family. Have we eaten beyond the point of being full, beyond the point of being sick of eating?
Does this mean I have to give up the 10 second rule when we drop food on the floor?
Have we become obsessed with diets – spending lots of money trying everything from diets to drugs to hypnosis to stomach stapling? Some of the things that we try can be damaging to our health: the pills we take – laxatives – vomiting and the list goes on. “They work for awhile, but we inevitably lose control and over eat again, putting back on the weight we had worked so hard to lose.”
Overeaters Anonymous is a spiritual program not a religious program.
This statement makes me ponder: “Sometimes we religious ones (the others are agnostic or atheist) have trouble because we believed in God’s existence, but we do not really believe God could and would deal with our compulsive eating. Perhaps we don’t believe that our compulsive eating is a spiritual problem, or we feel that God is concerned only with more important matters and expects us to control such a simple thing as our eating. We failed to understand that God loves us in our totality and is willing and able to help us in everything we do, that God will help us with every decision, even food choices and amounts.”
Sunday, a young woman told us how she had lost an important check and prayed that she would find it. The Lord answered her pray. She said she felt silly and embarrassed talking about her simple request when there were many more important requests for help. But her prayer was answered.
We are taught in the scriptures to pray morning and night. We are taught to pray over our crops and everything in our lives. It is important we learn to pray for the small and simple things like lost key or lost checks.
“Most of us have asked God to help us control our weight and this prayer hadn’t worked. . . our pleas for helped seemed to fall on deaf ears. What we were really asking God to do was remove our fat while allowing us to go on eating whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.
How do we ask for God’s help? We need to put in simple words what we need help with. Help me feel full so I will not want to eat that chocolate. Help me have the strength to not eat the junk food. Help me remember what I have learned about healthy eating. Help me not eat compulsive while I am dealing with this problem that is causing me stress.
These are some of the questions that I have been asking myself:
How does God fit into my life?
Do I understand how God’s hand works in my life?
Do I have faith? Can I act on that faith?
Do you like yourself? Do you love yourself?
The willingness to act on faith is the key to step two – new faith in ourselves, in others, and in the power of love.
When we begin to develop a new relationship with God, when we have the faith that he will help us, then we are ready to move ahead with our program of recovery.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
"Yes" I am Addicted to Food
April 1, 2009
Shakespeare penned “As the night follows the day, to thou own self be true and you cannot be false to any man.” I am on the road to self discovery.
I have set up this blog to follow my journey through life. There will not be a lot of pictures, just my thoughts. I am not a writer, but I wish my family to understand some of my thoughts.
I feel that I am addicted to food, so my first blogs will be about food addiction and learning to control my eating habits.
I am reading “The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous”. This program is similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step is “to admit we are powerless over food – that my life has become unmanageable.”
It is not about willpower. Lack of willpower is not what makes us compulsive eaters. The disease of compulsive eating is an illness that cannot be controlled by willpower.”
“The disease of compulsive eating is treefold in nature: physical, emotional and spiritual. Compulsive eating does not stem simply from bad eating habits . . . nor just from adjustment problems . . . nor merely from love of food, though all these may be factors . . .”
We must be aware that we have trigger foods that cause us to over eat. We will return to our compulsive eating habits if we are not aware of what triggers our need to eat, beside hunger.
We must turn to another power stronger than ourselves for help with this problem.
Why do we eat? Boredom, fear, stress, depression, tired, control, anger, loneliness, hiding from pain, entitlement, etc.
We must become teachable. Does that sound like a concept we have been taught in church? “Once we have become teachable, we can give up old thoughst and behavior patterns . . . “
My goal today is to admit that I am an over eater and to become teachable. I am studing my behaviors and attitudes and why I eat when I not hungry. This is my first step to change.
Shakespeare penned “As the night follows the day, to thou own self be true and you cannot be false to any man.” I am on the road to self discovery.
I have set up this blog to follow my journey through life. There will not be a lot of pictures, just my thoughts. I am not a writer, but I wish my family to understand some of my thoughts.
I feel that I am addicted to food, so my first blogs will be about food addiction and learning to control my eating habits.
I am reading “The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous”. This program is similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step is “to admit we are powerless over food – that my life has become unmanageable.”
It is not about willpower. Lack of willpower is not what makes us compulsive eaters. The disease of compulsive eating is an illness that cannot be controlled by willpower.”
“The disease of compulsive eating is treefold in nature: physical, emotional and spiritual. Compulsive eating does not stem simply from bad eating habits . . . nor just from adjustment problems . . . nor merely from love of food, though all these may be factors . . .”
We must be aware that we have trigger foods that cause us to over eat. We will return to our compulsive eating habits if we are not aware of what triggers our need to eat, beside hunger.
We must turn to another power stronger than ourselves for help with this problem.
Why do we eat? Boredom, fear, stress, depression, tired, control, anger, loneliness, hiding from pain, entitlement, etc.
We must become teachable. Does that sound like a concept we have been taught in church? “Once we have become teachable, we can give up old thoughst and behavior patterns . . . “
My goal today is to admit that I am an over eater and to become teachable. I am studing my behaviors and attitudes and why I eat when I not hungry. This is my first step to change.
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